about

Madhuri Karak (she/her) is an independent researcher, writer, and strategist working at the intersections of climate, technology, and culture.

She has supported earth defenders, small-scale fishers and farmers, environmental and climate activists, digital rights practitioners, and behavioral scientists to secure and manage the commons. This decade-long work has taken the form of reports, podcasts, narrative longform, strategic community engagement, and landscape analyses.

‘Collective organizing’ challenges are of particular interest to Madhuri: How are earth defenders mobilizing data initiatives to push for better regulations and end systemic harms? How did Indigenous youth in eastern India resist resource extraction? How can we better represent multisensory ways of knowing and experiencing land and forest in environmental data? What are the barriers to precarious smallholder agriculturists adopting climate-resilient farming methods?

She’s consulted for The Engine Room, the Open Environmental Data Project, the European Digital Rights Network (EDRi) and participated in the Digital Freedom Fund and EDRi’s ‘Decolonizing the Digital Rights Field in Europe’ process. Her partners in the environment and climate space include Rare, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the World Resources Institute.

Madhuri was a Mellon - American Council of Learned Societies Public Fellow (2019-2021) and has a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her work on indigenous sovereignty, climate, design thinking, and technology has appeared in fiftytwo, the Container Magazine, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Behavioral Scientist, Public Books, and Slate.

She currently lives between Ankara, Turkey and Kolkata, India.