Profile
Kavitha has first class degrees in Economics and Anthropology, extensive professional experience in corporates, consulting, and start-ups as well as project-based involvement in the third/creative sectors.
PhD research
Acts of Organizing: Exploring contemporary imagining of desirable futures
This project aims to contribute to knowledge through transdisciplinary research. The researcher has adopted a developmental stance and is inspired by the principles of engaged scholarship.
Kavitha’s research is framed around the desirability of sustainability aspirations and corresponding acts of imagination as being part of collective sustainable futures. Her research looks at future contexts, the elements of which have become increasingly important in the context of sustainability.
Areas of academic interest
- Sustainability
- Sustainable/Desirable Futures
- Organisation studies
- Research through Design (RtD)
- Spaces and place
- Ethnography
- Creative methods
- Collective Imagination
- Plurality
- Materials
PhD supervisors
Professor Mikko Koria, Dr Jukka Rintamäki (Aalto University) and Dr Sharon Prendeville.
Awards, grants or scholarships received
Kavitha has received a studentship to pursue her PhD at Loughborough University London. She was the recipient of a visiting scholar travel grant from Image Space Material: Cluster of Excellence at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 2022. She also received project funding in 2023 (with Anna Bertmark) from Huddlecraft & CIPC, funded by JRF's Emerging Futures Team to deliver experimental workshops in UK and Portugal.
Professional associations
- Sustainability Transitions Research Network (STRN)
- British Academy of Management
Interests and activities
Kavitha has eclectic interests that include playing racket sport, swimming, yoga, art and craft, poetry and creative writing, travelling, photography, urban experimental gardening, material experimentation, upcycling, and listening to BBC Radio 4 podcasts.
Publications
- Ravikumar, K., & Bertmark, A. (2024). Tomorrow’s Barbie: Collective imagining beyond borders. Collective Imagination Practice Publication
- Ravikumar, Kavitha (2023). In the know with stripes! (Zine). Wellcome Collection
- Beech, N., Fadina, D., Betancour, A. Sengupta, T., Mann, E., Schuldenfrei, R.
Ravikumar, K. and Mejía Moreno, C. (2022), Unsettled Subjects/unsettling
landscapes: confronting questions of architecture in CLR James’s The Black
Jacobins. Field Journal, vol.8 (1). - Ravikumar, K. (2022). Objects in the familiar: Systemic contexts of
production. Proceedings of Relating Systems Thinking and Design (RSD11),
October 3–16, 2022, Brighton, United Kingdom. - Ravikumar K. (2022). ‘Threads, old and new’. U+Zine 7 “Clothes”, Plurality
University Network Loughborough repository.