Kasia Paprocki is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her work draws on and contributes to the study of the political ecology of development and agrarian change with a focus on South Asia and specifically Bangladesh, where she has worked and conducted research for over 15 years.
Kasia holds a PhD and MSc in Development Sociology from Cornell University and a bachelor’s degree from Hampshire College.
Kasia’s first book, Threatening Dystopias: The Global Politics of Climate Change Adaptation in Bangladesh (2021, Cornell University Press), investigates the politics of climate change adaptation in Bangladesh from multiple perspectives and scales, offering an in-depth analysis of the global politics of climate change adaptation and how they are both forged and manifested in this unique site. Frequently described as the ‘world’s most vulnerable country to climate change’, the oversimplified specter of a major country slipping underwater has yielded a crisis narrative that erases a complex history of landscape transformation and intense, contemporary political conflicts. Colonialism, capitalism, and local agrarian struggles have so far shaped the country’s coastline more than carbon emissions. Today, both national and global elites ignore this history, while crafting narratives and economic strategies that redistribute power and resources away from peasant communities in the name of climate adaptation.
The book draws on over two years of multi-sited ethnographic and archival fieldwork with development practitioners, policy makers, scientists, farmers and rural migrants, to investigate the politics of climate change adaptation in Bangladesh from multiple perspectives and scales, offering an in-depth analysis of the global politics of climate change adaptation and how they are both forged and manifested in this unique site.
Her writing has been published in both academic and popular outlets and her research has been supported by the United States National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Program, and the Social Science Research Council.
At LSE, Kasia co-organises the Social Life of Climate Change seminar series, is an affiliate at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, and directs the MSc in Environment and Development. In 2021 she was awarded an LSE Excellence in Education Prize.