Our Faculty

headshot of Divya Gupta

Divya Gupta

Assistant Professor

Environmental Studies Program

Background

Divya Gupta is an environmental social scientist and interdisciplinary scholar whose work bridges natural resource governance, development, and justice in South Asia. Her research focuses on democratic decentralization, adaptation to global change, and rights-based approaches to conservation. Through empirical work in India and Nepal, she examines how systemic marginalization and climate-related changes interact to create and amplify vulnerabilities in forested landscapes.

Her research also extends to the United States, where she examines community resilience in Broome County, focusing on how communities experience and respond to climate-related disasters. This work engages local stakeholders and highlights the lived realities of vulnerability, recovery, and resilience in the context of increasing environmental change.

Her work is collaborative and engaged, bringing together scholars, practitioners, activists, and community members to understand the conditions under which networks of diverse actors generate synergies for more just and sustainable governance in the context of global change. For a complete list of publications, see her Google Scholar profile.

She is a Senior Research Fellow at the Earth System Governance and a Research Fellow at the South Asia Institute of Advanced Studies. She is also a Faculty Affiliate at the Climate Social Science Network at Brown University as well as the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University, and a co-host of the Incommon Podcast.

Education

  • Ph.D., Ohio State University

Research Interests

  • Multi-actor and multi-level governance
  • Decentralization
  • Resource rights
  • Collaboration
  • Institutional analysis
  • Knowledge co-production

Teaching Interests

  • International environmental policies 
  • Natural resource governance 
  • Environmental justice 
  • Conservation and development
  • Research methods for environment and sustainability