EDUCATION:
2019 PhD, in Anthropology, Pondicherry University, Puducherry, India
2011 MA, Anthropology, University of Madras, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
2009 BA, Sociology, University of Calicut, Kozhikode, Kerala, India
Nisar Kannangara
External Consultant | nisar dot kannangara at iihs dot ac dot in
Countries: India, United Kingdom
States: Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry
Cities: Kozhikode, Trivandrum, Kochi, Bengaluru, Puducherry
Languages: Malayalam, English, Tamil
Nisar Kannangara is an ethnographer with multidisciplinary research experience. He currently works as an External Consultant for the Academics & Research team at IIHS, where he conducts ethnographic research on climate change and health narratives from fisherfolk in the coastal towns and villages of Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi, and Kozhikode. His research interests include the social life of democracy, democratic decentralisation, cooperative movements, social and political transformation, indigenous housing, and autonomous adaptation to climate change in different geographies—coast, plains, and hills.
He has previously worked with the Inequality and Human Development Programme at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, where he led a project on Inequality and Autonomous Adaptation to Climate Change in India. He also worked with the Directorate of Culture, Thiruvananthapuram, on a project for the Kerala Cultural Museum and the Directorate of Kerala Institute for Research Training and Development Studies of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes as a Research Associate on a project on Ethnography of Scheduled Tribe Muthuvan Housing in Idukki district of Kerala.
Nisar received the British Academy Knowledge Frontiers Symposia Award 2023 for a project on ‘Democracy, Ideology, and Political Dynamics in Kerala’. As part of this project, he held a Visiting Researcher position at the Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster, London.