Lavanya Suresh is an Assistant Professor at BITS-Pilani, Hyderabad campus. After her PhD in Political Science (from ISEC Bangalore), she was an Assistant Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Hyderabad. Her work focuses on the political ecology of commons in India, with a broader interest in decentralisation and public administration. Besides publications in leading social science journals, she has co-authored a book (with Prof. M.V. Nadkarni and N. Sivanna) on “Decentralised Democracy: Gandhi’s Vision and Indian Reality.” She was also awarded the visiting research scholar fellowship under the Graduate Development Program of the Watson Institute of International Studies’ at Brown University, USA.  She is PI and Co-PI in a number of funded projects.