Rita Brara teaches at the Department of Sociology in the Delhi School of Economics at the University of Delhi in India. The university is located at the northern tip of the Aravalli mountains, one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world. Her research focuses on social constructions of the natural environment and climate change. For the past two years, she has been teaching a course on Climate Change and Society to MPhil students, culminating in two workshops: Imaginings of Climate Change (2014) and Environment and Climate Change: Framing Vulnerabilities (2015). The proceedings are currently being revised for publication. She is also pursuing the study of flower symbolism in contemporary Europe. In the summer of 2014 she taught a course on contemporary visual culture in India at Aarhus University, Denmark.
RCC Research Project: Adjudicating Resource Use and Conservation in India: The National Green Tribunal
Lunchtime Colloquium Video - Adjudicating Resource Use: The National Green Tribunal, India
Selected Publications:
- "Ecology and Environment." In The Oxford India Companion to Sociology and Social Anthropology, edited by Veena Das. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003.
- Shifting Landscapes: The Making and Remaking of Village Commons in India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006.
- "Water Provisioning and the Public Sphere." In Waterscapes: The Cultural Politics of A Natural Resource, edited by Amita Baviskar. Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007.
- "Not So Boring. Assembling and Reassembling Groundwater Tales and Technologies from Malerkotla, Punjab." In The Social Life of Water, edited by John Wagner. New York: Berghahn Books, 2013.
- "Shaping Land Rights: Tenurial Class, Lineage and Gender in Malerkotla, India." Asian Journal of Women’s Studies 20, no. 4 (2014): 7–38.