DFM Students

Meaghan Fallak

Meaghan Fallak worked in collaboration with Dr. Kirit Patel at the University of Winnipeg, as part of her undergraduate program in International Development Studies, to examine the implementation of the Street Vendors’ Right to Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending Act, 2014. The Act has the potential to positively impact the livelihoods of street vendors including dried fish vendors. Meaghan is in the process of analyzing her data and aims to publish two related papers in collaboration with Dr. Patel. Dried Fish Matters has sponsored Meaghan to complete a report detailing her research on dried fish vending in Visakhapatnam and how the Street Vendors’ Act, 2014 will affect the livelihoods of dried fish vendors in Visakhapatnam and across India

Iroshani Madu Galappaththi

Iroshani Madu Galappaththi is currently in the second year of her doctoral degree program in Social and Ecological Sustainability at the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability, University of Waterloo. Her research focuses on governance and institutional context of dried fish value chains to identify opportunities for transformation in support of human wellbeing and ecosystem sustainability. She has completed the coursework requirements of her program and is currently preparing for her comprehensive examination, which is scheduled for November 2019. She is expected to start fieldwork in West Bengal, India in the spring of 2020.

This summer, she participated in a panel discussion at the MARE People and the Sea Conference in Amsterdam and made a presentation at the Integrated Marine Biosphere Research Open Science Conference in Brest, France. In February 2019, she presented a poster at the World Wetlands Day Symposium at the University of Waterloo. Madu has been recently awarded a Gender Equity Research Grant by the University of Waterloo in support of her research work.

Sisir Kanta Pradhan

Sisir Kanta Pradhan has completed the coursework for his PhD in the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development at the University of Waterloo. Sisir presented a poster on Social-ecological systems perspective of dried fish in West Bengal in University of Waterloo during World Wetland Day. He participated as a discussant in the TBTI special session for MARE People and Sea Conference: Transdisciplinary Fisheries Sciences for Blue Justice: The Need to Go Between, Across and Beyond. He also participated in the summer field school at Chilika on Governance and Change.

Mahfuzar Rahman

Mahfuzar Rahman is currently in the second year of his doctoral program in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Manitoba. He has completed his coursework and is currently preparing for the candidacy examination. His doctoral research is aiming to map out the social value chains in Northeast South Asia with particular attention to human rights issues and the food and nutrition security of the region.