About

Prof. Lavanya Suresh is an Associate Professor at BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus, and a political scientist whose research focuses on the political ecology of commons. Her work examines the governance, use, and contestation of shared resources, including air, surface water, and forests. Her broader scholarly interests lie at the intersection of environmental governance, justice, gender, and decentralisation, with particular attention to questions of development, sustainability, and equitable resource governance.

She received her PhD in Political Science from the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bengaluru, and previously served as an Assistant Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Hyderabad. She was a Visiting Research Scholar at the Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University, through its Graduate Development Program, where she engaged with scholars working on governance and environmental issues.

Her research has been published in peer-reviewed social science journals, and she is the co-author of the book Decentralised Democracy: Gandhi’s Vision and Indian Reality. She has led multiple externally funded research projects and has extensive experience mentoring doctoral and postdoctoral researchers. Her teaching spans political science, environmental governance, and public administration.

Prof. Lavanya Suresh has been actively engaged in scholarly networks and professional service. She served two consecutive terms (2020–2024) on the Executive Committee of the Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE) and was the Early Career Network (ECN) Council Representative of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC) from 2023 to 2025. Since 2023, she has served as Co-Convenor of the Water Governance Working Group (WGWG) at the Ostrom Workshop, Indiana University, contributing to an international scholarly network focused on the governance of water resources. In 2025, she was invited as a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Global Sustainable Development, University of Warwick, UK.

At BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus, she contributes to institutional and academic governance as Faculty-in-Charge of Publications and Media Relations and as Convener of the Departmental Research Committee in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Her academic and professional engagement reflects a sustained commitment to advancing interdisciplinary scholarship, strengthening scholarly communities, and connecting research on commons, environmental governance, justice, and sustainability with wider policy and societal concerns.

Positions held in Professional Bodies

• Elected as Executive Committee member of the Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE) for two consecutive two year terms starting in 2020 - 2024
• Elected IASC ECN Representative of the Early Carrier Network (ECN) in the International Association for the Study of the Commons from January 15, 2023 to January 14, 2025.
• Member of International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC)
• Member of International Political Science Association (IPSA)
• Advisory Board member for the School of Social Sciences at CHRIST (Deemed to be University) in Bangalore from Nov 2024 to Nov 2026
• Served as a sub-theme committee member for “Commons and Commoning from a Critical Lens” and as a member of the Online Committee for the IASC (International Association of the Study of the Commons) 20th Biennial Conference (June 2024–June 2025), held at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA in June 2025.
• Authored three chapters for the Diploma in Gender Studies, Course-II: Gender and Development being developed by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Open University.
• Invited by Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur to collaborate with SATHEE (an initiative of the Ministry of Education) for developing the national-level Environmental Studies course.

Administrative Position held at present in BITS

• Faculty-in-charge of Publications and Media Relations - First Term - 19th Aug 2022 to 18th Aug 2024, Second Term - 19th Aug 2024 to 18th Aug 2026, Third Term - 19th Aug 2026 to 18th Aug 2028.
• Editor BITScan and BITStory.
• Convener, Departmental Research Committees (DRC), Department of Humanities and Social Sciences from 1st Dec 2022 to 30th Nov 2024, Second Terms- 01-12-2024 to 30-11-2026.