Harini
Nagendra
Professor
Azim Premji University
Harini Nagendra is a Professor of Sustainability at Azim Premji University. Her recent book "Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present, and Future" (Oxford University Press India, 2016) examines the transformation of human-nature interactions in Bangalore from the 6th century CE to the present, addressing the implications of such change for the urban sustainability of fast-growing cities in the global South. The book was listed by the science journal Nature as one of the five best science picks of the week in its issue of July 28 2016. Prof. Nagendra is an ecologist who uses satellite remote sensing coupled with field studies of biodiversity, archival research, institutional analysis, and community interviews to examine the factors shaping the social-ecological sustainability of forests and cities in the south Asian context. She completed her PhD from the Centre for Ecological Sciences in the Indian Institute of Science in 1998. Since then, she has conducted research and taught at multiple institutions, and was most recently a Hubert H Humphrey Distinguished Visiting Professor at Macalester College, Saint Paul, Minnesota in 2013. She is a recipient of numerous awards for her research, including a 2013 Elinor Ostrom Senior Scholar award for her research and practice on issues of the urban commons, and a 2009 Cozzarelli Prize from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (with Elinor Ostrom) amongst other awards and recognitions. Harini Nagendra has authored two books, close to 150 peer reviewed publications, and communicates her research for the public through newspaper and magazine articles, science blogs, and public talks. She also engages with international research on global environmental change, and is on the Scientific Steering Committees of the Global Land Project, and the Programme for Ecosystem Change and Society. In the past, she has served as a Steering Committee Member of Diversitas and a Capacity Building Committee member of the Asia Pacific Network for Global Environmental Change, and was a Lead Author of the 5th IPCC Report - Working Group III.