Prash Naidu is an environmental and medical anthropologist with a research agenda on environmental health disparities and environmental justice in Southeast Asia and North America. Naidu received his PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan in 2019. Naidu joined CUNY-CCNY in 2023 as Assistant Professor in Anthropology. Previously (2019-2023) Naidu was Assistant Professor of International Studies at Arcadia University in Greater Philadelphia, where he was also the Frank and Evelyn Steinbrucker Fellow in Democracy and Freedom Studies.

Broadly, Naidu studies landscape transformations and atmospheric pollution and traces the impacts of extractive capitalism on people and ecosystems. His first research program maps the global sand trade and looks particularly at the human health and socio-environmental impacts of sand mining in Southeast Asia.

His second research program is a community-based study of air pollution and the impacts of environmental racism on communities of color in Philadelphia. He is currently planning a East Harlem, NYC component of this project.

Naidu’s research programs in environmental health and justice use innovative, mixed-methods as part of fostering transformations toward equitable and resilient societies.

PhD (2019). Sociocultural Anthropology, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

A.M. (2011). Social Sciences and Comparative Human Development, University of Chicago

Environmental Anthropology; Medical Anthropology; Environmental Health; Environmental Justice; Climate change impacts; Air pollution; Community impacts from natural resource extraction; sand mining; coastal resilience; mixed methods; Remote sensing and GIS.