Anwesha Dutta - K. Sivaramakrishnan Reflection

Anwesha Dutta
CMI - Chr. Michelsen Institute

I first met you as a second-year PhD student at Ghent University, during a South Asia Studies workshop at Yale University. I remember sharing my hope of spending time at Yale as part of my doctoral work, and how immediately welcoming and encouraging you were. That openness stayed with me.

The semester I spent at Yale—facilitated by you and jointly hosted by the Anthropology Department and the South Asian Studies Council—was a formative period in my PhD journey. At a time when I often doubted my own work, your steady encouragement meant a great deal. You helped me shape what I still consider one of the strongest articles from my dissertation (which has now been cited sooo many times and also nominated for a few awards), and I look back fondly on our many “walk-and-talk” meetings—your signature way of thinking through ideas while moving through space. Those conversations remain some of the most generative intellectual moments I have had.

Our many conversations on Indian forestry and forest bureaucracy were especially formative for me. They helped me think more deeply about questions of environment, history, and power, and played an important role in shaping how I have since approached my work. As someone who considers myself a political ecologist by training, I continue to see those early discussions reflected in the way I frame questions and pursue research today.

What I carry with me most, however, is not only what you helped me write, but how you taught me to think—with curiosity, generosity, and care. That way of engaging with ideas and people has stayed with me in my own work and in how I try to mentor others.

Your generosity extended far beyond that semester. You graciously agreed to serve on my PhD committee, and your comments helped sharpen and strengthen the dissertation in lasting ways.

Since then, life has taken me in new directions—I moved to Norway, received tenure, and expanded my research into new areas. Yet if there is one person, I find myself returning to with deep gratitude when I think about how I arrived here, it is you.

You are one of the kindest and most generous scholars and mentors I have known. Your intellectual openness, warmth, and care for your students leave a lasting imprint—not only on our work, but on how we aspire to be as scholars ourselves. I know I am only one among many who carry your influence forward.

With heartfelt thanks I send you the warmest of wishes for this next chapter Shivi!