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Philosophische FakultätMESH

Dr Goutam Karmakar

Goutam Karmakar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, School of Humanities, University of Hyderabad, India. He is Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities, University of Cologne, Germany. In addition to these academic engagements and positions, he is also an honorary research associate at the Faculty of Arts and Design, Durban University of Technology, South Africa. Dr. Karmakar has a Ph.D. in English from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology Durgapur, India. He was previously offered the position of senior lecturer in English at the School of Humanities, Universiti Sains Malaysia, and awarded a three-year CHS Postdoctoral Research Position at the Department of English Studies, University of South Africa. Apart from these positions, Karmakar was also awarded the MIASA Individual Junior Fellowship, University of Ghana, Ghana; the Guest Researcher Fellowship, Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies at Linnaeus University, Sweden; and the Visiting Scholarship, Network for Environmental Humanities at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Previously he was a National Research Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa and a visiting scholar at the Rachel Carson Centre for Environment and Society, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany.
Karmakar works on subaltern environmentalism, decolonial ecologies, and the literature of the global south, where he explores how environmental and epistemic injustice work in tandem with climate coloniality, infrastructural violence, and the anthropocentric notions of capitalism and developmentalism. While delving deep into the literary narratives of the Global South, he is particularly interested in exploring how these texts not only highlight colonial ecological violence, environmental racism, and injustice but also how they can be read as a mode of environmental education, a pathway for envisioning a decolonial future where the focus should be on planetary solidarity and sustainability. Karmakar’s areas of research interest include Global South Literary Studies, Global Anglophone Literature, Postcolonial Studies, Decolonial Studies, Environmental Humanities and Cultural Studies. His scholarship has appeared in journals including ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Scrutiny2, Current Writing, English Academy Review, Journal of Human Values, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, Socio-Ecological Practice Research, South Asian Review, and South Asia Research, among others.  Besides these, he is one of the series editors for the Routledge book series “South Asian Literature in Focus.”
During his stay at MESH, as part of his Humboldt fellowship, Karmakar investigates the ingrained problems and repercussions of environmental injustice in Africa in the context of two major regions that have been sites of vicious extraction, crass industrialisation, environmental hazards, and resultant negative impacts—the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria and the South Durban Basin of South Africa. The objective of this research project is to examine the correlation between environmental injustices in these two regions and the consequential impacts resulting from extraction, spatial and epistemic injustice, racism, and significant toxicities. This study further argues that unless a decolonial framework is adapted by recuperating the lived experience and knowledge of the poor and disadvantaged people, environmental injustices that are ongoing at a rampant scale can never be ameliorated. In doing so, the study seeks to investigate the potential of literary and non-literary interventions in conjunction in these two countries. 

Contact: goutamkarmakar[at]uohyd.ac.in

 

Selected publications

Monograph in Progress:

  • Subaltern Environmentalism and Indian Literary Responses. Book manuscript on part of my NRF Project No. 409000. Under contract with Routledge.

Special/guest edited issues:

  • 2027. Guest co-editor of “Environmental Injustice, Resistance and African Literature,” special issue of English Language Notes. Under preparation.
  • 2026. Guest co-editor of “Coloniality, (In)justice, and the literature of the Global South,” special issue of Bandung: Journal of the Global South. Under preparation.
  • 2026. Guest editor of “Indigenous ecologies and literary responses: Knowledge and rethinking sustainable development,” special issue of Environment, Space, Place. Under preparation.
  • 2026. Guest editor of “Literary and Artistic Expressions of Radical Ecology,” special issue of Capitalism Nature Socialism. Under preparation.
  • 2026. Guest co-editor of “Extraction, Infrastructural Violence, & Dissent in Critical African Geographies,” special issue of African Geographical Review. Under preparation.
  • 2026. Guest co-editor of “Decolonial Hope: Planetary Sustainability, Solidarity, and Transformation,” special issue of Journal of Postcolonial Writing. Under preparation.
  • 2026. Guest editor of “Global thinking and regional acting: From eco-aesthetics to cultural discourses of the Asian natural environment,” special issue of Critical Arts. Under preparation.
  • 2025. Guest co-editor of “Nation, Nationalism and Indian Hindi Cinema,” special issue of National Identities. https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cnid20/27/1-2
  • 2024. Guest co-editor of “Ecology, Decoloniality, and African Literature,” special issue of the journal Scrutiny2. https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rscr20/28/2
  • 2024. Guest editor of “Literature, Activism and Transformative Learning,” special issue of Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa. https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rcwr20/36/2
  • 2023. Guest co-editor of “Capitalism, Anthropocene, and literature of the Global South,” special issue of the Journal of Narrative and Language Studies. https://nalans.com/index.php/nalans/issue/view/21

