Rajiv Rawat’s Portfolio

I have worn many hats over the past decade and a half, including that of community organizer, social justice activist, environmentalist, and a student of Himalayan cultures. Born in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas but having grown up in Canada, I have spent much of my adult life engaged in social and environmental movements and campaigns, coming full circle in the last seven years by rediscovering the culture, politics, geography, ecology, and history of my ancestral land of Uttarakhand. Before this, I also participated in the global justice movement, working in areas as diverse as the global AIDS crisis, Third World Debt, and corporate globalisation, while assisting in a myriad other causes. Many of these efforts involved a fair amount of technology from web design to video production to basic cartography, while I have also written articles and proofread manuscripts in my capacity as copy and layout editors for a number of publications.

My educational background is similarly eclectic. I graduated from Cornell University in 1996 with a B.A. in ecology and evolutionary biology. I then spent five years the Harvard School of Public Health as a research assistant in the HIV/AIDS field and a specialist in internet communications technologies, taking graduate level courses in both informational and biological sciences while interacting with a diverse array of scholars in the workplace and in international fora. In 2002, I returned to Canada and completed a Masters in Environmental Studies at York University (Toronto). Currently, I am pursuing a PhD in Geography from York while working in Yellowknife as the director of communications and technology at the new Institute for Circumpolar Health Research.