Qualifications:

PhD Candidate in the Department of Geography at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (Ongoing)

M.Sc. Biodiversity, Conservation & Management, University of Oxford (2017)

B.Tech. Biotechnology, VIT University, Vellore (2016)

Email: dhruv.gangadharan@rutgers.edu

Profile: Dhruv has been a passionate angler, growing up in Chennai and exploring the city’s beaches and backwaters. As a geographer, he’s interested in the intersection of small-scale fisheries, marine space and marine life. Specifically, he looks at how small-scale fishers assemble and enact coastal “community economies”, their ecological relations with fish and saltwater, and the ways in which fishers understand and negotiate environmental change. His proposed dissertation entitled “Being land, becoming sea: community economies in coastal Tamil Nadu” situates Pattamkattiyar fishers in the Ramnad district’s emerging Blue Economy. Using ethnographic and archival practices, the project examines their livelihood practices and modes of survival alongside economy and ecology. His position at Dakshin Foundation will aid in translating these learnings into practice. This will involve a deep understanding of coastal governance in the Palk Bay, analyzing Blue Economy policies and institutions in Tamil Nadu, and working with village-level institutions for human and environmental wellbeing.  Dhruv engages with literature in the politics of nature, urban geography, economic geography, science and technology studies, and more-than-human ethnography. He’s currently a PhD Candidate in the Department of Geography at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and works with Prof. Kevin St. Martin on “reading for difference”, inspired by the genealogy of diverse economies from the feminist economic geographer J.K. Gibson-Graham.