Samarthia Thankappan
Senior Lecturer

Profile

Biography

Samarthia joined the Department of Environment and Geography in December 2007 from her previous post from the Centre for Business Relationships, Accountability Sustainability and Society (BRASS) at Cardiff University, Cardiff. Samarthia had worked at the School of Management and Economics, Queen’s University of Belfast prior to joining Cardiff University. Samarthia has held various research positions in India and has extensive research experience in the field of Sustainable development & technological policy issues; Social & economic aspects of sustainability. Samarthia's research interests include resilience in food systems, such as in the Greater Mekong Subregion.

Please note that Samarthia's office is in the Environment Building, 2nd floor ENV/242

Career

Research

Overview

My research expertise is in the area of sustainability, policy and governance, providing coherent frameworks for highly innovative research into mechanisms to de-couple economic development from environmental deterioration to operate within ecosystem limits.

My research focuses on three key areas: (i) Sustainability and the agri-food sector, tackling  a wide range of issues from climate change adaptation and mitigation to understanding the ways in which current behaviours or changed behaviours may affect the sustainability of consumption and production systems in the future; (ii) Sustainability and the automotive sector exploring environmental, economic and social costs of enhanced transport systems, especially  the impacts of bio-based material substitution in the automotive sector; (iii) Environment, society & governance, examining the complexity & the  impact of climate change policy on businesses in the supply chain and mapping social and knowledge flows in ecosystems.

Projects

Using wild ancestor plants to make rice more resilient to increasingly unpredictable water availability

This project uses new technology platforms developed at Cornell University, USA, to access valuable genetic variation from ancestral wild species of rice, introduce this to modern day elite cultivars that are widely grown in India and identify new varieties that have increased yields under drought conditions due to the presence of small segments of DNA from the wild species. In addition however, the adoption of new rice varieties by local communities is dependent on multiple factors in addition to yield performance with grain quality being one of the most important. Cultural and sociological issues such as the role of gender also play a significant part in determining the success of a new cultivar and in order to address this project will perform a socioeconomic study to assess the likely uptake patterns of any new varieties and their impact on farmers' incomes. The impact of new rice cultivars on yield, per unit cost of production, and total production per specific input (land, labour, fertilizers, seeds) will be evaluated and on-farm testing and participatory evaluation will be an integral component of cultivar field trials. This project will also model the impact of new varieties to quantify how yields are enhanced in drought-prone landscapes currently and in the future as climate changes. This information along with the outputs from our socio-economic studies will inform policy makers in developing countries about the socio-economic benefits of new varieties and thus improve adoption of the most effective strategies to address food insecurity and poverty.

Grants

Supervision

Teaching

Undergraduate

Undergraduate

• Environment, Development & Society (Year 1)
• Food, Space Culture and Society (Year 2)
• Sustainable Societies (Year 3)