Dr. Nutan Maurya is an environmental anthropologist with more than ten years of experience conducting and supervising field research in the area of water pollution and related socio-economic issues. Her areas of interest are pollution-related challenges to public health and livelihoods, political ecology of emerging pollutants, and the anthropology of development. Recently, she served as consultant and social research collaborator for the Water-to-Cloud (W2C) project to study the impact of river water pollution on the health and livelihoods of India’s riverine communities.
Dr Maurya has worked on projects at the intersection of environment and socio-economy at Auburn University in Alabama, South Asian Institute at Harvard University, and Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) in Bengaluru. She has taught courses on Gender and Society, Political Sociology and Environmental Anthropology at South Asian University (Delhi), University of Delhi, ATREE, and University of Allahabad. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Indian Politics and Policy, Economic & Political Weekly (EPW), and Down to Earth.
Her doctoral study focused on the role of religion in conservation and protection of the River Ganga. She received her PhD in Anthropology, with a specialization in Environmental Anthropology, from the University of Delhi after studying Biology and Anthropology at the University of Allahabad.