Niharika Singh

Niharika’s research interest is in the environmental justice movement in India. Through the Phule Scholarship, she aims to develop a framework studying environmental casteism – a distinct form of exclusionary practice keeping historically marginalised communities away from the climate justice movement.

She is the first Savitribai Phule scholar at the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development, Somerville College. Before joining the centre, she has worked in the development sector in India focusing on tribal and rural development, and climate justice. Niharika is an alumna of the Tata Institute for Social Sciences, Tuljapur where she completed her MSc in Sustainable Livelihoods and Natural Resource Governance. She worked at the BAIF Development Research Organisation in Pune – one of the oldest organisations in India working on rural development issues. She grew up in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh before moving to Delhi for her undergraduate education at Miranda House, Delhi University where she completed her BA in Sociology. 

At BAIF, Niharika coordinated projects in nine Indian states and worked with rural and tribal communities in remote parts of the country. She believes that the Indian development sector needs reform to be more inclusive. Her program at Oxford offers an interdisciplinary approach to study pressing environmental issues and she intends to use it for her research.