Roopali Phadke

Roopali Phadke serves as Professor of Environmental Studies at Macalester College, where she teaches domestic and international environmental politics and policy. Her institutional engagements extend to boards including Northern Lights, Climate Generation, and Minneapolis' Water Bar, alongside advisory roles for the School for International Training and the Society for Social Studies of Science (4s). She co-organized the U.S. WorldWide Views on Climate and Energy project under the Danish Board of Technology.

Her educational trajectory includes a BA in Political Science from Wellesley College (1994), MA in South Asian Studies from Cornell University (1998), and PhD in Environmental Studies from UC Santa Cruz (2003).

Phadke's research interrogates the nexus of technology, democracy, and environmental justice through political ecology and STS frameworks. She investigates how participatory design in energy infrastructure (wind/hydropower) builds social acceptance and counters disenfranchisement, while her citizen science work examines community knowledge production in water management. Current projects like Mining Futures explore critical mineral sourcing for green transitions through community-centered lenses.

Her publication trends reveal escalating focus on mining's role in energy transitions (2018) and climate adaptation's intersection with diversity (2015), evolving from earlier analyses of visual politics in wind energy (2010) and participatory water governance in India (2002-2005).

Scientific recognition includes:

• 2016 Climate Adaptation Partnership award for Ready & Resilient project

As principal investigator for NSF's Mining Futures and NOAA's Ready & Resilient grants, she mentors students through honors theses on indigenous wind power development and hydropower activism. Her pedagogy emphasizes civic engagement, with students producing op-eds, scientific posters, and grant proposals addressing environmental health and NAFTA impacts.

She leads collaborative teams across projects like Ready & Resilient, which integrates community stakeholders into urban climate adaptation planning, and Mining Futures, which examines critical metals governance through transnational partnerships.