Biography

I am a sociocultural anthropologist currently working on questions of transnational capitalism, infrastructure, and corruption.

I have been doing research on call centers in India since 2009. My research projects have led me from studying agriculture to state development agencies to multinational corporations. I am interested in the themes of contemporary capitalism, development, postcoloniality, globalization, and the state. My empirical research interrogates anthropological and social theory from its margins by paying attention to the experience of peasants and other groups of poor people in India. Combining cultural and sociological analyses of institutions and social life with questions raised by postcolonial theory, I use rigorous and intensive ethnographic research as a basis to rethink some major questions in social theory dealing with space, place, and temporality. I employ anthropology’s traditional emphasis on a deep understanding of a place or people as a vantage point from which to critique and expand received ideas in social theory. My interest in these themes is complemented by sustained attention to the rethinking and renewal of anthropological methods.

Research Interests

Ethnography of information technology, the state and development, anthropology of food, environmental anthropology, space and place, history of anthropology, applied anthropology; India and South Asia

Education

2014 Ph.D., Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley
2007 M.A., Cultural and Social Anthropology, Stanford University
2006 B.A., Cultural and Social Anthropology, Stanford University

Bio

Dr. Bharat Jayram Venkat is an Associate Professor at UCLA with a joint appointment spanning the Institute for Society & Genetics, the Department of History, and the Department of Anthropology. He is also affiliated with the UCLA Center for India & South Asia, the Program in Digital Humanities, the Urban Humanities Initiative, and the Luskin Center for Innovation. His research focuses on a range of issues related to science, medicine, climate, race, and design.

His first book, At the Limits of Cure (Duke University Press, 2021; Bloomsbury India, 2022), is the winner of three book awards: the RAI Wellcome Medal (from the Royal Anthropological Institute and the Wellcome Trust), the Edie Turner Book Prize for Ethnographic Writing (from the Society for Humanistic Anthropology), and the Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social Sciences (from the American Institute of Indian Studies). It was also shortlisted for the British Association for South Asian Studies Book Prize and longlisted for the British Society for the History of Science Hughes Prize.

Through an historical and ethnographic study of tuberculosis treatment in India, this book asks: what does it mean to be cured, and what does it mean for a cure to come undone? Venkat details the unraveling of cure across a variety of sites: in idyllic hill stations and crowded prisons, aboard ships and on the battlefield, and through research trials and clinical encounters. In confronting our present moment—marked by fading antibiotic efficacy—this work argues that cures have almost never been as final as we might hope. This research was funded by the American Council for Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation, and the American Institute for Indian Studies.

Dr. Venkat current book project—tentatively titled Swelter: A History of Our Bodies in a Warming World— is about thermal inequality, the history of heat, and the fate of our bodies in a swiftly warming world riven by inequality.This book reflects on the existential and planetary crisis posed by extreme heat, but from the perspective of our bodies as they experience this crisis. Through a surprising history that connects beer and bananas to heat stress experiments on soldiers and segregation in American cities, Swelter traces the lines that connect body heat to global warming. In our age of anthropogenic climate change, this work argues that the science of climate and the science of the body can no longer be held apart—if they ever could. Swelter will be published by Crown in the United States, and Picador in the United Kingdom.

Dr. Venkat’s research on thermal inequality has been funded by the Berggruen Foundation, the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Fellowship, the UC President’s Faculty Research Fellowship in the Humanities, and a five-year National Science Foundation (NSF) Career Award, which is the NSF’s most prestigious award in support of early-career faculty.

Dr. Venkat is also the founding director of the UCLA Heat Lab, a diverse team of undergraduate and graduate students that investigates thermal inequality from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, ranging from biology and history to anthropology and urban planning. Students in the lab have worked on an assortment of projects across Los Angeles, such as eliciting oral histories about thermal experience in Watts and measuring the occupational heat exposure of food truck workers in Westwood. In collaboration with the UCLA TIE-INS Program, the Lab has also developed and taught climate literacy curriculum for elementary and high school students in the LA Unified School District (LAUSD). In recognition of his teaching and mentorship, Dr. Venkat was awarded both the Excellence in Educational Innovation Award (from the UCLA Life Sciences Division) and the Carole H. Browner Student Mentorship Award (from the Society for Medical Anthropology).

Dr. Venkat and his team have been interviewed about their research for a range of media outlets, including CBS News, USA Today, NPR, the Associated Press, NBC, the Guardian (UK), La Nación (Argentina), New Indian Express (India), Eater LA, Spectrum News, Grist, and UCLA’s own Daily Bruin, amongst others.

