Dipali Mathur

Dipali Mathur completed her Ph.D. in Environmental Humanities and Cultural Studies from the University of Wollongong (UOW) Australia in March 2022 under the supervision of Professor Ian Buchanan, and received two awards for her thesis: the ‘Professor Jim Hagan Memorial Prize’ for the best Ph.D. in the Faculty of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (ASSH) in 2022, and the ‘Examiners’ Commendation for Outstanding Thesis Award’.

In October 2022, Dipali's thesis was published as a book titled Available to be Poisoned: Toxicity as a Form of Life, by Rowman & Littlefield, and a chapter from the book has been included as a core reading in the Cultural Studies course delivered under the Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Humanities programme at the University of Wollongong Australia. Her Ph.D. explored the ways in which chronic exposure to toxic chemical pollution becomes an accepted condition of life for already marginalised populations and the environments they inhabit under the global, linear system of extractive capitalism, at both the global and local levels.

Prior to her position at Ulster University, Dipali was a ‘Digital Scholarship Postdoctoral Fellow’ at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Edinburgh.

She is currently project PI on a British Academy Newton International Fellowship for the period 2023-2025 along with Dr. Robert Porter (Co-I), titled Re-materialising the Digital: Governmentality and the Environmental Consequences of Life Online at Ulster University, Belfast.

Dipali was also awarded an 'Honorary Fellowship' at UOW Australia for the period 2022-2023, and she is an affiliated researcher with The Posthumanities Hub at Linköping University, Sweden. Prior to commencing her Ph.D. research in Australia, Dipali has taught English Literature at the University of Delhi, India as an ad-hoc Assistant Professor from 2013-2015.

My interdisciplinary research sits at the intersection of the environmental and digital humanities, cultural studies, green technology systems and critical policy studies, and engages with questions of

• international approaches to circular economy practices with a special focus on electronics, ICT, WEEE and digital infrastructures;
• developments in circular electronics and green/renewable energy technologies;
• policy and governance related to circular frameworks and Net Zero with a special focus on WEEE, AI, Cloud infrastructures, green/renewable energy systems, and the transboundary movement and disposal of hazardous substances;
• pathways to sustainable and equitable development in global south countries, particularly India, through climate/environmental, social, racial and economic justice;
• geographies of waste/toxic and digital colonialism (such as, offshoring polluting industries, mining, waste dumping) maintained by the global linear model of 'green extractive capitalism' and its impacts on marginalised communities

Newton International Fellow as Project PI (1st Mar. 2023–28th Feb. 2025), Ulster University, Belfast. 

Project Title: Re-materialising the Digital: Governmentality and the Environmental Consequences of Life Online

Funding Institution: The British Academy

Total Award: £119,250

Digital Scholarship Postdoctoral Fellow (1st Sept. 2022–28th Feb. 2023), Stipendiary Fellowship, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) and Centre for Data, Culture & Society (CDCS), University of Edinburgh.

Project Title: Re-materialising the Digital: Governmentality and the Environmental Consequences of Life Online

Funding Institution: Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) under ‘The Institute Project on Decoloniality 2021-2024’ (IDP ‘24), University of Edinburgh. https://www.iash.ed.ac.uk/profile/dr-dipali-mathur