Rinku Roy Chowdhury completed her bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Environmental Science at Wellesley College, a master’s degree in Conservation Ecology and Sustainable Development at the University of Georgia, and a Ph.D. in Geography at Clark University. Before returning to Clark in 2015, she taught geography at Indiana University at Bloomington and co-directed the Anthropological Center for Training and Research on Global Environmental Change (ACT). Prior to that she was a faculty member in the University of Miami’s Department of Geography and International Studies and the Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy.

Roy Chowdhury’s research focuses on the institutional, ecological and spatial diversity of human-environment interactions in forest-agricultural mosaics (Mexico), urbanizing ecosystems (multiple sites in the U.S.), and coastal mangrove vulnerability to anthropogenic and climate change (the Americas and South Asia). She is particularly interested in linking theoretical, methodological and field-based approaches from the social and ecological sciences to understand smallholder land and agribiodiversity management, how institutional structures and local agency interact to shape landscapes, and the evolution of adaptive strategies in the face of climate and political-economic change. She is active in the U.S. Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) network (primarily affiliated with the Florida-Coastal Everglades and Baltimore Ecosystem Study sites) and as a member of the Global Land Project’s scientific steering committee.