Alpa Shah confronts a time of ecological crisis in international lecture and article
Professor Shah delivers the Eilert Sundt Lecture, now published in American Anthropologist.
Professor Alpa Shah gives the Eilert Sundt Lecture 2026
I propose that our environmental crises are fundamentally rooted in social, political, and economic inequalities... Without confronting these systemic inequalities - conceptually, methodologically, and politically - we cannot meaningfully address the ecological crisis.
The power of Anthropology
At a time of global crisis and division, Alpa Shah argues that the capacity of anthropology to listen with empathy, to learn from people not often heard, and to provide a framework for understanding complexity makes it vital in the 21st century.
The Eilert Sundt Lecture 2026
A Politics of Planetary Care for a Planet in Crisis: Silenced Notes from Indigenous Forest Worlds in India
15 October 2026 | University of Oslo
Drawing on Indigenous forest worlds in India and the incarcerated intellectual-activists who struggled alongside them, Alpa Shah's Eilert Sundt Lecture argued for a politics of planetary care that holds human and more-than-human worlds together while confronting the social processes through which some lives are rendered expendable.
It asked how we might build more liveable futures while reckoning with the profound inequalities that determine whose lives, labour and environments are valued - and whose are extinguished.
The lecture was given to a packed auditorium and followed by a lively Q&A. The next day, Alpa was in conversation with academic staff in Oslo on public writing, followed by a two-hour discussion on her work led by students in another full auditorium. In the words of the organisers 'Alpa's vision for anthropology combined with her university-political savvy was a particularly welcome message in these uncertain times.'
The Eilert Sundt Lecture is a prestigious annual lecture hosted by the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Oslo. It is named after Eilert Lund Sundt (1817 - 1875), considered to be the first social scientist in Norway. Once every 10 years it is given by an Anthropologist.
An extended version of this lecture is published in American Anthropologist.
Toward a Politics of Planetary Care:
The Limits of More-Than-Human Approaches, Silenced Notes From Indigenous Forest Worlds in India
