Bio: Ishika is a Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for Wildlife Studies, India. She began learning about the biological world through a Bachelor’s in Life Sciences from St. Xaviers’ College, Mumbai, and later completed her Masters in Wildlife Biology and Conservation from the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore. For the past four years, her research has focused on human–nonhuman primate relationships, formerly in the Nicobar Islands and presently in Northeastern India. She also spent two years working extensively with the Wild Shaale program at CWS.
Work interests: Ishika’s academic and applied interests lie in an interdisciplinary space across ethnoprimatology, social sciences, citizen science, science communication and conservation education. Outside of research, she enjoys collaborative projects, and loves being a part of science communication and capacity building groups. She hopes to eventually draw insights from her academic work on human–nonhuman ecosystems and work towards being able to preserve positive interactions between them, minimise potentially negative circumstances and facilitate smooth sharing of information between various stakeholders on ground.
Current research: Following Ishika’s work on human-nonhuman primate interactions in the Nicobar Islands, she is now studying the underlying mechanisms that drive a range of interactions between human communities and nonhuman primates in Assam, India. Along the way, she intends to continue working on avenues in science communication, including writing children’s books, producing podcasts and experimenting with a range of popular media, particularly within primatology.
Publications list:
Salazar, G., Ramakrishna, I., Satheesh, N., Mills, M., Monroe, M. C., & Karanth, K. K. (2021). The challenge of measuring children’s attitudes toward wildlife in rural India. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 1-17. (https://doi.org/10.1080/10382046.2021.1897339)
Ramakrishna, I., Kumar, A., Barua, M., Sinha, A., Ethos, Pathos, Logos: Affective and Emotive Ethnographies of Human-Macaque Lifeworlds, In Ecological Entanglements – Affect, Embodiment and Ethics of Care. Orient Blackswan. (in press).
