Theme specialists in Conservation

Aditi Bhardwaj is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Study of Developing Societies, School of Development Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. As part of her doctoral work, she is currently working on issue of cultural landscapes and conservation in the Tirthan Valley of Kullu, Himachal Pradesh.

She has worked extensively on issues of relocation and rehabilitation of communities from Protected Areas in India. She also has worked on the community-based ecodevelopment programmes in some of the Protected Areas of Kerala, particularly Periyar Tiger Reserve. Ms. Bhardwaj has been associated with the Wildlife Institute of India for several works, including Management Planning Exercise at the Siswan Community Reserve, Punjab, Assessment of Efficacy of Tiger Conservation Foundations in India and Assessment of Conservation and Community Reserves in India.

Her key area of research include landscape conservation, human dimensions of conservation, relocation and rehabilitation of forest dwelling communities, participatory governance of protected areas, issues of justice and equity in conservation governance. She also teaches basic and advanced qualitative research methods and economic sociology.

She is the deputy chair for the IUCN CEESP’s Human Well-being and Sustainable Livelihoods forum. She is also a member of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas, IUCN Commission on Environment, Economic and Social Policy as well as the International Association for Landscape Ecology.

She has recently worked on two international projects- Just Conservation anchored at the Centre for Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity (CESAB) of the French Foundation for Biodiversity Research and IUCN CEESP HWSL project on Evidencing links between human wellbeing, governance and conservation effectiveness.