Dr. MANISHA RAO
PROFESSOR & HEAD
DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY
UNIVERSITY OF MUMBAI
Room No, 131, 1st Floor, Ranade Bhavan
Department of Sociology
University of Mumbai, Mumbai, India-400098
Email: manisharao.rao@sociology.mu.ac.in
Dr. Manisha Rao is Professor & Head at the Department of Sociology, University of Mumbai. She obtained her Ph.D. from the Department of Sociology, University of Pune and an M.Phil. from the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. Her research and teaching focus on the intersection of environment, gender, development, agrarian issues and social movements. The social and ecological politics of the Uttara Kannada district of the Western Ghats remain an area of interest and field research. The British Library Endangered Archives Programme Round 21 for 2026-’27 has approved her Grant proposal for support. Further, she has successfully completed Research Projects awarded by Indian Institute of Technology, Indore’s JayaPrakash Narayan National Centre for Excellence in the Humanities; Indian Council of Social Science Research [I.C.S.S.R.] New Delhi and by the U.G.C Area Studies Centre, Centre for Canadian Studies, SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai. She has supervised several M.Phil. & Ph.D. scholars. She has developed new skill based courses under NEP 2020 such as Academic writing, Feminist epistemology and interdisciplinary courses such as Debating the Commons and Sociology of Food Systems. She is on the Board of Studies of colleges under University of Mumbai, S.P. Pune University & S.N.D.T. Women’s University as well as on the Syllabus revision committee of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. She is the Convenor of RC-11, Sociology of Environment of the Indian Sociological Society. Her research has been published in international and national journals like the Sage Journal of Developing Societies, Sociological Bulletin, and International Quarterly for Asian Studies among others. Her edited book ‘Reframing the Environment: Resources, Risk and Resistance in Neoliberal India’ was published by Routledge in 2021.