Ramya Swayamprakash
Assistant Professor, School of Interdisciplinary Studies
GVSU COURSES:
- ENS 201: Intro to Environmental & Sustainability Studies
- ENS 280: Special Topics in Environmental Studies
- ENS 300: Principles of Sustainability
- INT 310: Creativity and Problem-Solving
EDUCATION:
- PhD in History, Michigan State University
- Dissertation: Freshwater Frontier: Island Making, Dredging, and Infrastructure in the Detroit River
- Master of Urban Design with Distinction, Lawrence Technological University
- Thesis: Border as Infrastructure: Re-conceiving the US Canada border along the Detroit River
- Master of Philosophy, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
- Master of Arts in Political Science, University of Mumbai, India
- Graduate Diploma in Environmental Law, University of Pennsylvania
- Bachelor of Mass Media (specialization: Journalism), Wilson College
FACULTY WEBSITE:
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Environmental and borderlands history, infrastructure and landscape studies, urban design, digital methods for cultural studies
PUBLICATIONS:
BIOGRAPHY:
I (she/her/Amma) am a transnational and interdisciplinary environmental scholar whose doctoral work focused on rivers, dredging, and the place of nature in the Great Lakes. My research has been published in academic and public-facing avenues. I take tea and dredging (not necessarily in that order) seriously. In addition to my work on the Great Lakes, I am now going back to my earlier interest in dams in post colonial India.
Broadly, my research—whether in India or North America—is premised on a central question: what is nature? And how does something become nature? Thus, I am interested in how humans (and non-humans) fashion our familiarities, especially through the lens of infrastructure creation.