Profile

Arpita Bisht is a Post-Doctoral Fellow and an Associate Researcher at the Albert Hirschman Center for Democracy and a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague. She obtained her PhD from TERI School of Advanced Studies, New Delhi, India in 2018. She then received the Marie Sklodowska Curie LeADing Post-Doctoral grant to pursue her post-doctoral work on her project titled “Theorizing a post-extractive future for India: Evidence from a meta-analysis of social resistance movements against environmental injustices at resource peripheries in India” at the ISS, The Hague. 

Her work focuses on environmental and social justice resistance movements and Ecological Distribution Conflicts (EDCs) generated as a result of expanding mineral commodity frontiers. Her research is interdisciplinary and lies at the intersection of political ecology, ecological economics, cultural and social anthropology, human geography, human ecology, conflict studies, natural resource management, policy studies and post-growth economics. She has particular expertise on extractivism of bulk metals such as iron ore. In recent years she has focused research on examining the extraction, conflicts, environmental and social injustices, and post-extractive solutions to the expansion of extractivism of sand resources.
Given the linkages of extractivism, EDCs and growth-centric policies, particularly in the Global South, she is also interested in critical analysis of and alternatives to ongoing patterns of growth. She is particularly interested in de-growth and post-growth alternatives to work towards developing viable post-growth and post-extractive solutions to achieve socioecologically viable economic progress.