Arianna Tozzi

I am an environmental human geographer researching processes of rural agrarian transformation and grassroots-led approaches to social and environmental change. My work draws on environmental humanities, feminist political ecology, and feminist science studies to explore how intersecting agrarian and climate crises are experienced, contested, and reimagined through everyday farming practices—particularly those of women and other marginalized actors.

I am currently a Hallsworth Research Fellow in Geography, working on a project titled “Feminist Agrarian Futures: Colonial Cotton, Its Legacies, and a Search for Alternatives.” This research traces the history of cotton cultivation in Vidarbha, central India, and examines how women-led agroecology groups may offer pathways out of the current crisis of agrarian livelihoods in the region. The project combines archival research with ethnographic and creative methodologies co-produced with women farmers experimenting with alternative farming methods. Weaving together decolonial and feminist research practices with a speculative orientation towards building alternative futures, the research engaged with colonialism as an enduring system of power, positioning marginalised voices at the centre of a transformative politics of life and earth. This work forms part of a long-term collaboration with activist groups campaigning for the recognition of women farmers’ rights across India and will culminate in creative and art-based dissemination activities, alongside more standard academic publications.

I co-convene the Society and Environment Research Group (SERG) in Geography and coordinate the Feminist Agroecology Network, a grassroot-informed platform that brings together scholars, activists and practitioners working on regenerative agriculture and processes of agrarian transformations through feminist and decolonial approaches. (If you are interested in joining the network, you can sign up by sending an email to: [email protected].)

Background
Before starting the Hallsworth Fellowship, I completed a PhD in Human Geography at the University of Manchester (2023) and held an Early Career Research Fellowship at the John Rylands Research Institute. My doctoral research challenged current approaches to climate resilience in rainfed regions of Maharashtra, India arguing that in monsoon-dependent regions water policies should be reframed from the perspective of the monsoon and its shifting temporal and spatial dynamics. Findings from this research have been published in Progress in Human Geography, Geoforum, Journal of Agrarian Change,  The Geographical Journal, Environment and Planning E, and in edited volumes such as the Routledge Handbook of Gender and Water Governance and the Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology.

Prior to joining the University of Manchester, I worked in India for three years as a Research Associate with the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment, focusing on the long-term sustainability of decentralized solar energy systems. From 2015 to 2017, I was a Project Officer at The Climate Group in London, where I worked on energy efficiency projects.

Research Interests
•    Agrarian Futures
•    (Rain)Water
•    More-than-human geographies
•    Agroecology
•    Interdisciplinary approaches to geographical research
•    Art-based research

Current research projects:

2025-26 - Colouring the Field: Bridging Academia and the Arts to Explore Manchester Cotton’s Legacies and Alternative Futures in India (PI)

2024-2025 White Gold – How cotton colonialism shaped India’s agrarian ecologies (ECR Fellow John Rylands Research Institute )