Sonali Huria

I study the encounters of grassroots communities with nuclear energy technologies and infrastructures in the Global South, with a special focus on India. Prior to joining KTH, I worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Friedrich Alexander University, Germany where my research explored how communities navigate the fissures engendered by radiation in their lives, ecological embeddedness, and religious/affective intimacies. I was also the recipient of the 2021 research grant from the Takagi Fund for Citizen Science, Japan.

My doctoral research, completed in 2020 at New Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia University entailed an exploration of anti-nuclear grassroots mobilizations in India through the prism of ‘democratic dissent’, and was anchored in theoretical perspectives from environmental and nuclear humanities, democracy studies, eco-feminist scholarship, and science and technology studies.My nearly decade-long work in the field of human rights research, teaching, advocacy, and investigation at India’s National Human Rights Commission, in many ways, precipitated my interest in the acerbic contestations emerging at the time around India’s nuclear energy sector expansion, and the accompanying attenuation of environmental, democratic, and human rights norms.

I have written extensively on the political, social, environmental, and human rights concerns surrounding India’s nuclear sector for news portals, magazines, and newspapers in South Asia and beyond, and I also co-edit DiaNuke.org, a popular resource space on nuclear disarmament and energy issues.