I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University with the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute (2023 – 2024). I received my PhD in 2023 from Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bengaluru. I did my Masters in Climate Change and Sustainability Studies from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. I completed my Bachelors of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering.
I have worked across academia, research and industry as a visiting faculty with RV University, academic associate and teaching assistant with ATREE, technical consultant with GIZ India and Eastern Himalayan Foundation, and as a software engineer with Genpact Headstrong Capital markets. I co-founded Reading Himalaya, an all-women-led research and policy consultancy working on the Eastern Himalayan Region of India.
I am an interdisciplinary researcher in environment, development, climate change, and sustainability studies with almost 10 years of experience. I work on water access and marginalization from a political geographic perspective in the mountains of South Asia. My work engages with the question of thinking/rethinking water governance in the mountainous landscapes in a rapidly urbanizing world with uncertain and intense ecological calamities. My PhD thesis attempted to disentangle the drivers of domestic water scarcity in the volumetrically “water-rich” Eastern Himalayan Region.
My PhD was supported by the National Mission on Himalayan Studies Research Fellowship Research (2016-2019) and the ATREE Institutional Fellowship (2015-2020). I secured the HWISE-RCN CAA along with my collaborators and organized a workshop on Deconstructing Water Insecurity in Himalayan Mountains Towns in 2022-23. I received a student exchange grant in 2017 to visit the Department of International Environment and Development Studies (NORAGRIC). I have received workshop and conference grants within and outside India to present my work. I was awarded a full Scholarship for B.Tech from Amity University from 2007 to 2011.
- I am a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group II Chapter 4: Water.
- International Water Resources Association | Climate Change Task Force -Working Group on Mountains & Plains
- Indian Youth Water Network (IYWN)
- Household Water Insecurity Experiences (HWISE) - Research Coordination Network (RCN)
- Shah, Rinan. 2024. Ways of Storing and Using Water – Experiences of Water Scarcity in a Water Rich Region. Grassroots – Journal of Political Ecology, 31(1), 831-846. doi: https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.5436
- Shah, Rinan. 2022. Marginality and Informality in Domestic Water Scarcity: Case of a Self-Service Mountain Town. In: ICAS Conference Proceedings, 630-639. Amsterdam University Press. https://doi.org/10.5117/9789048557820/ICAS.2022.073
- Shah, Rinan. (2022). Laying bare : Determinants of informal water vendors for domestic water supply in Himalayan mountain towns. HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies, 41 (1), 74–90. http://journals.ed.ac.uk/himalaya/article/view/7047/9307
- Shah, Rinan, & Badiger, Shrinivas. (2018). Conundrum or paradox: Deconstructing the spurious case of water scarcity in the Himalayan region through an institutional economics narrative. Water Policy, 22 (S1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.2166/wp.2018.115
- Shah, Rinan. Caring for Glaciers: Land, Animals, and Humanity in the Himalayas. Conservation and Society 21(2):p 150-151, Apr–Jun 2023. | DOI: 10.4103/cs.cs_133_22
- “Rethinking Territorialities of Water Governance for the Water-Scarce Mountains” at Rethinking Territorialities of Water Governance in a Water-Scarce World, The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard University | 27th September 2024
- “Environmental Research and Policy in the Eastern Himalaya: Creating and Sharing Knowledge” at The High Himalaya and Environmental Justice Conference organized by Tibet House, New Delhi | 14th July 2024
- “Understanding Sustainable Development” as a part of Refresher Course on Disaster, Sustainability and SDGs organized by UGC Malaviya Mission Teacher Training Centre, University of North Bengal | 24th February 2024
- “Water Security Narratives”, Streams Special Lecture at the Department of Architectural Conservation, School of Planning and Architecture | 21st February 2024
- “Inside Out: Water Sufficiency Narratives in the Mountains” at SPARC Partners’ Meet: Evolving A Himalayan Policy for India: Infrastructure, States, Communities, and Ecologies in the Eastern Himalayas, Sikkim University, Gangtok | 7th & 8th February 2024
