Avital Datskovsky

Syracuse, NY

Grant Category:	Fulbright-Nehru Student Research Program
Project Title:	Conservation and Multi-Species Relationships in Ranthambore National Park
Field of Study:	Anthropology
Home Institution:	Syracuse University, Sonipat, Haryana
Host Institution:	Ashoka University
Grant Start Month:	September,2024
Duration of Grant:	Nine months

Brief Bio:

Avital Datskovsky is a PhD student in the Anthropology Department at Syracuse University. She holds a bachelor’s degree (2013) in South Asian languages and civilizations from the University of Chicago and a master’s degree (2018) in development studies with a focus on contemporary India from SOAS University of London. Avital’s Fulbright-Nehru project is tracing human and animal inclusion and exclusion from the Ranthambore National Park (RNP), an Indian tiger reserve, established in the 1970s as part of India’s conservation program called Project Tiger. As the park has grown substantially in terms of its tiger population and as an ecotourist destination, communities reliant on the forest for their livelihoods have been excluded from the park. Avital’s ethnographic project is considering what different responses of humans and animals to the RNP as a protected area reveal about political, social, and economic formations in the area; it is also exploring what possibilities for conservation may emerge when the impacts of Project Tiger are studied in terms of human and animal relationality.