Nethmi Bathige

My name is Nethmi Bathige and I am a PhD student in the Department of Geography at Pennsylvania State University. I identify as a feminist political ecologist studying the financial ecologies of agrarian debt, and for this I mainly use qualitative methods. My current research is focussed on the embodied health impacts of farmer credit and debt in Sri Lanka’s dry zone.

I graduated with a Master of Arts degree in Geography from the University of Kentucky and my thesis was on the political ecologies of climate-smart agriculture projects implemented among farmers in Sri Lanka’s dry zone. My research findings look at how climate-smart agriculture reproduces vulnerability and risk among smallholders through the incorporation of commercial agriculture, while gender mainstreaming aspects of climate adaptation projects produce gendered labor burdens for women farmers.

I completed my Bachelor of Arts degree majoring in biology and geography from Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. For my undergraduate honors thesis, I researched levels of food security and dietary diversity among organic and conventional tea smallholder farmers in Sri Lanka's Wet Zone regions.