Goutam Karmakar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, School of Humanities, University of Hyderabad, India. He is Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities, University of Cologne, Germany. In addition to these academic engagements and positions, he is also an honorary research associate at the Faculty of Arts and Design, Durban University of Technology, South Africa. He was previously offered the position of senior lecturer in English at the School of Humanities, Universiti Sains Malaysia, and awarded a three-year CHS Postdoctoral Research Position at the Department of English Studies, University of South Africa. Apart from these two positions, Karmakar was also awarded the MIASA Individual Junior Fellowship, University of Ghana, Ghana; the Guest Researcher Fellowship, Linnaeus University Center for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies at Linnaeus University, Sweden; and the Visiting Scholarship, Network for Environmental Humanities at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Previously he was a National Research Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa and a visiting scholar at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany.

Some of Karmakar’s published work includes Modernist Transitions: Cultural Encounters between British and Bangla Modernist Fiction from 1910s to 1950s (Bloomsbury, 2023), Narratives of Trauma in South Asian Literature (Routledge, 2023), and The City Speaks: Urban Spaces in Indian Literature (Routledge, 2022). Karmakar’s scholarship has appeared in journals including ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Scrutiny2, Current Writing, English Academy Review, Journal of Human Values, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, Socio-Ecological Practice Research, South Asian Review, and  South Asia Research, among others. Besides these, he is one of the series editors for the Routledge book series “South Asian Literature in Focus.”

• Global South Literary Studies
• Global Anglophone Literature
• Postcolonial Studies
• Decolonial Studies
• Environmental Humanities
• Cultural Studies

Special/guest edited issues:

2025. Guest co-editor of “Nation, Nationalism and Indian Hindi Cinema,” special issue of National Identities. https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cnid20/27/1-2

2024.Guest co-editor of “Ecology, Decoloniality, and African Literature,” special issue of the journal Scrutiny2. https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rscr20/28/2

2024. Guest editor of “Literature, Activism and Transformative Learning,” special issue of Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa. https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rcwr20/36/2

2023. Guest co-editor of “Capitalism, Anthropocene, and literature of the Global South,” special issue of the Journal of Narrative and Language Studies. https://nalans.com/index.php/nalans/issue/view/21

Peer-Reviewed/Academic Articles:

2025. “Arguing for Decolonial Repair: Petrostate, Environmental Injustice, and Decompositional Politics in Helon Habila’s Oil on Water.” Journal of Narrative and Language Studies, 13(27), 106-124. Link

2025. “Infrastructural Violence, Environmental Injustice, and Decolonial Repair: The Case of South Durban Basin.” Public Humanities, 1, e116. Link 

2025. “Arboreal Dialogics and Environmental Activism: Multispecies Entanglements in Ben Okri’s Every Leaf a Hallelujah.” Scrutiny2, 1–21. Link

2025. “Necessitating Environmental Education: Indigenous Knowledge and Decolonial Ethics in Rajam Krishnan’s When the Kurinji Blooms.” Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, 27(2), 164-191. Link

2025. “Decoloniality, solidarity, and indigenous ecology: Reading Nemonte Nenquimo’s We Will Not Be Saved as hope in the Anthropocene.” Journal for Cultural Research: 1–17. [co-authored]

2025. “Decolonial hope and planetary solidarity: Fostering sustainability through African life narratives.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 61(3): 313–330.

2024. “Colonial Modernity and Epistemic Hegemony: Rethinking Environmentalism in Kamala Markandaya’s The Coffer Dams.” South Asian Review: 1–20.

2024. “Capitalism and Environmental Injustice: Decoloniality and Ecological Education in Ambikasutan Mangad’s Swarga.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment: 1-22. 

2024.   “Plachimada Struggle and the Environmentalism of the Poor: (In)justice and Activism in Mayilamma: The Life of a Tribal Eco-Warrior.” Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa 36(2): 124–137.

2024. ““Knowledge Born in the Struggle”: Activism, Decolonial Ecology, and Sustainability in Wangari Maathai’s Unbowed: A Memoir. Scrutiny2 28(2): 158–179. [co-authored]

2024. “Towards a critical ecological ontology: literacy, sustainability, and fostering environmental education through the Indian green informational picturebook.” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 15(6): 939-959. 

2024. “Injustice and subaltern environmentalism: tribal ecosystem and decolonial practices in Bhoopal’s Forest, Blood & Survival: Life and Times of Komuram Bheem.” Journal for Cultural Research 28(4): 333-352. 

2024. “Transformative Learning with Wangari Maathai: Fostering Environmental Education and Sustainability Through the Green Picturebook Seeds of Change: Planting a Path to Peace.” Journal of Human Values 31(1): 97-117.

2024. “Grievable/Disposable lives in the Anthropocene culture: Ecoprecarity, indigeneity and ecological wisdom in Kaala Paani.” International Social Science Journal (2024): 1-16. [co-authored]

2024. “Examining (in)justice, environmental activism and indigenous knowledge systems in the Indian film Kantara (Mystical Forest).” Socio-Ecological Practice Research 6(2): 117-130. (Editor’s Choice) [co-authored]

2024. “Living with extraction: Environmental injustice, slow observation and the decolonial turn in the Niger delta, Nigeria.” International Social Science Journal 74: 787–808.

2023. “Arguing for Environmental Education: Sustainability and Decoloniality in Bessie Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather.” English Academy Review 41(1): 88-104. [co-authored]

2023. “Tackling Environmental and Epistemic Injustice: Decolonial Approaches for Pluriversal Peacebuilding in South Africa.” Peace Review 35(3): 496-510. [co-authored]

2023. “Episteme and Ecology: Amitav Ghosh’s The Living Mountain and the Decolonial Turn.” South Asian Review 45 (3): 315–35. [co-authored]

2023. “Extraction and Environmental Injustices: (De)colonial Practices in Imbolo Mbue’s How Beautiful We Were.” ETropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics 22(2): 125–147. [co-authored]