Dr. Venkat has published extensively in both academic journals and public-facing venues. His work on science and medicine includes essays on ethical reasoning in the clinic, the history of evidentiary paradigms in antibiotic research, the idea of radical cure, extreme drug resistance in India, the history and possible future of the sanatorium, iatrogenesis and zoonotic disease, the idea of a TB-free India, the near impossibility of cure, and the graphic imagination of triage in the face of antibiotic failure.

His published work on heat includes essays on anthropological approaches to studying heat, how colonial-era knowledge about climate was produced through racialized bodies, the relationship between redlining and thermal inequality, the visualization of race and heat in literature and film, the effects of heat on food truck workers, and why thermal comfort has been largely organized around the needs of men in suits.

Prior to arriving at UCLA, Dr. Venkat held a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University’s Global Health Program and was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oregon. Due to the unexpected proximity of his office in Oregon to the archives for Rajneeshpuram (an intentional community/“cult”), he has also written a really fun essay on the relationship between immigration law, sham marriage, and the study of cults.

You can find much of his work collected here.

J. Alberto Casillas-Trasviña is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UCLA and an Affiliate Faculty member of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. His research focuses on groundwater resilience in arid and drought-prone regions, integrating process-based hydrological modeling, environmental and age tracers, and machine learning to improve recharge estimation, solute transport, and managed aquifer recharge. Alberto and his group at the UCLA Groundwater Hydrology Lab apply these methods to water management challenges in California’s Central Valley, including conjunctive use and compliance under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, and to understanding how wildfires and other environmental disturbances alter aquifer recharge dynamics in semi-arid systems. He holds a Ph.D. in Geology from Ghent University (2022), an M.Sc. in Hydrology and Water Resources from UNESCO-IHE (2018), and a B.S. in Civil Engineering from the Instituto Tecnológico de La Paz (2014).

Research & Interests

Groundwater hydrology; Vadose zone hydrology; isotope and age tracer methods; coupled surface water-groundwater modeling; managed aquifer recharge; wildfire impacts on groundwater recharge; Bayesian uncertainty quantification; machine learning for hydrogeology; aquifer characterization.

Education

Ph.D. (2022), Universiteit Gent, Belgium

M.S. (2018), UNESCO-IHE, Delft, The Netherlands

B.S. (2014), Instituto Tecnológico de La Paz, B.C.S., México

Dr. Sarah B. Kapnick advises JPMorgan clients on climate, energy, biodiversity and sustainability topics. Responsible for overseeing the Firm’s climate thought leadership strategy, Dr. Kapnick leverages extensive technical and scientific expertise to drive content strategy and advise clients at the intersection of finance, climate science, commerce and national security. She has received several recognitions for her work at J.P. Morgan and Climate Intuition series, including being named to the 2025 TIME100 Climate, Bloomberg Green “Ones to Watch” and Fin-Erth lists.

Prior to her current role, she served as Chief Scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), appointed by the President, responsible for guiding the programmatic focus of NOAA’s science and technology priorities. In this capacity, Dr. Kapnick oversaw the development of critical scientific strategies for emerging topics such as climate intervention, greenhouse gas monitoring, marine biodiversity, climate macroeconomics, and climate security.

Dr. Kapnick is a member of the American Geophysical Union, American Meteorological Society and American Association for the Advancement of Science. Prior to her graduate studies, she spent two years as an investment banking analyst with Goldman Sachs covering financial institutions. She received a Ph.D. in atmospheric and oceanic sciences with a certificate in leaders in sustainability from UCLA, and an A.B in mathematics with a certificate in finance from Princeton University.

Michael J. Stubbs is a veteran of the motion picture industry who now devotes himself full-time to philanthropy, nonprofit board service, advocacy, and activism. His philanthropic focuses are the environment, human rights, quality education, criminal justice reform, social equity, economic opportunity, and community resilience. Michael’s priority areas of environmental philanthropy are wildlife, wilderness, and ecosystem protection.

Bill was born at UCLA hospital, part of a long family affiliation with the university, which includes both parents receiving undergraduate degrees from UCLA, Bill’s father, brother-in-law and niece all graduating from UCLA Law – and Bill completing his psychiatry residency at UCLA and earning an MBA from Anderson. He cares deeply about the environment and has traveled extensively with Conservation International and Oceanic Society. He currently serves on a few nonprofit boards and is the co-founder of Big Bear Retreat Center. He also volunteers at Homeboy Industries and with the UCLA psychiatry residency program, teaching mindfulness-based approaches.