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Biographical Sketch
Seema Purushothaman’s work spans over three decades of engagement at the interface of societies, ecosystems and development. Geographically and people wise, it spreads across small family farms situated in the peri urban zones, the vast production landscapes and in the forest peripheries. Seema’s career evolved from that of an agricultural field officer to an empirical researcher, to a conceptual explorer, eventually moving towards action research and advocacy. She worked with academic institutions for 25 years and the rest with voluntary agencies, consultancy entities, and a state line agency. At her two recent workplaces -Azim Premji University and Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, she integrated concepts and lived realities in teaching and action research.
A bachelor’s degree (1982−86) from Kerala Agricultural University equipped Seema with a multi-disciplinary base that kindled a strong aptitude towards economics, agrarian social relations and ecology. Leaving a position with the Government of Kerala, she then pursued Master's in Agricultural Economics and published her dissertation on the economic impact of industrial pollution on farmers. This study trained her interest towards Environmental Economics, then a newly emerging field. In 1990, while working at the Institute of Economic Growth Delhi, she secured a Ford Foundation scholarship to join the Environmental Economics programme at University College London. Thus began a long and engaging journey with the concept and practice of sustainability.
Seema’s journey as an environmental economist became visible in 1991, through a global scale economic valuation of tropical forests, co-authored with Prof. David Pearce. This pioneering work led to a decade long involvement in applying environmental economics to water and forest related issues in various parts of India. Later, her doctoral thesis on the economics of tribal land use applied Environmental Economics to study adivasi communities of southern India. This was the beginning of her involvement with the rights and livelihoods of indigenous communities.
Infusion of social-institutional, distributional, educational and political dimensions of sustainability in Seema’s empirical work followed her engagement with the academic discourse on sustainable development, and with networks like SANDEE (South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics), BRICS Initiative on Critical Agrarian Studies, Network on Rural and Agrarian Studies, and the Global Land Initiative of The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
Seema’s interdisciplinary academic orientation was instrumental in an increasing involvement with Ecological Economics. She has been active in the Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE) for over two decades now, holding various responsibilities including the Presidency from 2024 to 2026. She is an active member of the leadership board of the Global Alliance for Inter and Transdisciplinarity (ITD).
Long engagement with grassroots realities and constant conversations with small farmer communities in India, alongside familiarity with related contexts in other parts of the Global South, collaboration with academic networks, international organisations as well as the Indian voluntary sector continue to catalyse and reinforce the action researcher cum real time educator in Seema Purushothaman.
