A human geographer by training, Amitangshu Acharya specializes in the interdisciplinary field of political ecology. He is currently a Leverhulme Trust PhD Scholar at the Institute of Geography, School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, U.K. His PhD research - which bridges political ecology with science and technology studies (STS) - attempts to unpack the rising popularity of domestic water purifiers in middle-class homes in India. Amitangshu believes that an enquiry into ‘small’ technologies like ‘purifiers’ can not only open up new ontological questions on water but also decode the cultural politics shaping the rising technopolitical mediation of urban environments in the majority world.

Amitangshu completed his Masters from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India, and then in 2010, he received the Sir Ratan Tata Trust Scholarship to pursue an MSc in Environment, Culture, and Society at the University of Edinburgh, U.K. He is also a recipient of the Centenary Research Fund, University of Edinburgh, U.K  (2018) and IJURR Foundation Writing Up Grant (2019). He believes in the taking academic research into the public domain and has worked towards such a cause by writing regularly in news outlets like The Independent, UK; Huffington Post, India; Khaleej Times, UAE; The Economic Times, India, The Hindu, India. In 2018, he was successfully selected to participate in a National Geographic slow journalism workshop conducted by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Paul Salopek. His earlier research publication on local knowledge-based flood forecasting in India was cited and discussed in the IPCC, Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC), in 2019.