Peer-Reviewed/Academic Articles:

  • 2025. “Decoloniality, solidarity, and indigenous ecology: Reading Nemonte Nenquimo’s We Will Not Be Saved as hope in the Anthropocene.” Journal for Cultural Research: 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2025.2506048  [co-authored]
  • 2025. “Decolonial hope and planetary solidarity: Fostering sustainability through African life     narratives.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 61(3): 313–330. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2025.2454571
  • 2025. “Dams, development and disposability: Eco-anxiety, precarity and submerging voices in Na. D’souza’s Dweepa.” Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 12: 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-04294-6
  • 2024. “Colonial Modernity and Epistemic Hegemony: Rethinking Environmentalism in Kamala Markandaya’s The Coffer Dams.” South Asian Review: 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/02759527.2024.2445938
  • 2024. “Capitalism and Environmental Injustice: Decoloniality and Ecological Education in Ambikasutan Mangad’s Swarga.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment: 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/isae050
  • 2024. “Plachimada Struggle and the Environmentalism of the Poor: (In)justice and Activism in Mayilamma: The Life of a Tribal Eco-Warrior.” Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa 36(2): 124–137. https://doi.org/10.1080/1013929X.2024.2410071
  • 2024. "“Knowledge Born in the Struggle”: Activism, Decolonial Ecology, and Sustainability in Wangari Maathai’s Unbowed: A Memoir.” Scrutiny2 28(2): 158–179. https://doi.org/10.1080/18125441.2024.2391414 [co-authored]
  • 2024. “Towards a critical ecological ontology: literacy, sustainability, and fostering environmental education through the Indian green informational picturebook.” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 15(6): 939-959. https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2024.2371856
  • 2024. “Injustice and subaltern environmentalism: Tribal ecosystem and decolonial practices in Bhoopal’s Forest, Blood & Survival: Life and Times of Komuram Bheem.” Journal for Cultural Research 28(4): 333-352. https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2024.2358538
  • 2024. “Transformative Learning with Wangari Maathai: Fostering Environmental Education and Sustainability Through the Green Picturebook Seeds of Change: Planting a Path to Peace.” Journal of Human Values 31(1): 97-117. https://doi.org/10.1177/09716858241263129
  • 2024. “Grievable/Disposable lives in the Anthropocene culture: Ecoprecarity, indigeneity and ecological wisdom in Kaala Paani.” International Social Science Journal 74(254): 1633-1648. https://doi.org/10.1111/issj.12533 [co-authored]
  • 2024. “Examining (in)justice, environmental activism and indigenous knowledge systems in the Indian film Kantara (Mystical Forest).” Socio-Ecological Practice Research 6(2): 117-130. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42532-024-00180-2 (Editor’s Choice) [co-authored]
  • 2024. “Living with extraction: Environmental injustice, slow observation and the decolonial turn in the Niger delta, Nigeria.” International Social Science Journal 74: 787–808. https://doi.org/10.1111/issj.12480
  • 2023. “Arguing for Environmental Education: Sustainability and Decoloniality in Bessie Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather.” English Academy Review 41(1): 88-104. https://doi.org/10.1080/10131752.2023.2282340 [co-authored]
  • 2023. “Tackling Environmental and Epistemic Injustice: Decolonial Approaches for Pluriversal Peacebuilding in South Africa.” Peace Review 35(3): 496-510. https://doi.org/10.1080/10402659.2023.2208519 [co-authored]
  • 2023. “Episteme and Ecology: Amitav Ghosh’s The Living Mountain and the Decolonial Turn.” South Asian Review 45 (3): 315–35. https://doi.org/10.1080/02759527.2023.2206307 [co-authored]
  • 2023. “Extraction and Environmental Injustices: (De)colonial Practices in Imbolo Mbue’s How Beautiful We Were.” ETropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics 22(2): 125–147. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.22.2.2023.3970 [co-authored]
  • 2023. “Epistemic (dis)belief and (dis)obedience: Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness an decolonial ecological turn.” Journal of Narrative and Language Studies 11(21): 24-39. https://doi.org/10.59045/nalans.2023.13 [co-authored]