WII-Category 2 Centre: World Heritage Assistant


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jpgVivek Sarkar, Ph.D.
World Heritage Assistant
Email: vsarkar [at] wii [dot] gov [dot] in

I am from Coochbehar, northern West Bengal, where my mother inspired me to observe butterflies and my father provided opportunities to visit the nearby forests at an early age. From 2006 I started photo-documentation of butterflies and cicadas from Bengal, Karnataka, Kerala, Odisha and NE India. I conducted nature awareness and conservation education programs in many schools and colleges of Karnataka, Odisha and West Bengal. I did my Graduation in Bio-technology from Bangalore University and post graduation in Wildlife Biology from North Orissa University. After my masters I was engaged in wildlife and conservation projects in Odisha where I published my first book, "Butterflies of Bonai", which is the first field guide on Odisha butterflies. In 2014 I published my second book on ‘Ecotourism in Odisha’. I was working as project fellow in Global Cicada Phylogeny Project in National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) from 2013 to 2015. Since then studying cicada has become one of my major subject of passion. I am also interested and very passionate about sketching, music, movies, crafts, photography and sports. I worked as Project Biologist from 2015 to 2017 in UNESCO C2C for nomination of ‘Bhitarkanika Conservation Area’ as world heritage site. I received Rufford Small Grant early 2017 to pursue my interest on cicadas independently. I studied cicadas and documented cicada related folklores in Meghalaya as a part of my PhD titled “Taxonomy, natural history and acoustics of cicadas in Garo-Khasi-Jaintia hill complex, eastern India”.

Selected Publications:

  • Sarkar, V.K., D.S. Das, V.C. Balakrishnan & K. Kunte (2011). Validation of the reported occurrence of Tajuria maculata, the Spotted Royal butterfly (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae), in the Western Ghats, southwestern India, on the basis of two new records. Journal of Threatened Taxa 3(3): 1629–1632.

  • Sarkar, V.K.(2015). How to study cicadas in the field? (A manual to study cicadas).Cicadas of india, Indian Foundation for butterflies. http://www.indiancicadas.org/A_MANUAL_TO_STUDY_CICADAS_VIVEK_2015-10-30.pdf

  • Price B, Allan E, Marathe K, Sarkar V, Simon C, Kunte K (2016) The cicadas (Hemiptera: Cicadidae) of India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, Nepal and Sri Lanka: an annotated provisional catalogue, regional checklist and bibliography. Biodiversity Data Journal 4: e8051. doi: 10.3897/BDJ.4.e8051.

Selected Books:

  • Mohapatra. P.P.; Sarkar. V.; Mishra. A.K.; Nair. M.V(2012) A field guide for Beginners-Butterflies of Bonai, Odisha. OFSDP(Odisha Forestry Sector Development Project).
  • Mohapatra. P.P.; Panda. A.; Sarkar. V (2014) Ecotourism. A Biodiversity Management Initiative of OFSDP (Odisha Forestry Sector Development Project).

Shilpi Singh
Email: shilpisng [at] wii [dot] gov [dot] in

I am having my master’s in economics from H.N.B. Garhwal University, Uttarakhand and Post Graduate Diploma in Business Administration with specialization in Human Resource from SCDL, Pune. Prior to joining UNESCO C2C at the Wildlife Institute of India, I worked with Centre for Space Science and Technology Education in Asia & the Pacific (CSSTEAP), Affiliated to the United Nations, IIRS, ISRO from (2003-2016). While working with CSSTEAP, I developed expertise in conducting various long term and short term international training programmes/workshops and alumni meet, etc. for capacity building. I also got opportunity to meet people of other countries which further inspire me to know about their culture and build network with them.

I am an avid nature lover and very passionate about crafts, music, photography and painting.

 


Anuranjan Roy
E-Mail: anuranjan [at] wii [dot] gov [dot] in

Born in West Bengal, brought up in Gujarat, completing my B. Tech in Mechanical Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra in Haryana and then being employed in an engineering stint split equally between India and the USA has helped me sample a diverse range of cultures and feel at home in all of them. Through the course of a decade designing medical devices, at the intersection of biology and engineering, I have had the opportunity to visit and study 38 World Heritage Sites spread across 5 countries. Combining my interests in creative writing, wildlife, history, society, culture, and travel, I have won national level writing competitions organized by the Indian Express in 2008 and Wildlife Institute of India in 2016, and have also been published by Outlook Traveller and Sanctuary Asia. I have co-edited "Wild Treasures", an anthology published by WII-C2C which spans 200 years of writing about 16 natural World Heritage Sites across the Asia Pacific. I served as Assistant Course Director on the inaugural MSc in Heritage Conservation and Management batch of 2019-2021. I have also represented WII-C2C at the 2019 Nature-Culture Linkages organized by University of Tsukuba in Tsukuba, Japan and the 2019 Heritage Education conference organized by the Centre of Heritage Management, Ahmadabad University in Ahmedabad.

Publications:

  • Patra, R, Roy, A and Kumar, S 2022, 'A partially leucistic Dark-sided Flycatcher Muscicapa sibirica', Indian Birds, vol. 17, no. 6, pp. 186-187.
  • Roy, A 2020, 'Sacred Mountain Landscape and Heritage Routes: Nature, Culture and Borderless Beliefs', in Ishizawa, M, Inaba, N & Yoshida, M (Eds.) Proceedings of the Fourth Capacity Building Workshop on Nature-Culture Linkages in Heritage Conservation, Asia and the Pacific 2019. Mixed Cultural and Natural Heritage. Journal of World Heritage Studies, University of Tsukuba. Japan: University of Tsukuba, pp.58-64.
  • Singh Bindra, P, Ghosh, S & Roy, A 2019, Wild Treasures: Reflections on Natural World Heritage Sites in Asia - An Anthology, Aryan Books & WII-C2C, Dehradun, India.