Indigenous Environmental Justice Communication (IEJC)
- Post On09/21/2025
- ByShankar Paudel
IEJC, in my research, examines the ways in which two Indigenous communities—Tharus from Chitwan, Nepal, and Tigua (Tiwa) Indians from El Paso, Texas, USA—located in two different time zones (almost 12 hours difference) and geographical locations (the USA in the global north and Nepal in the global south) engage in environmental justice with regard to local, national, and global environmental actions and policies. Additionally, the study seeks to determine the ways in which international organizations (particularly UN agencies), INGOs, and NGOs influence these communities. This study stands to contribute to the fields of RWS and TPC, as exploring similarities and differences across two aforementioned Indigenous communities in a transnational context can support the development of a theory of Indigenous Environmental Justice Communication that can be applied globally while being locally relevant.
Shankar Paudel
यत् भावो – तत् भवति।
My name is Shankar. I am a PhD candidate in Rhetoric and Writing Studies (RWS) at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). I am also an assistant director in the First-Year Composition program. At UTEP, apart from being a doctoral student, I am working as an instructor of technical writing (RWS-3359) and first-year composition (RWS 1301). I have worked as an assistant director for the Rhetoric and Writing Studies program (2024-2025) and the University Writing Center (2022-2024) for three semesters (2022 Spring, 2023 Fall, and 2024 Spring). Prior to that, I was a graduate consultant at the University Writing Center (UWC) for a year and coordinated the Workshop Committee during that time. In the summer of 2022, I also worked with the School of Nursing at UTEP as a PhD Research Associate. My areas of interest in research and teaching include technical and professional communication, environmental rhetoric and communication, environmental humanities, environmental historiography, rhetoric and composition, digital humanities, and multimodal composition. My dissertation is focused on Indigenous Environmental Justice Communication which involves environmental rhetoric and the field of technical and professional communication. I served as the president of two student organizations at UTEP, Frontera Retorica (a student chapter of the Rhetoric Society of America at UTEP) and Nepali Students Association at UTEP (NSA-UTEP), until July 2025. Internationally, I am associated with the South Asian Foundation for Academic Research (SAFAR) as an academic counselor and the Center for Advanced Studies in South Asia (CASSA) as a digital consultant and am also involved in various projects led by Prof. Arun Gupto and Prof. Sangita Rayamajhi.