Nimisha Thakur

Ph.D Candidate, Anthropology Department

Graduate Research Associate, South Asia Center

Highest degree earned

M.A., Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute

Graduate Student Dissertation Title

River song: Riverine values, ethics and cosmologies on the Brahmaputra floodplains

Bio

Nimisha Thakur is a doctoral candidate in the Anthropology Department, specializing in socio-cultural and environmental anthropology. Her research project centers on environmental ethics governing riverine life amidst impacts of climate change and state infrastructural projects, in the northeast Indian state of Assam. She specifically focuses on fluid understandings of land in small river islands of the Brahmaputra river and how these place-based ethics enable riverine communities to imagine a future despite precarities seeping into everyday life.

From 2018-2020, Nimisha was a Syracuse University Water Initiative Fellow as part of the National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored EMPOWER Research Traineeship at the Department of Earth Sciences at Syracuse University. Nimisha was awarded an American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) Fellowship, 2022-23, to conduct Ph.D. research in Assam.

Nimisha previously earned a master's in archaeology from Pune University and a bachelor’s in history from Delhi University in India. Her writing recently appeared in SAPIENS Anthropology Magazine (April 2021) and Anthropology and Humanism (December 2020). She has also worked with an independent climate action group called we-Can supported by the Chevening Alumni Program Fund, focusing on livelihood impacts of climate change in Majuli river island in Assam, India.