About Sandra Elizabeth Joseph

I am Sandra Elizabeth, a second year doctoral scholar enrolled at the Department of Sociology, Shiv Nadar University (Delhi— NCR, India).

At present, I am at my fieldwork site in Kuttanad, a low- lying, flood- prone region in the Indian state of Kerala.

Broadly, I am looking at the relationship between water control projects and agricultural production in the region, and how this relationship is imbricated upon a genealogy of developmental interventions ( that took place at the junctures of both colonial and post- colonial history).

My general intellectual interests include: maritime histories; environmental and agrarian history; Indian Ocean Studies; Anthropology of Wet Environments/ Amphibious Anthropologies.

Besides these, I am also very piqued by the Anthropology of Catholicism, as it was formerly a strong research interest of mine

I am a second-year doctoral student of socio-cultural anthropology based in New Delhi, India. My research looks at the relationship between water-control projects and agriculture in the Kuttanad wetland complex in Kerala, South India. My work is situated at the intersection of Kuttanad's agrarian environment, infrastructures, and technologies of water control, as well as the temporalities of planning and development. Broadly, my areas of interest include: Environmental Anthropology, South Asian Agrarian History, Political Ecology and Human Geography
Sandra's website

NBN Episodes hosted by Sandra:

Javiera Barandiaran, "Living Minerals: Nature, Trade, and Power in the Race for Lithium" (MIT Press, 2026)

February 13, 2026

Living Minerals

Javiera Barandiaran

A sobering investigation of the rush for lithium for electric vehicles, the problematic history of lithium mining, and the consequences for sustainabi…