In the summer of 2025, Goutam Karmakar will join MESH as an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Dr. Karmakar has a Ph.D. in English from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology Durgapur, India and is currently Assistant Professor of English at Barabazar Bikram Tudu Memorial College, Sidho-Kanho-Birsha University, West Bengal, India. He also has an Honorary Research Associate position in the Faculty of Arts and Design, Durban University of Technology, South Africa. 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. He has also worked at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa as a National Research Foundation postdoctoral fellow and as a visiting scholar at the Rachel Carson Centre for Environment and Society, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany.
Karmakar works on subaltern environmentalism, decolonial ecologies, and literature of the global south, where he explores how environmental and epistemic injustice work in tandem with climate coloniality and the anthropocentric notions of capitalism and developmentalism. While delving deep into the literary narratives of Asia and Africa, he is particularly interested in exploring how these texts not only highlight colonial ecological violence, environmental racism, and injustice but also how these texts can be read as a mode of environmental education, a pathway of envisioning a decolonial future where the focus should be on planetary solidarity and sustainability. Karmakar’s areas of research interest include South Asian literature and Culture, Postcolonial Literature and Theory, Decolonial Studies, Environmental Studies, and Global Anglophone Literature. His scholarship has appeared in journals including ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Scrutiny2, English Academy Review, 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 aims to approach the ingrained problems and repercussions of environmental injustices in Africa in the context of two major regions that have been a site of vicious extraction, crass industrialization, environmental hazards, and resultant negative impacts—the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria and South Durban Basin of South Africa. The objective of this research is to examine the correlation between environmental injustices in these two regions and the consequential impacts that happen through extraction, spatial and epistemic injustice, racism, and enormous 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. This study underscores the potential impact of decolonial interventions in facilitating an understanding of the persistent politics of ‘othering’ in South Africa and Nigeria.
Contact: GoutamK[at]dut.ac.za
Selected publications
Book Publication 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:
- 2025. Guest co-editor of “Decolonial Hope: Planetary Sustainability, Solidarity, and Transformation,” special issue of Journal of Postcolonial Writing. Under preparation.
- 2024. Guest co-editor of “Ecology, Decoloniality, and African Literature,” special issue of the journal Scrutiny2. Under preparation.
- 2023. Guest co-editor of “Capitalism, Anthropocene, and literature of the Global South,” special issue of the Journal of Narrative and Language Studies 11(21). Special Issue Introduction “Epistemology and (de)colonial ecology: Capitalism, Anthropocene, and literature of the Global South,” in ibid.: i-ix. https://nalans.com/index.php/nalans/article/view/741
Peer-Reviewed/Academic Articles:
- 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. “Towards a critical ecological ontology: literacy, sustainability, and fostering environmental education through the Indian green informational picturebook.” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics: 1-21. 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: 1-20. 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: 1-21. 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 (2024): 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1111/issj.12533
- 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)
- 2023. “Living with extraction: Environmental injustice, slow observation and the decolonial turn in the Niger Delta, Nigeria.” International Social Science Journal: 1-22. 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
- 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
- 2023. “Episteme and Ecology: Amitav Ghosh’s The Living Mountain and the Decolonial Turn.” South Asian Review: 1- 22. https://doi.org/10.1080/02759527.2023.2206307
- 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