Prerna Anilkumar

Background

About Prerna Anilkumar

I am an educator, environmental researcher, and co-dreamer of spaces where learning is rooted in land, liberation, and relationships, with both human and more-than-human life. My interdisciplinary work across India, Canada, and Italy spans environmental research, food systems thinking, land-based education, project coordination, youth engagement, campaigning, and community advocacy. I’ve led ecofeminist campaigns, coordinated grassroots farmer-led initiatives, and designed nature-based educational programs for children and adults, centering relational and decolonial approaches to learning. With a background in law and land-based education, I work across silos, bridging diverse ways of knowing to support community-rooted climate action and research. Years of work alongside Dr. Vandana Shiva, Right Livelihood Award and Sydney Peace Prize laureate, deepened my commitment to seed and food sovereignty, grounding me in a lineage of learning with Indigenous farmers, seed-keepers, knowledge-holders, children, and land defenders. This lineage informed my Master’s research in education, exploring the intersections of ecology and somatics through questions like: What does it mean to learn with the Earth, not just about it? How might healing our bodies be part of healing the land, and vice versa? I've designed learning environments that are experiential and alive, inviting children (ages 0–10) to play, grieve, imagine, and grow in relationship with the more-than-human world. I’m also part of the Living Earth Collective, a growing community reimagining education, research, and care in kinship with land, each other, and all of life. What sets me apart: the expansive range and depth of my expertise, shaped through immersive work across diverse cultural and ecological landscapes, from organic farms and the living classroom of Earth University in the Himalayan foothills, to youth programming in rural Italy, to rigorous academic (colonial) institutions in the Global North, to Indigenous-led land restoration and nature-based education in urban Canada. By intentionally weaving different worldviews and ways of knowing while working across disciplines and cultures, I have developed highly successful programs that move beyond conventional responses to climate challenges, building resilient, just, and regenerative futures grounded in real community needs.