Harini Nagendra, Director Research Centre, Professor and Lead, Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability, Professor of Sustainability, Azim Premji University
Harini Nagendra is an ecologist and Professor of Sustainability. Over the past 25 years, she has been at the leading edge of research examining conservation in forests and cities of South Asia from the perspective of both landscape ecology and social justice. For her interdisciplinary research and practice, she has received a number of awards including the 2009 Cozzarelli Prize from the US National Academy of Sciences, the 2013 Elinor Ostrom Senior Scholar award, and the 2017 Clarivate Web of Science award. Her publications include the books “Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present and Future” (Oxford University Press, 2016) and “Cities and Canopies: Trees in Indian Cities” (Penguin, 2019, with Seema Mundoli) as well as recent papers in Nature, Nature Sustainability, and Science.
Harini Nagendra writes a monthly column ‘The Green Goblin’ in the Deccan Herald newspaper and is a well-known public speaker and writer on issues of urban sustainability in India. She is also the author of a historical mystery fiction series set in 1920s colonial Bangalore. Professor Nagendra has been a Lead Author on the IPCC AR5 report, and a past Science Committee member of DIVERSITAS and the Global Land Programme. She engages with international science and policy through her involvement as a Steering Committee member of the Future Earth Programme for Ecosystem Change and Society, and the Future Earth Urban Knowledge Advisory Network.