Dr. Koushik Chowdhury

Dr. Koushik Chowdhury is an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellow at the University of Kassel in the Department of Socio-Ecological Interactions in Agricultural Systems. Previously, he worked as a research associate at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, where he focused primarily on the social and economic aspects of migration and the vulnerability transition in the Indian portion of Sundarbans. He studied for a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Geography and Environmental Management from Vidyasagar University, Midnapore. Later, he obtained his doctorate from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur on "Traditional Water Bodies, Ecosystem Services, and Sustainable Natural Resource Conservation".

His current research focuses on the role of cultural ecosystem services in water governance in the context of cities in the global south. He is particularly interested in exploring the relationships between people and nature and the role cultural values play in shaping these relationships. In his post-doctoral research, Koushik Chowdhury aims to find out how cultural ecosystem services have shaped water governance practices and to investigate how cultural ecosystem services can be effectively managed and sustained over time. To do so, he links theories of environmental management and ecosystem services with local ecological knowledge and cultural practices from a transdisciplinary perspective.

Koushik’s research interests focus on the following areas:

- Cultural Ecosystem services

- Water Governance

- Sustainable development

- Climate change adaptation

- Rural Development.