Dear All,

The Department of Environmental Studies cordially invites you to the Second colloquium in the Spring '26 Colloquium Series on Tuesday, 24 February 2026

Title: "Living with Toxic Development: Shipbreaking in Coastal Bangladesh"

Speaker: Camelia Dewan, Associate Professor, Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology at Uppsala University, Sweden

Date: 24 February 2026

Time: 6:30 – 7:30 PM 

Zoom Link:http:// https://zoom.us/j/91825895782?pwd=oTKNHaeiZx5xJjZMzVWXFetnB9dqbF.1   

Abstract: This talk presents the author’s current book project on shipbreaking in coastal Bangladesh. It examines the lived concerns of residents and workers in this industrialising zone who face toxic exposures both at work and at home. The project argues that anxieties about health and pollution reveal the unevenness of the “promises of development to come” (Li 2017)—a powerful discourse of growth and prosperity in which many are compelled to make significant sacrifices in the name of progress.

In Sitakunda, industrial development generates economic gains for those able to mobilise capital and land—wealthy businessmen and landowners who can sell property, open shops, or relocate. Others, including fishing communities and landless workers, lack such mobility. Interlocutors describe unnayan (economic development, modernization) as bishakto (poisonous, toxic). Building on these emic terms, the author proposes the concept of “toxic development” to show how ordinary people without capital, land, or influential networks must endure industrial activities that simultaneously create livelihoods and undermine them.

Bio: Camelia Dewan is a social anthropologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology at Uppsala University, Sweden. She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology and Environment from the University of London (SOAS/Birkbeck). Her research examines climate change, development, infrastructure, and environmental justice in South Asia. Dr Dewan is the author of Misreading the Bengal Delta: Climate Change, Development, and Livelihoods in Coastal Bangladesh (University of Washington Press, 2021), which analyzes how climate change narratives shape development interventions and reconfigure coastal vulnerabilities. The monograph was awarded the 2025 ACLS Open Access Book Prize and the Arcadia Open Access Publishing Award in the Environmental Humanities category. Dewan has published in journals including Ethnos, Environment and Planning C, Social Analysis, Journal of Peasant Studies, and JRAI. Her current research focuses on shipbreaking and toxic industrial development in coastal Bangladesh, tracing how global maritime economies intersect with workplace ecologies, public health, and structural inequality through long-term ethnographic and archival research.

We look forward to your active participation in the talk.

Warm regards,

Environmental Studies Department