Prakash Kashwan is an interdisciplinary social scientist and an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Connecticut. He also co-directs the Economic and Social Rights Research program at the University of Connecticut’s Human Rights Institute. His teaching and scholarship focuses on political economy of institutions, environmental policy and politics, global climate governance, and climate justice. His research builds on grassroots engagements during a first career in international development during 1999-2005.
Dr. Kashwan is the author of Democracy in the Woods: Environmental Conservation and Social Justice in India, Tanzania, and Mexico (Oxford University Press, 2017), and an associate editor of the journal Progress in Development Studies. His research has been published in interdisciplinary journals including Ecological Economics, Regional Environmental Change, Land Use Policy, Journal of Environmental Management, International Journal of the Commons, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Global Environmental Politics, and World Development.
He has also contributed popular commentaries to the Washington Post, the Conversation, and the Guardian, among others. Dr. Kashwan is one of the experts charged with the task of scoping out the transformative change assessment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).