Student Information
Graduate Student
Sustainability
College of Global Futures
Long Bio
Raksha is a PhD candidate in the School of Sustainability. She works on collective action and natural resource governance. She has previously worked with communities in rural India on management of land and water commons. She has used experimental games as a tool to understand commons dilemmas and strengthen shared management of resources. Her focus has also been on natural resource based livelihoods, especially agriculture and livestock rearing. Her research interests include understanding collective management of groundwater commons in urban and peri-urban spaces. She is part of the Center for Behavior, Institutions and the Environment at ASU and works with Dr. Marco Janssen, her advisor. She is a Graduate Research Assistant working on the project ' Scaling up commons dilemma experiments for research and education'. Going forward, Raksha hopes to continue working on natural resource management policy and its implications for marginalized populations in Asia and the world.
Education
Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, Sociology, Economics
Christ University, Bangalore, India.
Master of Arts in Development
Azim Premji University, Bangalore, India.
PhD in Sustainability (ongoing)
Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA.
Publications
Thomas, L., Balakrishna, R., Chaturvedi, R., Mukhopadhyay, P., & Ghate, R. (2022). What Influences Rural Poor in India to Refill Their LPG?. In Climate Change and Community Resilience (pp. 191-203). Springer, Singapore.
Zhang, W., Meinzen-Dick, R. S., Valappanandi, S., Balakrishna, R., Reddy, H., Janssen, M. A., ... & Ghate, R. (2021). Norms, gender, and payment method affect extraction behavior in a framed field experiment on community forestry in India (Vol. 2091). Intl Food Policy Res Inst.
Courses
2025 Spring
2024 Summer