Dr Rishika Mukhopadhyay

Rishika has an MA (2013) and MPhil (2015) from University of Delhi. She received an international excellence scholarship for her PhD (2017) from the University of Exeter. She was a visiting research fellow at Aarhus University Denmark for six months.  

Before joining Exeter, Rishika worked in the social science research sector in Delhi (Institute for Social Studies Trust, Maps of India ) and Gujarat (Centre for Social Sciences). See a co-authored report on Youth in India which emerged from her work with ISST and Dr Sadan Jha's article Dalit Desires and the City of Surat for which Rishika conducted fieldwork with Mahyavanshi community of Surat. 

Before joining Southampton, Rishika was a teaching fellow at Durham University and was involved in an independent review of Cornwall Plan 2020-2050 with professor Jane Wills and Dr Rachel Turner. The review aims to give insight into the challenges and opportunities of implementing the Cornwall Plan among key local governance partners. The team is interested in understanding the process of policymaking, consensus-building, and implementation of plans in local and regional sustainable development governance.

Building on this work, the team received a British Academy grant for a shared understanding of a sustainable future. See the reports from this work below:

• Localising and decentralising goal-based governance for sustainability in England
• Research into partnerships and collaborative working for the delivery of the Cornwall Plan

To reach a wider readership beyond academia, she writes blog posts and short stories based on research work. Here are a few examples:

• Community Kitchen Initiatives in UK and India: Towards a transformative politics during the time of Covid-19
• Participatory Geographies Research Method Workshop
• Mapping Everyday Spaces: A Tale of Three Markets
• ‘A Street in Memory’ and ‘Making Home-the Hawkers of Gariahat’ in People Called Kolkata: 55 stories from the resilient city edited by Kamalika Bose. People Place Project and Penguin Random House India. 2019.