DR. MARIRAJAN THIRUPPATHI

Associate Professor &

Deputy Vice Chancellor - Research and Innovation

Unicaf University

ZAMBIA

Areas of Expertise

Community Governance, Participation, Sustainable Resource Management of Local Natural Resources (Natural & Organic farming, Agroforestry, Cooperative farming, Community business); Climate vulnerability assessments, Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation; Disaster risks assessments and management and SocMon Expert.

Brief Bio

Dr. Mariarajan Thiruppathi holds an interdisciplinary PhD in Community Governance and Resource Management and currently serves as an Associate Professor and Deputy Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation at Unicaf University in Zambia. He is a practitioner of participatory approaches in action research, focusing on community governance, the management of local natural resources, and sustainable livelihoods. He has authored more than 30 peer-reviewed publications and provides training, curriculum development, and program accreditation consulting services to universities and non-profit organizations.

Additionally, he is an active member of research ethics committees, and editorial boards, an external examiner, and an adjunct professor for numerous organizations and institutions.

Dr. Thiruppathi works in various capacities across Africa and teaches physical, blended, and online graduate courses in Sociology & Social Work and Educational Administration. His current research focuses on ecosystem approaches, fisheries management, sustainable livelihoods, organic farming, climate resilience, socioeconomic monitoring, and governance. He engages in action research and development and outreach activities in partnership with regional and international intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations.

In his professional career, he served as Executive Director of Peoples Action for Development (PAD) in Tamil Nadu, India. During his tenure, he implemented a child-centered community development program among coastal communities, covering approximately 133 villages in the Gulf of Mannar, Tamil Nadu, India. He facilitated livelihood groups using the Sustainable Livelihood (SLD) approach at the community level. He made a conscious effort to form district-level platforms for both Palmyra workers and fisherfolk, with representation from government departments and NGOs, to establish a better governance system in climate change-affected coastal communities in the Gulf of Mannar region through the Climate Change Score Card (CCSC) approach.

He acted as site coordinator for the Socio-Economic Monitoring Coastal Manager (SocMon) program and coordinated site assessments of the Gulf of Mannar sites in Sri Lanka and India, producing site assessment reports from 2012 to 2015. In his middle-level career, he served as Campaign Coordinator for Joint Action for Sustainable Livelihood (JASuL) in Tamil Nadu, India. In this role, he organized 28 district-level NGO committees, uniting more than 500 NGOs in Tamil Nadu to improve governance in the irrigation water sector. Additionally, he developed a research protocol and conducted an impact assessment study on the World Bank-supported Tamil Nadu Water Resource Consolidation Project (TNWRCP) and its Hanumanathi Model Project, resulting in a Participatory Field Study Report.