Vijay Ramprasad is a geographer, environmental social scientist, and ecologist studying the relationships between institutions, rural livelihoods, and the environment. He is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Ecology, Development, and Research, and was a Postdoctoral Associate at the University of Minnesota’s Department of Forest Resources.

His research examines relationships between social and ecological outcomes of environmental and development policy, with a focus on vulnerable social groups. He currently works on these related themes: the political ecology of restoration, impacts afforestation policy on rural livelihoods and forests, use of information communication technologies in risk-mitigating decisions of smallholder farmers, linkages between agricultural credit policy, smallholder indebtedness, and sustainability of food systems, power and politics in payments for ecosystem services projects, social and ecological impacts of refugee and IDP settlements, and the interface between political ecology and environmental justice scholarship in forest governance.

He was educated at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (Ph.D., Geography and GIS), the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (MS, Environmental Policy and Planning), and St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore (MSc, Plant Physiology and Microbiology; BSc, Environmental Science, Chemistry, and Botany).