Dr. Ishfaq Hussain Malik

Profile

I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of Geography, University of Leeds, UK. My research is rooted in political ecology and engages critically with the uneven geographies of climate change, adaptation, and resilience. I work at the intersections of climate change, Indigenous knowledge systems, and decolonial environmental politics, focusing on how power, history, and knowledge shape human-environment relations. Through community-based research in the Arctic and the Himalayas, I explore how climate change is experienced and understood in places that are often on the frontlines of environmental disruption but marginalised in global climate discourse. My work in the Arctic involves collaboration with Inuit communities to document Indigenous knowledge, monitor climate change impacts, adaptation, and engage in knowledge co-production. In the Himalayas—particularly in the Kashmir region—I examine the socio-political dimensions of climate change and disasters, monitoring climate change impacts and adaptation, and examining how vulnerability and resilience are deeply entangled with structural factors. My work foregrounds the role of structural inequalities, colonial legacies, and environmental governance in shaping who bears the burden of climate crisis. Knowledge co-production is an important part of my research where I engage with collaborative and decolonial methodologies that value plural ways of knowing and build relationships of reciprocity and trust with communities. Political ecology provides the analytical framework through which I interrogate dominant narratives of climate crisis and adaptation, advocating for more equitable and grounded pathways to climate resilience.

Research interests

• Climate Change, vulnerability, adaptation and resilience 
• Ethnography
• Indigenous communities and knowledge
• Community-based research
• Political Ecology
• Disaster Studies

• ARCWISE: Arctic Resilience, Climate Adaptation, and Indigenous Wisdom for Sustainable Ecosystems
• Impacts of cryosphere-hydrosphere change on ecosystems and livelihoods in northern Nunatsiavut, Canada (IMAGINE)

Qualifications

• PhD Geography, Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), Aligarh, India

Professional memberships

• Priestley Centre for Climate Futures