Dr Vidya Athreya

Vidya Athreya is a senior scientist at Wildlife Conservation Society - India. She has been working on human leopard interaction since 2003 when she started researching the ecology of leopards in human use landscapes in India. Now she heads a team of researchers who work on understanding not only the ecological but also the human dimension of spaces shared between people and large wildlife in India. Her research has led to the formation of policy documents to deal with human leopard conflict at the state and national level in India. She studied in the University of Pondicherry, India, University of Iowa, USA and University of Manipal, India. She is increasingly interested in the cultural dimensions of shared spaces and her work spans the disciplines of wildlife biology, geography, social science and cultural studies.