Kaanan Thakkar

Recently shared my ongoing PhD research at ICCCA25. Through a place-based lens, I critique "development" around World Heritage sites in The Gambia & center local communities’ everyday experiences towards resilience and undoing historic inequities. TYSM @lbnaylor.bsky.social for your support always!

22.09.2025 19:30 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

‘Well, no, you don’t have to have children’: what African women over the age of 60 have learned about life Women across west Africa have a life expectancy of 59. In a rare project, Sylvia Arthur set out to give voice to those who have lived beyond expectation, whose experiences have been largely overlooked

A remarkable project by journalist and activist Sylvia Arthur, that brings women's perspectives and lived experiences to the forefront in telling stories about the gap between local and global development efforts in West Africa.
Read: www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

07.08.2025 15:50 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Embodied Belonging in the Social Science Lab | ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies

Creating a pinned post for our first ever lab paper, out in the January issue from @acme-geography.bsky.social

acme-journal.org/index.php/ac...

We argue that the Lab serves as a counter-practice within the academy by prioritizing our individual and collective well-being over productivity metrics.

13.03.2025 13:50 — 👍 4    🔁 4    💬 0    📌 0

Kuno's folk: missing the wood and the trees Thousands of Sahariya Adivasis who have lived here for centuries and depended on the forest for their livelihoods, are now banned from entering. September 2024 marks two years since the state shut the...

Yet another example of how conservation mechanisms exclude and ignore the very stewards of the land, neglecting the ancestrally and historically rooted livelihoods of communities living within these newly drawn fortresses of protection.
Read: ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/...

03.09.2024 12:28 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

This fight of Bangladeshi citizens is no longer about job quotas. It is against a fascist regime; against a government that has declared war on its very own people!

02.08.2024 21:06 — 👍 1    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

Shot in the eyes, victims of Bangladesh protest violence face dark future Hundreds of protesters and bystanders were hit in the eyes by pellets fired by security forces, and might lose vision.

“We were protesting for a legitimate cause and were shot at for it. There is no justice here."

www.aljazeera.com/features/202...

02.08.2024 21:02 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 1

Romila Thapar Is One of India’s Bravest Public Intellectuals Romila Thapar has transformed our view of India’s past, questioning myths first devised by British colonial ideologues before they were taken up by Hindu chauvinists. Her courage and integrity have pu...

A beautiful piece on revolutionary contributions by Thapar - who insists that there was no basis for labeling ancient India as “Hindu" & questioned divisions of the past into “ancient,” “medieval,” and “modern,” a Eurocentric approach that long remained influential.
jacobin.com/2024/07/romi...

04.07.2024 19:28 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

‘Who knew the lack of rain could kill my art?’ Sanjay Kamble, a farmer and craftsman from Kerle village in western Maharashtra, makes intricate irlas (bamboo raincoats) by hand. Decreasing rainfall over the last decade and the availability of plas...

"Around twenty years ago, every farmer used an irla while working in the paddy fields ..over the years, the vagaries of rain have forced most villagers to migrate to cities..where they work...as daily wage labourers, and street vendors..."
ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/...

24.06.2024 22:20 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0