Environment & Climate

Spring 2026 GIG Project - Aashish Gupta

CGII funding is contributing to a project addressing Swahili women’s roles from 600-1600 CE on the East African coast in the realms of agricultural production, cuisine, cultural transmission, craft production, and leadership.

Exacerbated by climate change, flash droughts pose significant threats to global food and water security.

This is a collaboration with the Athar Lina Initiate to conduct research and create co- design strategies for socially and contextually aware modes of turning the water that is inundating historic buildings into a resource for improving the social and built environments of the Al-Khalifa neighborhood in Cairo, Egypt.

Concrete is one of the most important materials in modern civilization but its production generates 8% of global CO2 emissions so there is growing urgency to develop alternative low-carbon alternatives.

Less Economically Developed Countries (LEDCs) are struggling to meet the demand for affordable housing in their growing cities.

This grant supports the creation of a collaborative working group to foster interdisciplinary conversation among UVA faculty working on West Africa.

I will conduct travel research to Denmark and Sweden to study the design and management of nature-based learning environments in K-12 schools for comparison with U.S. approaches.

How did British colonial efforts to expand “commodity frontiers” come to shape environmental changes on one hand and contestations over belonging, citizenship and territory on the other in South Asia?

In the face of climate disaster and gross inequity, degrowth is a sociopolitical movement that proposes an alternative to the hegemony of capitalist economism and commodification, advocating for a collectively supportive, equitable and non-accumulative way of life.