- IWMI-New Delhi Early Career Researchers Webinar Series, “Understanding Water Consumption and Sufficiency in Urban Mountain Towns” | 22nd May 2023
- “Ways of Storing and Using Water: Experiences of Water Scarcity in a Water-Rich Region” at Flow/Overflow/Shortage: Measuring and Managing Extreme Urban Conditions | 24th – 25th May 2023
- “The Numbers Game: Water Sufficiency Definitions and Implications in a Changing Climate” in the panel entitled Crisis in the Anthropocene: Climate Change and Complex Realities of the Himalayas at the British Association for South Asian Studies Annual Conference 2023 | 3rd – 6th April 2023
- International Water Resources Association: “Water Towers: Downstream Climate Change Vulnerabilities and Adaptation Strategies” at the Water Security and Climate Change Conference | 1st – 3rd December 2022
- “What’s Your Status? Water Infrastructure in Urban Mountain Towns” at The Himalayan Studies Conference 2022 under the theme “Spatiotemporalities and/of Infrastructures in the Indian Himalaya II” | 13th – 16th October 2022
- IHE Delft PhD Symposium 2022 – “Understanding Water Consumption and Sufficiency in “Urban” Mountain Towns” | 13th – 14th October 2022
- Collaborated paper presentation “Visualising the Urban: Seeing Water Pipes in Darjeeling and Kalimpong” at Urban Arc (Bhutia and Shah) | 13th – 15th January 2022
- “Knowledge Politics in Natural Resource Management (NRM) in South Asia: Sharing Experience and Learning” organized by Southasia Institute of Advanced Studies (SIAS) and ForestAction in Nepal | 17th November 2021
- Environmental Humanities Online Publishing Workshop “Storying Climes of the Himalaya, Andes, and Arctic” by HUC, ICIMOD, and My Climate Risk (World Climate Research Programme) | 9th – 14th October 2021
- Presented “Informality as an Indicator of Marginality: Studying Domestic Water Scarcity in a Water-Rich Region” at the12th International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS) (online) | August 25th to 28th 2021
- Transboundary Rivers of South Asia (TROSA) Winter School, Theme: Inclusive Water Governance organised by South Asian University; Oxfam; UNESCO Chair of International Water Cooperation Uppsala University (Online) | 2020
- “Political Economy of Domestic Water Scarcity in the Eastern Himalayan Towns” at World Water Week organised by the Stockholm International Water Institute, Stockholm | 25th to 30th August 2019
- “Deconstructing Domestic Water Scarcity in the Mountain Towns of the Eastern Himalaya” at 9th International Perspective on Water Resources and the Environment in Wuhan, China | 4th to 6th January 2017
- Springs: Policy Changes and Sustainability. Revolve Media and Kubernein Initiative, Sustainable India 2024.
- Cultivating the Nile: the everyday politics of water in Egypt by Jessica Barnes. Water Science Policy. Co-Author | 2021
- Youth Engagement for Global Action: Theme - Inclusive Water Governance | Oxfam Asia | 2020
- Where do I belong? | The University of Western Australia Blog | 2020
- Data and knowledge generation for SDGs | swissnex Blog | 2020
- Contextualizing Water Scarcity in Urban Mountain Towns: The Case of Darjeeling | City Observer | 2018
- Contributing author, Sixth Assessment Report Working Group II, Chapter 4: Water, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) | 2022
- Technical Consultant, Eastern Himalayan Foundation, Darjeeling
- Technical Consultant, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, New Delhi
- Co-writer, Documentary on Women and Water | Ongoing
- Co-supervised a Masters thesis on the domestic water issues in Gangtok | December 2018 – April 2019
- Mentorship to scholars engaging in environment and water studies
- Assistance to graduate students in preparing research proposals for their PhD studies
- Reviewer for Regional Environmental Change and Current Research in Environmental Sustainability (journals), book chapter, and thesis.
- Rethinking Territorialities of Water Governance in a Water-Scarce World, Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard University | 27th September 2024
- Writing and Discussion Workshop 2023 on Deconstructing Water Insecurity in Himalayan Mountain Towns and Cities with 10 participants from the Eastern Himalayan Region funded by HWISE-RCN CAA 2021
- Support for GIS workshop and rapporteur at Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) Training Programme by ATREE | 1st -12th July and December 2019