Navya R
Navya works as the Programme Manager for the "Celebrating Nature-Culture Relationships" programme at WCS-India. Her lifelong fascination with nature and wildlife led her to pursue a Master's degree in Biotechnology. While her academic background allowed her to appreciate nature at a microscopic level, her passion for wildlife inspired her to undertake projects in that field. Working on wildlife projects has taken Navya to diverse locations across the country, particularly areas where humans and wildlife coexist, providing her with a unique perspective. In her current role at WCS-India, she is dedicated to documenting positive interactions between humans and nature.
Dolsy David
Dolsy is driven by a passion for understanding the positive interactions between people and wildlife, and she hopes to use this knowledge to improve human-wildlife relationships. With a Master's degree in Science, specialising in Biodiversity (Utilisation and Management) from Pune University, and through her experience in working in different landscapes throughout India, Dolsy brings expertise to the table. She aims to shift the focus to cohabitation.
Iravatee Majgaonkar
Iravatee is a researcher trained in interdisciplinary environmental sciences. She holds a Master's degree in wildlife biology from the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru and is currently enrolled as a PhD scholar at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Bengaluru. her interests lie in studying socio-ecological changes in pastoral landscapes in the Deccan peninsula. In the past eight years, she has led research projects that studied carnivore distribution in agropastoral landscapes and participated in socio-economic surveys of pastoral economies in western Maharashtra and northern Karnataka. For her PhD, she is studying how land use change and pastoralism-biodiversity relations are linked to each other in the semi-arid savannas of Pune district in Maharashtra.
Nature-culture Fellowship
Year 2
Kangkana Pal
Kangkana is a researcher with a master's degree specialising in Ecology. While her initial focus was on wildlife, she is captivated by the interplay between human-nature interactions and their impact on our natural history and culture. Beyond biology, her interests extend to photography and documentation, offering a unique way to explore and express her work in the field.
Nivedita Krishnamurthy
Nivedita Krishnamurthy is a research fellow working on understanding primate-human interaction in Bengaluru from a cultural perspective. With a background in Social Work (Rural Development) and Sustainable Development Practice, she is very fond of working in the field. She has previously worked with the farming communities of Koraput (Odisha) on millet optimisation; and the pastoral communities of Kangra (Himachal Pradesh), studying pastoral economy. Her research interests lie in human-wildlife interactions, conservation-development dynamics, and biodiversity finance. Outside work, one could find her playing table tennis, badminton, travelling, or simply sipping her coffee and enjoying a 50s Bollywood movie (or music).
Nature-culture Fellowship
Year 1
Akanksha Pandey
Akanksha is an anthropology graduate with a master’s degree in Development and Labor Studies from JNU. She has worked as a qualitative researcher for three years in educational policy and research in India before switching to wildlife and conservation. Since the last two years, she has worked with multiple short-term projects focused on behavior of non-human primates. Currently, she is affiliated to WCS-India as a Nature-Culture Fellow exploring human-crocodile interactions in Goa.
Pavithran M M
Pavithran is a young social work postgraduate with a specialisation in community development. He has interned in various non-governmental organisations such as WWF-India, Action Aid India, and Bodhi Tree Foundation.
He is passionate to work in the areas of green social work - environmental conservation, protection of indigenous cultures and practices, and human-wildlife conflict mitigation.. His interests include photography and writing poetry. He believes Environmental Journalism can be a good platform which combines his diverse skills and interests, from being trained in photography to a keen interest in creative writing and social work. His wishes to draw from his practice of photography during the WCS-India fellowship to create a photo essay on people’s perspectives towards gaur, folktales that revolve around gaur and the level of coexistence shared by humans and gaur in the Coonoor region of the Nilgiris District in Tamil Nadu.
Rujan Sarkar
Rujan completed his bachelor’s degree from James Cook University, where he studied Zoology and Marine Biology. His work so far has involved conducting biodiversity surveys in a variety of ecosystems, assisting in a project regarding invasive cats in Australian rainforests, and studying regeneration at seed dispersal sites of hornbills in North-East India. Apart from wildlife, he is also interested in music and photography. He hopes to bring together his scientific and creative interests to help people better understand the natural world and our place as a part of it.
Sahamatha
Sahamatha did her master’s degree in Physics from University of Mysore with specialization in Theoretical Physics. Her interests lie in interdisciplinary research - exploring the interface of natural and social sciences and ethnography of education. Having diverse interests made her explore multiple study areas. She taught particle physics at college level, worked in the remote villages of Maharashtra - understanding learners’ ideas and sense making in Science Education, collaborated with the folk musicians from Rajasthan, Kutch and Malwa exploring the cultures of teaching and learning folk music in different communities. At WCS-India, she’ll be studying human-whale interactions in Karwar, Karnataka.