Received Sylff fellowship in 2008
Current Affiliation: The Evergreen State College
SLI2019: Climate Justice and REDD+: Voices of Community Forest Users
Academic supervisor: Shaul Cohen (PhD advisor)
Academic achievements, social engagement initiatives:
Following the SYLFF supported field work for the Ph.D. dissertation in Delhi and Cophenhagen, I received a Wayne Morse Dissertation Fellowship to complete dissertation writing at the University of Oregon. Since completing my Ph.D. I taught in the Environmental Studies program at two liberal arts colleges, Denison University, and Colgate University, and in the Geography and Urban Studies program at Temple University, before landing at my current institution, The Evergreen State College to teach in the Master of Environmental Studies program as well as to teach Climate Justice and related subjects in the undergraduate curriculum. Since joining Evergreen, I have worked with colleagues to organize two Indigenous Climate Justice symposia bringing together Native American and international perspectives on climate mitigation and adaptation. Meanwhile, I have been conducting research with a focus on critically examining the Clean Development Mechanism and the REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) as they are being implemented in Nepal, with an eye towards understanding how they are transforming social relations in the local context, particularly as they relate to the forest commons. I am currently working on a book project with Routledge to bring together my doctoral and postdoctoral research projects on climate policy and politics in one volume. My published work has appeared in various peer reviewed journals such as Global Environmental Politics, and in edited volumes including The International Handbook of Political Ecology.
Shangrila Joshi is a Member of the Faculty at The Evergreen State College. Her research and teaching interests are at the intersections of environmental justice, political ecology, and critical development studies. She obtained a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Sciences from Kathmandu University, a Master of Arts in International Affairs from Ohio University, and a doctorate in Environmental Science, Studies and Policy, with Geography as the focal discipline, from the University of Oregon. Shangrila is from Nepal, an indigenous Newar of the Kathmandu Valley, and she spent her formative years there, as well as in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Kabul, Afghanistan.
The 2008-09 SYLFF graduate fellowship enabled me to conduct valuable fieldwork in Delhi - including in-depth interviews with members of Indian climate intellingentsia and civil society - and to conduct follow-up interviews and participant observation at the 15th Conference of Parties in Copenhagen. My dissertation "Justice, Development, and India's Claim to Environmental Space: A Postcolonial Political Ecology of the Atmospheric Commons" examined North-South climate politics leading up to the Copenhagen climate negotiations with a focus on India's negotiating position.
