Anand Pandian
Details
| First Name | Anand |
| Last Name | Pandian |
| Nickname | anand |
| Website | |
| Where do you work or study? | Johns Hopkins University |
| What do you do? | I'm an anthropologist and writer, and serve as a curator of the Ecological Design Collective. |
| Where do you live? | In the North American city of Baltimore, on the unceded lands of the Piscataway and Susquehannock peoples. |
What Brings You Here?
| How do you like to engage your environment? | Walking along the trails of the Stony Run urban stream valley, just down the block from where we live, sometimes with my kids, sometimes with a pair of binoculars looking and listening for birds. Also, kayaking wherever I can get into the water. |
| What ecological concerns weigh on you the most? | The way that fear and anxiety so often manifest now in harder lines and boundaries, the desire to protect one's own against others, rather than finding new ways of living with others (human or non-human) unlike oneself. |
| What does ecological design mean to you? | The chance to nurture the seeds of a more livable world within the cracks and debris of this one. |
| What would you recommend reading on radical ecological futures? | The Earthseed books by Octavia Butler. And adrienne maree brown for tools and insights on how to bring home the lessons of Butler’s speculative fiction for creative envisioning and organizing now. |
| What kinds of projects would you like to get involved with? | Lately I've been drawn into collaborative projects for environmental justice in Baltimore, but I'm more generally eager to find new opportunities to work across the divides between research, art, and activism. |
| What mediums do you like to work with? | I've mostly been a writer, but I'm trying to work on my visual literacy. |
| What kinds of people would you like to collaborate with? | I'm really interested in building creative relationships beyond the ivory tower of academia. |
| What's one idea you'd like to figure out with others? | Learning lately about life-centered design has been fascinating and inspiring, so resonant with the currents of multispecies ethnography running through my world of anthropology. |
| What else should we know about you? | People keep telling me I'm optimistic. I don't know what to make of that! I feel like I've been peering into the abyss of ecological ruin for most of my adult life. |
| What would you like to see this community become? | A space of genuine creativity, affirmation, and joy. |