Bharath Ananthanarayana is an artist, activist, and a practice-based researcher. His AHRC funded PhD project is supervised by Ian Cook et al and Nicola Thomas (Exeter) and Judith Aston (UWE).

His project is a decolonising practice of defetishising ginger, by following it around the Western Ghats in India to make its more-than-human entanglements visible. The creative research methodology brings interactive documentary’s (i-docs) polyphonic sensibilities to witness and record stakeholders’ life-worlds. Multi-perspectival research around a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a hottest hotspot of biological diversity, enables broad questions around environmental sustainability and complex socio-ecological relations for assessment.

Bharath co-convenes United Conservation Movement (UCM), an umbrella organisation in India that brings together different environmental and conservation organisations in the Western Ghats region to effectively collaborate on strengthening the efforts focused on interdependent crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. He also consults with ecological restoration and arts-based advocacy & outreach projects.