Malavika Jinka Ramamurthy

Malavika Jinka Ramamurthy is a PhD Candidate in Applied Sociocultural Anthropology at the University of Arizona, specializing in Political Ecology, Environmental Anthropology, and Development Anthropology. Her doctoral research examines resilience and human agency in the context of biodiversity conservation and development-driven resettlement in India. Beyond her research, Malavika served as a Research Assistant for BARA. Her fieldwork examined water management systems across the Sahel region of West Africa, with a focus in Senegal and Mauritania. Malavika’s recent publication, Development Definitions of Internally Displaced People and the Government: A Study of the Chenchu Tribe in the Nallamala Forest of Southern India, received the Award for Excellence in Resilience Research for Global Development Challenges at AIRES, University of Arizona. She also won first place for the Edward P. Dozier Award for Best Student Paper at the University of Arizona. In December 2024, Malavika organized and led panel discussions on resilience and land governance at the UNCCD COP16 summit, held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where she also presented her doctoral dissertation research proposal.

Her Master’s research analyzed contrasting definitions of “development” as expressed by individuals affected by India’s conservation and development initiatives, as well as by government representatives and NGOs. Her thesis earned the Paul F. Jacobs Award for Best Applied Anthropology Master’s Thesis at Mississippi State University (MSU). As a Research Assistant at MSU with the Social Science Research Council, she contributed to a study on teenage pregnancies in the Mississippi Delta region and was a finalist in the 3-Minute Thesis competition.