Camelia Dewan - K. Sivaramakrishnan Reflection

Camelia Dewan
Uppsala University

I was first introduced to K. Sivaramakrishnan in 2018 through Tracey Heatherington, who suggested that my manuscript might find a home in the Culture, Place, and Nature that he was the series editor of at the University of Washington Press. At the time, I had just finished my PhD and was still learning how to situate my work. That Shivi was willing to engage it seriously—and eventually take a chance on it—remains something I deeply value.

I first met him in person in early 2019, when I visited Yale to discuss the book project. I remember us
walking across campus, talking through the book as it was still taking shape. When I returned again in 2024, I appreciated that this mode of engagement endured: walking and talking, as he shared the
layered histories behind the South Asian Studies Council at Yale. Those conversations modeled a form of scholarship that is relational, historically grounded, and attentive to institutions as sites of power as well as possibility.

His own work, especially Modern Forests, has been central to how I think about the state, environment, and history in South Asia. As the series editor of my first monograph Misreading the Bengal Delta: Climate Change, Development, and Livelihoods in Coastal Bangladesh, he brought a rare combination of rigor and care, pushing me to clarify my arguments while remaining accountable to the uneven, contested realities they describe.

In bringing together scholars of environmental anthropology, the state, and South Asia, Shivi has helped sustain an intellectual space that resists easy narratives—of development, of climate crisis, of the “one world.” That commitment has left a lasting imprint on my work.