The Social Science Research Council awarded a one-year grant of $50,000 through the Transregional Research Grant to support the research of Assistant Professor Saleh Ahmed and Associate Professor Nisha Bellinger of the School of Public Service. The team is researching “Race and Ethnicity as the Determinants of Racialized Coastal Experiences in the Indian Ocean Region.”
The goal of this research is to create a critical foundation for the collective understanding of the multidimensional aspects of the social vulnerability of minorities across the upper Bay of Bengal region. To conduct this research, Ahmed and Bellinger will be collecting surveys from 200+ participants in the coastal Bangladesh and in the South 24 Parganas district in the Indian state of West Bengal region, and analyzing the resulting data to gain insight into why do people at the margins often experience a disproportionate burden of environmental stresses in climate- vulnerable locations, and how do the local, regional, or national policies respond to those inequalities. For this project Ahmed and Bellinger are partnering with colleagues from Khulna University (Bangladesh), Indian Institute of Technology Mandi (India), and Burdwan Raj College (India).
The team expects that that this project will help to improve awareness, policy effectiveness, along with improved capacities for adaptation interventions in the Indian Ocean regions and other parts of the world where minorities are facing disproportionate nature of climate impacts.
For more information, visit: Transregional Collaborative Research Grants