Dr. Shiju Sam Varughese is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Studies in Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (CSSTIP) in the School of Social Sciences of Central University of Gujarat (CUG), Gandhinagar. After receiving basic training in biology, he completed his M.Phil research on People’s Science Movements (PSMs) and doctoral research on public controversies over science in media from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. Dr. Varughese works on issues related to science and democracy by employing concepts and tools from History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science. He has authored Contested Knowledge: Science, Media, and Democracy in Kerala (Oxford University Press, 2017) and co-edited Kerala Modernity: Ideas, Spaces and Practices in Transition (Orient Blackswan, 2015). His current research interests include public engagement with science and technology, risk governance, new social movements, social history of knowledge, science and technology in popular culture, and regional modernities.
During his Fulbright-Nehru Research Fellowship, Dr. Varughese will theorise how the post-disaster societies develop new practices of care to reconstruct their life in the context of the pesticide disaster caused by the aerial spraying of Endosulfan in the cashew plantations in Kasaragod district of Kerala. He will argue that the practices of the community in the post-disaster reconstructive phase will be helpful in developing a new participatory model of risk governance to survive recurrent disasters.