Dr Ambarish Karamchedu

Dr Ambarish Karamchedu is an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow in Geography and International Development at the Department of Geography, King’s College London.  He completed his PhD in Development Policy and Management at the University of Manchester. He did his BSc (Hons) in Geography at the University of Glasgow and MSc in International Development: Environment, Climate Change and Development at the University of Manchester. His research focus is the political economy of agricultural change in India since economic liberalisation the 1990s. He explores the adoption and consequences of private sector driven technologies such as the GM biotechnology Bt cotton and groundwater irrigation by smallholder farmers in dryland areas, ethnographically documenting the outcomes of the technologies and how they shape the trajectory of farming livelihoods in the long term under climate change. In doing so he explores the intersecting themes of agricultural intensification, technological narratives around success and failure, environmental risk, and indebtedness.