Atmaja Gohain Baruah

Atmaja locates her research interests within the broad spectrum of Sino-Indian relations. As part of her Ph.D., she is focusing on exploring the connection between climate variability, ecological migration and wellbeing in India and China. Besides observing these interconnections across the whole spectrum of context-specific migration, she seeks to inspect the broader institutional responses impacting the risks and vulnerabilities of those already vulnerable and marginalised. Apart from environmental governance in Asia, her research interests also lie in analysing non-traditional security threats facing the Indo Pacific.  

Atmaja Gohain Baruah is a joint PhD student at the Department of Comparative Asian Studies at National University of Singapore (NUS) and the Geography Department at King’s College London (KCL). She is a recipient of the President's Graduate Fellowship and is currently working on her research focusing on exploring the connection between climate variability, ecological migration and wellbeing in India and China. As her research is interdisciplinary, she is navigating multidisciplinary frameworks and working across disciplines. She is supervised by Assoc Prof Rajesh Rai at NUS and Dr Naho Mirumachi at KCL.

Atmaja is an Associated Research Fellow at the Institute for Security and Development Policy, a Stockholm-based non-profit and non-partisan research and policy organization. She is involved with the Stockholm Center for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs, looking at the shifting strategic relations and climate cooperation in the Indo Pacific.

She is currently also engaged with the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), a non-profit, scientific research organization focusing on the sustainable use of water and land resources in developing countries. The project fits well with her past experience of conducting policy and political economy analysis in the context of extreme events.

Atmaja is a native of Assam, India. Prior to joining NUS, she had obtained B.A. Hons in Sociology from Miranda House, Delhi University and Masters in East Asian Studies from Delhi University. It was her M.Phil. in East Asian Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, focusing on China’s environmental governance, that laid the foundation of her interest in environmental governance in Asia.  Alongside, Atmaja was working as a Project Assistant with the East Asia Centre at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), one of India’s premier think-tank. She was engaged in conducting research related to China and East Asia, having strategic relevance to India. She was also working as an editorial assistant with Routledge Studies on Think Asia (Taylor & Francis, UK) and the Editor-in-charge of their bimonthly newsletter, the East Asia Military Monitor, covering contemporary Asian issues.

Atmaja speaks English, Assamese and Hindi fluently and is trained in intermediate Mandarin Chinese for her research work.