Gladwin Joseph

Biography

"Gladwin Joseph for the last 13 years served in senior leadership roles at Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE), of which 10 years was as its Director. ATREE grew from a small team of 20 members to about ~170 people in the years he served at ATREE. For the past 7 years, he also was involved in helping develop their inter-disciplinary PhD programme in Sustainability and Conservation. He was instrumental in helping shape the Field ecological research stations that evolved into dynamic community-based conservation centres in strategic landscapes in the Western Ghats and the Eastern Himalayas where ATREE works. While at ATREE he took keen interest in helping shape the conservation education programmes located through the field centres. For several years he has been involved as a team member with the open-source, multi-institutional biodiversity portal anchored at ATREE. Gladwin enjoys working with people and catalysing research in the interface between disciplines, and between policy, action and theory. His academic interests include sustainability, land stewardship, biodiversity & livelihoods, and ecological farming. He is keenly interested in the emerging interdisciplinary work between the natural and social science disciplines, as it relates to sustainability and conservation. His earlier research was in the relationship between tree physiology, chemical ecology and insect biology, and that changed while at ATREE where he worked hard to build the institution while research took a backseat. When he found the time he continued to work in action-research in the interface between conservation, biodiversity and livelihoods. In the past few years, his interests in research have been `vicariously' served through being part of several PhD student committees at ATREE. He enjoyed working with some colleagues in putting together a well-received bilingual field guide on `Common Dryland trees of Karnataka'. Gladwin served as a member of the Twelfth Five-year Planning commission's working group on Ecosystem Resilience, Biodiversity and Sustainable Livelihoods. He served as a member of Governing council of the Karnataka State Council for Science and Technology (KSCST) from 2009-2012. He also served as the chairman of Expert committee on Biodiversity Heritage Sites of Karnataka Biodiversity Board from 2010-2012."

Research Interest

 Agricultural Plant Science, Physiology