I work at the intersection of climate change, health systems, mobility, pastoralism, agriculture, extreme weather, water and sanitation, bringing more than two and a half decades of experience in participatory action research, advocacy, communication, and visual ethnography across South Asia and other climatically fragile settings.

As an ethnographer and former journalist, I use long-term visual ethnography to make visible the lived realities, knowledge, labour and agency that often remain overlooked in complex, remote and challenging geographies. My current work explores the relationship between climate change, mid-level actors, messy knowledge flows, and the explicit and implicit politics of visibility particularly how people and institutions navigate uncertainty, negotiate competing knowledge systems, and make everyday decisions when neither risks nor solutions are fully knowable.

A central concern of my work is creating democratic and equitable spaces for research co-creation, participation, voice and agency. I work with diverse stakeholders to bring plural knowledge frames into conversation and to bridge the often-substantial gap between dominant forms of expertise and implicit, experiential and situated knowledge. My approach seeks not simply to document marginalised or overlooked perspectives, but to understand how knowledge is produced, mediated, legitimised and made visible.

For more than two decades, I have worked extensively in climatically fragile regions of South Asia, including India, Bangladesh and the wider Himalayan and South Asian region, collaborating with the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex; Norwegian University of Life Sciences; STEPS Centre; and Johns Hopkins-led research consortia. I have also advised visual research initiatives and collaborated with researchers and practitioners in Italy, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tunisia, Tibet-China, Bangladesh and India.

My academic and professional writing has appeared in journals including The Lancet, Indian Anthropologist, BMC Health Services Research, BMJ Global Health, International Journal for Population, Development and Reproductive Health, and Regional Environmental Change, as well as IDS–STEPS Centre working papers. As a journalist, I have written extensively for The Statesman, The Economic Times, Hindustan Times, Geography and You and SouthAsiaDisasters.Net.

Alongside research and writing, I work across photography, film and participatory visual practice. I have co-curated PhotoVoice exhibitions and directed documentaries screened at the Wellcome Trust, Cannes Film Festival, and Health Systems Global symposia in Cape Town, Vancouver and Liverpool. I have also worked as a global trainer on media and policy for UKAID-funded programmes.

I currently serve as Vice Chair of the Climate Resilient and Sustainable Health Systems Thematic Group of Health Systems Global. Across these different roles, my work is driven by a common commitment: to create spaces where diverse forms of knowledge can meet, where invisible labour and expertise can be recognised, and where visual and ethnographic practice can strengthen participation, agency and more equitable responses to an uncertain climate future.