Meet the Team
The CARE project team brings together a eclectic mix of skills, work, perspectives and interests, connected by a shared curiosity to unpack, communicate and explore the many intersections between climate, environment, health and first responders.
We shuffle our identities along the way between academics, activists, researchers, visual artists, communicators, documenters, explorers and experimenters. These roles overlap, shift and blur as the project moves between research, action, making, doing and outreach.
Core Team
Past Associates
and what is CARE made of? How do you make it happen? What does it mean for us? What does it mean as method, as collaborative mechanism? For a remote and physically distant team?
People, practice, perspectives....
(some meanderings by the team over coffee conversations which don't have answers but multiple inquiries....)
Core Team
Shalini Sharma
Shalini Sharma is an Associate Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IISER Pune. She has also worked as an Assistant Professor at TISS Guwahati. She has a PhD in Development Studies from SOAS, University of London, as a Felix Fellow. As a Commonwealth Fellow at the University of East Anglia (2018-19) and as a Fulbright Fellow at Princeton University (2019-20), she worked on indigenous knowledge, urbanization, and climate change.
Centering political ecology, her current research/teaching focuses on two key areas: a) Disaster studies and environmental justice b) Media studies and Science Communication.
She is a contributing author to IPCC 2022, was the first visiting fellow at UNESCO C2C for World Natural Heritage Management Training in India, and has received training from the UNESCO Climate Change Office in Paris on the national curriculum and strategic planning towards climate education goals. She also serves as co-convenor of the Environment and Politics Working Group for the British International Studies Association.
At IISER Pune, she led the Science Media Center (2022-25) and is associated with the Centre for Water Research and the Living Waters Museum. She was also instrumental in setting up the Remember Bhopal Museum (India's first oral-history based museum co-curated by survivors of the industrial disaster), which is now being extended digitally.
Punita Kumar
Program Associate (Chhatisgarh)
Punita is a public health professional with over a decade of experience in community health, advocacy, and social-environmental justice. For the CARE project at IISER Pune, her work is focused on Chhattisgarh to build alliances with state education departments, health agencies, NGOs and INGOs towards collaborative action.
She has experience in conducting environmental health impact assessments and operational studies on environment-related health challenges, supporting the state health department in implementing the Chhattisgarh State Program on Climate Change and Human Health (CG NPCCHH), and leading participatory approaches such as Community Environmental Monitoring (CEM), which links air pollution, respiratory illness, and health needs.
Before joining IISER Pune, Punita headed the Climate Change and Human Health Cell at the State Health Resource Centre, Raipur. She has also served on the board of SPHERE India and convened the Inter-Agency Group (IAG) Chhattisgarh, strengthening networks for disaster preparedness and health response.
Punita holds a postgraduate degree in Public Health from the National Institute of Health and Family Welfare, New Delhi, and a specialization in Psychiatric Social Work from Dr. B R Ambedkar University, Agra. She is passionate about advancing equitable, climate-resilient health systems and amplifying community voices in environmental health policymaking.
Priyanka Shendage-Kulkarni
Program Associate (Maharashtra)
Priyanka is a sustainability professional with 8 years of experience in the field of environment and climate change. She holds a BSc in Environment Science from Fergusson College, India and a MSc in Sustainable Development from University of Exeter, UK.
She is skilled in strategic partnership development, policy advocacy, and delivering impactful communication at national and international platforms. She is dedicated to advancing climate action and empowering communities through innovative, collaborative approaches. She has represented UNICEF India at the UN Water Conference 2023. She has built a youth platform called Maharashtra Youth for Climate Action, a state level young people's forum on climate advocacy.
Shalini Patel
Shalini is a multimedia artist and visual designer with a love for comics, character design, and visual storytelling. She enjoys creating quirky, expressive characters and developing their personalities, worlds, and stories through comic art. As an animator, she brings these characters beyond the page, using movement and timing to give them an extra spark of life. She also explores concept art for video games, creating imaginative characters and worlds that invite audiences to step into new stories.
Prachi
Visual Researcher & Creative Communication Lead
Prachi is a mischief-maker, a museum tinkerer and a freelance narrative & interpretation designer. As a visual thinker, she's always been fascinated by circles and lines and the worlds we build with them. The conscience of these elements as an inquiry of ‘where do we draw the line’ has framed her practice from the literal visual to the conceptual to unpacking identity politics sustained through different systems and institutions of power (knowledge, space and medium)- with museums being at the heart of it. She works with narrative building, experience design, visual thinking and visual analysis and communication strategy development for physical and virtual spaces.
As part of CARE project, she is articulating the visual documentation and arts-practice lens for climate stories and narratives. She is also the creative and visual communication lead.
Bhavana Das
Researcher & Documentation Associate
Bhavana works as a Project Assistant with the CARE initiative at IISER Pune. She has an interdisciplinary background in biology, development studies, and environmental research, with interests in political ecology and science communication. She holds a BS–MS Dual Degree in Biology from IISER Pune, with her postgraduate work oriented towards Development Studies and Urban Political Ecology. Outside of research, she enjoys science communication, writing, and creative pursuits.
Shivani Deshmukh
Educator Engagements Associate
Shivani did her graduation and post graduation in Environmental Science, qualified NET and SET and worked as Assistant professor in Shri Shivaji Science College Amravati and then worked as SRF in NRSC under the project of Carbon flux from 2023-2026.
Under the CARE project, she works as a Project Assistant for Educator engagements.
Asrith Krishna P V
Researcher & Visual Documentation Associate
Asrith works as a Project Assistant with the CARE project at IISER Pune. He holds an Integrated M.A. in Sociology from Pondicherry University and has a professional focus at the intersection of social research and media. Previously, as a research assistant at IISER Pune, he worked on documentation, and editing of audio-video interviews with Bhopal survivors for the Aquamuse project. As an intern at IISER's Science Media Centre, he was involved in videography, photography, and video editing for various activities at the Institute. He also managed the Alert Bhopal social media platform and has been an active volunteer with civil society groups. He is interested in using his skills to transform research and field experiences into clear, engaging, and well-documented visual narratives.
Past Associates
Pooja Kumar
Strategic Consultant
Until early 2026, Pooja was part of the CARE project. She is a communications professional with over a decade of expertise in advocacy and communication within the fields of environment and higher education. As a strategic consultant with the CARE, she led communication and project strategy management. She currently works with Krea University and has held multiple consulting roles on projects spanning research and communications. Pooja holds a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism with a specialization in Development Journalism from Madras University. In 2019, she was recognized among India’s 40 Under 40 Most Inspiring Eco-Sapiens by The New Indian Express.