Bharath Ananthanarayana

Bharath Ananthanarayana is an AHRC's SWWDTP funded post-graduate researcher between University of Exeter and University of the West of England (UWE). He is supervised by Ian Cook et al and Nicola Thomas (Exeter) and Judith Aston (UWE).

His project is a PhD by practice of following ginger out of the Western Ghats to make its more-than-human entanglements visible. The following uses sensory ethnography to research the rhizomatic connections between the land, ginger farming, producers, consumers, and other emergent stakeholders around the Western Ghats, India. Following ginger unpicks the forces which have promoted rapid land use change and address the flows of power and social relations around commodification of ginger. The creative research methodology involves interactive documentary (i-docs) practice to witness and record stakeholders’ life-worlds. Researching within a bio-diversity hotspot and UNESCO World Heritage Site enables broad questions around environmental sustainability and complex land politics to be assessed. He hopes to culminate his research around the adaptive environmental, cultural, and political changes needed to address ecological and social degradation within the region’s critical ecosystems.