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Having worked on water for more than a decade, I am currently researching the relationship between disastrous environmental change, mechanisms of environmental knowledge, and technologies of water management in flood-prone North Bihar. I am trained primarily in the social sciences but with a keen interest in the natural sciences (water management, fluvial morphology, hydrogeology, biogeochemistry of water) and the humanities (socio-linguistics and epistemology), and my work aims to contribute to the interdisciplinary dialogue on themes of disasters, risk and adaptation, floods and water management, toxic drinking water, environmental knowledge and environmental justice, but also environmental conflicts and social movements, resource access and water-treatment technologies, sanitation, languages and practices of nature, amphibious livelihoods. I am also interested in reflective ethnographic methodologies and in applying research to the practice of social development.
Apart from a few projects in Sub-Saharan Africa (2000-2005), since 2001 I have been primarily working in India, where I have conducted extensive fieldwork in several different states (Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, New Delhi, Orissa), coordinated rural NGOs in North Bihar on water projects (with Megh Pyne Abhiyan), and served as a water-expert for the United Nations (UNDP, WFP, UNEP, multilateral development). I was living in rural North Bihar when the area was hit by the two worst floods in living memory (2007-2008), and for ethnographic fieldwork in 2012-2015.
I hold a B.Sc.+ M.Sc. in Diplomacy and International Relations (magna cum laude and honorable mention, University of Turin, Italy), M.A. in Social Anthropology for Development (SOAS, University of London), M.Phil. in Anthropology (Yale University), M.Phil. in Forestry and Environmental Studies (Yale University), and a join Ph.D. in Anthropology and Forestry and Environmental Studies (Dec 2018, Yale University).
My research has been supported by the Fulbright Commission, Social Science Research Council, the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the American Institute for Indian Studies, the MacMillan Center, the Tropical Research Institute, the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies, Agrarian Studies, the Yale South Asian Studies Council.
Most recently, I am the recipient of 2016-2017 Royal Anthropological Institute’s Curl Prize for the best essay relating to the result or analysis of anthropological work, of the 2017 Eric Wolf Prize for the best paper advancing the field of Political Ecology by the Political Ecological Society, the PRAXIS award for outstanding achievement in translating anthropological knowledge into action by the WAPA, and the 2017-2018 Josephine deKarman fellowship for high academic standards based on a national competition among graduate students of any discipline at universities in the U.S.A (all but the DeKarman are open rank competitions).
I am now the Taylor H. Stanford Fellow in the departments of STS and Anthropology at Cornell University. Teaching has been a discovery: I had no idea how much I loved doing it: in 2017 I co-instructed with Prof. Sivaramakrishnan the undergraduate seminar "Environmental Justice in Modern South Asia" at Yale University; in 2018 I taught the engaged research-based senior seminar "Water Societies: Environment, Technology and History " at Cornell. This semester I am teaching "How Do We Know Nature: Language, Knowledge and the Environment" with the smartest possible students, and next semester I will be teaching "Floods, Toxic Drinking Water and Other Muddy Disasters".
These two courses will build an art/research installation, “The Flood Room: Environmental Knowledge, Disaster Preparedness, Community Resilience and Climate Change Communication in Ithaca, New York” in partnership with the Ithaca Sciencenter, Engaged Cornell and the Atkinson Center and the Cayuga Lake Watershed Network.
>>I have not been very good at maintaining this website: feel free to write to me at luisa.cortesi(@)yale.edu<<
My ACADEMIA profile
© Luisa Cortesi
- FEATURED IN ADVANCED SCIENCE NEWS!
- https://environment.yale.edu/news/article/fes-grad-receives-field-prize-during-yale-university-commencement-2019
Having worked on water for more than a decade, I am currently researching the relationship between disastrous environmental change, mechanisms of environmental knowledge, and technologies of water management in flood-prone North Bihar. I am trained primarily in the social sciences but with a keen interest in the natural sciences (water management, fluvial morphology, hydrogeology, biogeochemistry of water) and the humanities (socio-linguistics and epistemology), and my work aims to contribute to the interdisciplinary dialogue on themes of disasters, risk and adaptation, floods and water management, toxic drinking water, environmental knowledge and environmental justice, but also environmental conflicts and social movements, resource access and water-treatment technologies, sanitation, languages and practices of nature, amphibious livelihoods. I am also interested in reflective ethnographic methodologies and in applying research to the practice of social development.
Apart from a few projects in Sub-Saharan Africa (2000-2005), since 2001 I have been primarily working in India, where I have conducted extensive fieldwork in several different states (Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, New Delhi, Orissa), coordinated rural NGOs in North Bihar on water projects (with Megh Pyne Abhiyan), and served as a water-expert for the United Nations (UNDP, WFP, UNEP, multilateral development). I was living in rural North Bihar when the area was hit by the two worst floods in living memory (2007-2008), and for ethnographic fieldwork in 2012-2015.
I hold a B.Sc.+ M.Sc. in Diplomacy and International Relations (magna cum laude and honorable mention, University of Turin, Italy), M.A. in Social Anthropology for Development (SOAS, University of London), M.Phil. in Anthropology (Yale University), M.Phil. in Forestry and Environmental Studies (Yale University), and a join Ph.D. in Anthropology and Forestry and Environmental Studies (Dec 2018, Yale University).
My research has been supported by the Fulbright Commission, Social Science Research Council, the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the American Institute for Indian Studies, the MacMillan Center, the Tropical Research Institute, the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies, Agrarian Studies, the Yale South Asian Studies Council.
Most recently, I am the recipient of 2016-2017 Royal Anthropological Institute’s Curl Prize for the best essay relating to the result or analysis of anthropological work, of the 2017 Eric Wolf Prize for the best paper advancing the field of Political Ecology by the Political Ecological Society, the PRAXIS award for outstanding achievement in translating anthropological knowledge into action by the WAPA, and the 2017-2018 Josephine deKarman fellowship for high academic standards based on a national competition among graduate students of any discipline at universities in the U.S.A (all but the DeKarman are open rank competitions).
I am now the Taylor H. Stanford Fellow in the departments of STS and Anthropology at Cornell University. Teaching has been a discovery: I had no idea how much I loved doing it: in 2017 I co-instructed with Prof. Sivaramakrishnan the undergraduate seminar "Environmental Justice in Modern South Asia" at Yale University; in 2018 I taught the engaged research-based senior seminar "Water Societies: Environment, Technology and History " at Cornell. This semester I am teaching "How Do We Know Nature: Language, Knowledge and the Environment" with the smartest possible students, and next semester I will be teaching "Floods, Toxic Drinking Water and Other Muddy Disasters".
These two courses will build an art/research installation, “The Flood Room: Environmental Knowledge, Disaster Preparedness, Community Resilience and Climate Change Communication in Ithaca, New York” in partnership with the Ithaca Sciencenter, Engaged Cornell and the Atkinson Center and the Cayuga Lake Watershed Network.
>>I have not been very good at maintaining this website: feel free to write to me at luisa.cortesi(@)yale.edu<<
My ACADEMIA profile
© Luisa Cortesi
