College of Agriculture & Natural Resources Department of Community Sustainability

Home Country: Calcutta, India

Advisor: Phillip Warsaw and Maria Claudia Lopez

Titas’ research explores conservation-induced relocation in India, with a focus on land, displacement, and livelihoods. Her work looks at how conservation policies and relocation processes reshape people’s relationships to land, livelihood, and natural resources, particularly for the forest-dwelling communities. She is especially interested in how gender shapes lived experiences of displacement, including access to compensation and rehabilitation, as well as the ability to retain or reclaim rights over land and natural resources. Drawing on a mixed-methods approach, Titas combines survey and ethnographic methods to understand the complex socio-economic and cultural impacts of displacement.

More broadly, her research examines how conservation initiatives intersect with larger processes of land acquisition, dispossession, and state territorialization in India. By bringing together questions of land, gender, and rights, her work highlights the uneven effects of biodiversity conservation and the ongoing challenge of creating more just and equitable relocation processes.

Google Scholar page: ‪Titas Dutta - ‪Google Scholar

Appointments

1. Dissertation Writing Fellowship, Gender, Justice, and Environmental Change (GJEC), Centre for Gender in Global Context, International Studies Program, MSU, 2026-2027
2. Dissertation Research Fellowship, Gender, Justice, and Environmental Change (GJEC), Centre for Gender in Global Context, International Studies Program, MSU, 2024-2025
3. Graduate Fellow, Scholarship in Undergraduate Teaching & Learning (SUTL), Lyman Briggs College & Graduate School, MSU, 2023–24,
4. Instructor, Community Sustainability, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, CSUS 200: Introduction to Sustainability, Summer 2023.
5. Instructor, Community Sustainability, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, CSUS 215: International Development and Sustainability, Summer 2022.