My interests focus very broadly on understanding change – its causes and its consequences. I work largely on tropical marine systems and the human communities that depend on them. I am keenly interested in understanding how ecological systems and dependent human communities are structured and in the complex interactions that occur at the interface of human and ecological systems. While inherently dynamic, these systems are undergoing an unprecedented degree of transformation because of global and local anthropogenic forces. On the one hand these are sculpting a new environmental and ecological normality that wild species and communities have still to adjust to. On the other hand, as human societies compete for rapidly depleting natural resources in an increasingly globalised world, whether local institutions of control can adapt adequately to maintain societal structures is an open question. How these systems respond to these forces of change can have profound consequences for each other. The work of my group focuses on documenting and understanding these changes and their consequences for coupled human-ecological systems in tropical coastal and marine systems, largely in India.