Dr Ruchi Shree

Ruchi Shree is a political ethnographer working on the politics of water. Her work addresses the interplay of perspectives on water (namely commons, entitlement and commodity) and its ramifications on social movements, policies and everyday life in India. She did her PhD at the Centre for Political Studies (CPS), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi in 2015. She is currently teaching at the PG Department of Political Science, Tilka Majhi Bhagalpur University (TMBU), Bhagalpur, Bihar. Prior to TMBU, she taught at Janki Devi Memorial College (University of Delhi) from 2012 to 2019.

Along with teaching, she has been actively engaged in research and advocacy with several organizations viz. Environmental Law Research Society (ELRS, New Delhi), Hanns Siedel Foundation (Germany/India) and South Asian Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP). Her association with ELRS resulted in a book chapter ‘Sanitation and State Planning: An Analysis of Fiver Year Plans’ in Right to Sanitation in India: Critical Perspectives (OUP, 2019). A monograph ‘Politics of Water as Natural Resource: Prospects of Commons Perspective’ was published by Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML, New Delhi) in 2019. She contributed a chapter ‘Mapping the Water Disputes in India: Nature, Issues and Emerging Trends’ in Water Issues in Himalayan South Asia: Internal Challenges, Disputes and Transboundary Tensions (Springer, 2020).

In 2020, she coordinated a series of webinars on ‘Resource Federalism in India’ along with HSF and at present co-editing a volume out of it. She regularly writes blogs, reviews and photo essays for SANDRP. As a research fellow at SOAS, she is working on ‘Fostering Ecocentric Community-led River Restoration and Conservation in the Ganga Basin (India)’ supported by the British Academy Leverhulme Fellowship (2021-2023). She aims to understand the significance of small rivers and the role of community participation in river rejuvenation of Champa River in Bihar, a small tributary of Ganga.