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The Rajan lab consists of a vibrant and talented group of graduate students with backgrounds that span a range of disciplines, including engineering, the natural and social sciences and the humanities.
Examples of research topics include: land reform policies of the World Bank in Central America; sustainable agriculture in Malawi; environmental politics in Hungary and Poland; local government and environmental governance in France, Germany, and Italy; water harvesting in India; renewable energy politics in California; the food sovereignty movement in Brazil; and the societal and ecological risks of genetically engineered organisms.
The culture of the lab is collegial and collaborative. There are regular meetings of the entire group (often, at least once a week during term) and a range of social events. Graduate students help each other and collaborate on publications and grant applications. The success rate in these endeavors is high and most students are well funded. Past graduates have secured post-doctoral and tenure-track positions in a range of leading institutions, including the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Macalester College, and Harvard University.
My goal, as a graduate advisor, is to help nurture a new generation of cutting edge research that can help provide solutions and alternatives. I strongly believe that rigorous academic scholarship can be profoundly relevant. I therefore ask of my students that they combine a sense of strategic vision, a grounded-ness in the real world, and a commitment to uncompromising rigor.
I also ask of my students that they see themselves as mature professionals, with clear goals and missions, and above all, a sense of self-worth and relevance. Working with me entails doing course work in environmental studies as well as at least one other discipline of the social sciences. It also entails building strong connections and strategic partnerships with civil society institutions. Above all, it involves a commitment toward framing research questions in terms of real-world problems in all their multi-dimensionality, a commitment to hard empirical research, and perhaps most important, to clear thinking and jargon-free expression.
If you are considering applying to the Department of Environmental Studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz and would like to work in my lab group, I encourage you to contact me sooner, rather than later. Since I rarely select any graduate student without discussing their potential research with them first, please contact me as soon as you decide that you might want to apply. Please send a bio, a sample of written work, and a statement describing the research you’d like to undertake.
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