Dr Ambarish Karamchedu is a critical development studies researcher with a background in human geography and international development. His work focuses on the political economy/ecology of uneven development, agrarian and environmental change in South Asia.

Ambarish has conducted academic research primarily in India, with an emphasis on qualitative research methods and the intersections between agrarian political economy, environment and development, human/environment relations and caste/class relations of uneven development under neoliberalism.

Ambarish joined the Department of International Development in October 2022. He was previously an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow in Geography at King’s College London.

He completed his PhD in Development Policy and Management at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester in 2021, and holds an MSc in International Development: Environment, Climate Change and Development also at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester in 2017. He completed a BSc in Geography at the University of Glasgow in 2015.

Research

• Political economy/ecology of industrial livestock systems (poultry in particular)
• India/South Asia
• Agrarian political economy
• Environmental/climate change in smallholder agriculture
• Deagrarianisation and labour markets
• Caste, waste, labour and urban political ecology
• Critical animal studies and Marxism

Ambarish’s work draws on critical development studies, political economy/ecology and human geography, and has been theoretically and empirically focused on human/environment relations of crops, water and rural livelihoods in India. His doctoral research explored the political economy of agrarian change under economic liberalisation in dryland India since the 1990s, focusing on the adoption of agricultural technologies such as GM cotton and groundwater irrigation and their intersections with debt, risk, climate adaptation and processes of deagrarianisation and rural livelihood precarity under neoliberalism.

His most recent work sits at the intersection between political economy, critical animal studies and human/animal relations through a metabolic theory lens to understand the expansion of industrial poultry into emerging countries such as India, Brazil and China.

Teaching

Undergraduate

• 4YYD0004 Social and Political Analysis of Emerging Economies

Postgraduate

• 7YYDN037 Climate, Environment and Uneven Development

PhD supervision

Ambarish welcomes students looking to study any of the following areas:

• Political economy/ecology of industrial livestock systems (poultry in particular)
• Agrarian and environmental change in India
• Agrarian capitalism and climate change
• Critical approaches to environment, development and groundwater/crops
• Caste, waste, labour
• Critical animal studies, human/animal relations in industrial livestock

Further details

See Ambarish's research profile