Associate Professor Krishna Shrestha

Krishna K. Shrestha is a development and environmental geographer.  His research interests encompass i) environmental and climate governance, ii) disaster risk reduction, iii) indigenous knowledge, iv) food, water and livelihood security, and v) development planning and policy, in particular the intersection of the five with his work on social and environmental justice. Connecting these arenas of works is an overarching analytical thread of Justice as Redistribution AND Justice as Recognition. 

Krishna's work constitutes blending moral philosophy and theories of justice with critical development studies, political ecology and communicative action. His research on these five themes simultaneously engages with grand theory and real-world societal challenges.  He uses grounded analysis of socio-political and ecological dynamics through a multi-scale perspective where the role of unequal power relations in constituting a politicised environment is a central theme.  His research gives particular attention to the ways in which problems of justice are linked to systems of social hierarchy and political and economic control.  He uses a ‘critical pragmatic’ approach to development and environmental problems in which rigorous explanation is balanced with carefully considered policy alternatives. Most of his work is interdisciplinary and empirically based which integrates indigenous, social and natural science methodologies to examine the interrelationship between social and natural systems. His research, teaching and engagements are driven by the belief that cultural and contextual understandings arte vital for education and science to shift paradigms, enabling alternative ways to understand and address complex social and environmental challenges. 

Krishna is currently Associate Professor in Development Studies at the School of Social Sciences, UNSW Sydney. Prior to this appointment, Krishna was Program Director at the Urban and Regional Planning and Policy at the University of Sydney.  He also held various positions at the University of Queensland, Macquarie University and the Department of Forests in Nepal Government. He was a visiting scholar at the Department of Geography, Cambridge University, UK, and Visiting Senior Research Fellow at Asia Research Institute at National University of Singapore (NUS). He served as a member of the Academic Board at the University of Sydney. He is the recipient of the Endeavour Research Fellowship by the Australian Government. He has an interdisciplinary qualification, with higher degrees in Geography (PhD Sydney), Higher Education (Grad. Cert. Sydney), Environmental Policy and Management (MEEM, UTS) and Forestry (BSc TU Nepal).