Dr Sangita Thebe Limbu
PhD
Faculty of Social Sciences
Research Associate
Full contact details
Faculty of Social Sciences
The Wave
2 Whitham Road
Sheffield
S10 2AH
- Profile
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Sangita is an interdisciplinary researcher with over eight years of research experience across academia, consultancy, and the non-profit sector. Her work explores the intersections of social and environmental inequalities, with a particular focus on gender, Indigeneity, energy transitions, and the socio-environmental politics of resource governance. She draws on academic training in disaster studies, anthropology, gender, and development studies to inform her research practice.
She is currently a Research Associate at the Urban Institute, where she contributes to the UKRI-funded JustGESI project (Mainstreaming Gender Equality and Social Inclusion for a Just Energy Transition in Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania), led by Professor Vanesa Castán Broto. Sangita joined the Institute in May 2025, bringing her ethnographic and interdisciplinary expertise to this collaborative initiative focused on inclusive energy transitions. Her role involves supporting the integration of Institutional Ethnography as a methodological approach to study and address the structural drivers of discrimination and oppression that constrain the equitable delivery of energy transition policies in the project’s focus countries.
- Qualifications
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She earned her PhD in Risk and Disaster Reduction from University College London (UCL) in June 2025, having passed her viva with no corrections. Her doctoral research, grounded in feminist and decolonial perspectives, examines the political, epistemological, and ontological tensions surrounding the recognition and application of Indigenous knowledge in the global climate change and disaster risk reduction discourse. A central case study in her thesis further highlights the intergenerational riverine relationships of the Majhi Indigenous communities and their resistance to river diversion and hydropower-induced displacement in Nepal’s central hills. Drawing on nine months of fieldwork, including ethnography, oral histories, archival and policy analysis, and autoethnography, her research engages with Indigenous activists, environmentalists, engineers, policymakers, and development professionals to trace how knowledge, identity, and power intersect in environmental governance.
During her PhD, Sangita worked as a Postgraduate Teaching Assistant at UCL for four years, supporting undergraduate and postgraduate courses on gender, disaster, conflict, climate change adaptation, and qualitative research methods. She is also an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Prior to her doctoral studies, Sangita worked in higher education and international development sectors in the UK and Nepal, conducting research on a wide range of topics, including post-war transition, women’s political participation, youth unemployment, perspectives on education, post-earthquake reconstruction, and the gendered impacts of infrastructure development and urbanisation.
She holds an MSc in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford, an MSc in Gender, Development and Globalisation from the London School of Economics, and a BA in International Development from Middlesex University.