About

Prof. Lavanya Suresh is an Associate Professor at BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus, where she has been a faculty member since 2017. A political scientist by training, she specialises in the political ecology of commons in India, with broader research interests in decentralisation and public administration.

She earned her PhD in Political Science from the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bangalore, and previously served as an Assistant Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Hyderabad. As a recipient of the prestigious Visiting Research Scholar Fellowship under the Graduate Development Program at the Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University, USA, she has collaborated with global scholars on governance and environmental issues.

Her research has appeared in leading peer-reviewed social science journals, and she is the co-author of Decentralised Democracy: Gandhi’s Vision and Indian Reality. She has successfully led multiple funded research projects and is currently heading the project Mapping Institutions, Rules, and Norms Defining Commons. She mentors four PhD scholars at present, and three of her former students have completed their doctoral degrees. She teaches courses on environment, climate change, and political science.

Prof. Lavanya’s contributions to scholarship and policy on commons governance have been recognised through significant leadership roles. She was elected to the Executive Committee of the Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE) for two consecutive terms (2020–2024) and served as the Early Career Network (ECN) Council Representative in the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC) (2023–2025). In July 2025, she was invited as a Visiting Fellow by the Institute for Global Sustainable Development, University of Warwick, UK.

In addition to her research and teaching, she contributes to institutional governance at BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus, as the Faculty-in-Charge of Publications and Media Relations and the Convener of the Departmental Research Committee (DRC) in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Her work continues to shape critical conversations on environmental governance, institutional dynamics, and policy design—bridging rigorous academic research with real-world challenges and applications.

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
• Editor BITScan 
• 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.