Dr. Pradip Swarnakar is an associate professor of sociology at the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Gwalior. Dr. Swarnakar’s research areas include environmental sociology, climate change, social networks, and sustainability transition. He has completed projects funded by the Indian Council of Social Science Research and the National Science Foundation. He has been a visiting scholar at the Department of Social Research, University of Helsinki, Finland, and the Department of Urban and Environmental Sociology, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research GmbH-UFZ, Germany. Dr. Swarnakar obtained his PhD in sociology from the Indian Institute of Technology – Kanpur. He has received a KONE Foundation senior researcher grant and a Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) bilateral grant. He is also co-editor of Bottom-up Approaches in Governance and Adaptation for Sustainable Development: Case Studies from India and Bangladesh (SAGE Publications, 2017).

As a Fulbright-Nehru scholar at the University of San Francisco, Dr. Swarnakar is teaching two courses: Global Environments and Societies and Globalization, and Development and the Environment. He is also conducting research on the sociocultural dimensions of drought management in California. Employing the theoretical perspective of transition management and practice theory, the objective of his research is to identify the role of culture in transitioning to the new norm of water scarcity and unpredictability. In addition to teaching and research, he is delivering invited lectures at the University of California, Merced, and the University of Minnesota.