Dr Adam Green
Lecturer in Sustainability
Profile
Biography
Dr Green is an archaeologist who specialises in the long-run relationship between inequality and sustainability in South Asia. His research highlights the surprising prevalence of egalitarianism in the archaeological record, and his interest in inequality in the past is tied to a strong desire to reduce inequalities in the present. That is why he works closely with farmers, economists, agronomists, and other stakeholder communities to identify ways archaeological data and insights can help make the world fairer and more sustainable.
Adam began working in India in 2009 as a Fulbright scholar affiliated with the National Museum of India in Delhi and a research scholar affiliated with the Deccan College Post-graduate Institute for Archaeology in Pune. While working on his doctorate at New York University, he contributed to fieldwork at the ancient settlements of Farmana, Karsola and the ancient city of Rakhigarhi. In 2015, he earned a PhD in from New York University’s Department of Anthropology while teaching as an Instructor of Anthropology at Georgia State University. He joined the University of Cambridge as a Postdoctoral Researcher in 2016, and led collaborative surveys with Dr Aftab Alam from Banaras Hindu University, locating ancient villages in India as part of the European Research Council-funded TwoRains project. In 2018, he joined the Global Challenges Research Fund-ed TIGR2ESS Project, a collaborative and interdisciplinary research project that worked across universities and research institutes in the United Kingdom and India to improve the sustainability of Indian agriculture. In addition to working with a wide network of Cambridge scholars in geography and development studies, he developed active collaborations with economists and agronomists at Punjab Agricultural University, Center for International Projects Trust and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-arid Tropics. Adam was also a Research Associate at King’s College, Cambridge, where he worked with students and scholars in archaeology and beyond to identify ways knowledge from the past could address global challenges.
Adam joined the University of York as a Lecturer in Sustainability in 2022, and is undertaking research and teaching that challenges old thinking about inequality and sustainability using data and insights from the past. He holds a dual appointment in the Department of Archaeology and Department of Environment and Geography, and welcomes discussions from potential PhD or post-doctoral researchers interested in designing and funding projects that focus on sustainability, inequality, agricultural economies, the Green Revolution, and the archaeology of South Asia.
Research
Overview
Adam has been conducting collaborative fieldwork at the intersection of archaeology, heritage and agriculture in India for more than a decade, and uses digital and computational methods to rapidly assemble and analyse large-scale datasets that can be used to investigate long-term trends in human economies. In particular, his research asks what is the relationship between inequality and sustainability?
His upcoming projects build archaeological, historical and geographical datasets that span vast periods of time and develop the cutting-edge methods that will be needed to translate these data into insights into long-term trends in past agricultural economies. He is particularly focused on trajectories of cropping diversity and collective water management in the Green Revolution environments of northwest India. He is a member of the Gini Project, a National Science Foundation-funded international working group on ancient inequality, and conducts a range of projects that combine legacy, remote sensing and field data to address a range of issues in archaeology and heritage.
Adam’s research is collaborative and cooperative, and actively promotes substantive dialogues that will be necessary to making the world fairer and more sustainable.
Research group(s)
Creating sustainable and equitable food, energy and water systems
Teaching
Undergraduate
Adam is leading the undergraduate module Assessed Seminars: Environmental Archaeology: A Landscape Perspective
Postgraduate
He is also leading the post-graduate modules: Sustainability I: definitions of sustainability & methods of assessment and Sustainability II: understanding sustainability as change through time.
He welcomes students interested in pursuing PhDs on the agricultural economies of South Asia, and in invites students to develop proposals around the following (or related) topics:
Animal and/or Plant Diversity and Agricultural Sustainability in South Asia (Archaeology)
Trends in South Asia’s Agricultural Economies (Archaeology or Environment & Geography)
Collective Action and Sustainable Agriculture in South Asia (Environment & Geography or Archaeology)
Crop Diversification and Rural Inequality in South Asia (Environment & Geography)
Other teaching
He also delivers a range of seminars and lectures on agricultural economies, inequality and water management in a range of modules within both departments.
Publications
Selected publications
