Kaanan Thakkar is a Ph.D. Candidate in Geography and Spatial Sciences at the University of Delaware, working at the intersection of environmental politics, development and cultural heritage. In her doctoral dissertation, she examines the multi-scalar politics of economic precarity and environmental degradation, specifically by centering the everyday lived experiences, livelihoods and socio-ecological relations of communities living within internationally recognized cultural landscapes in The Gambia.
Prior to the Ph.D., Kaanan worked with UNESCO in Paris, France, contributing to the conservation, management, and monitoring of World Heritage sites and its capacity-building programmes. As a former conservation architect, she built an interdisciplinary background through her work supporting sustainability research, women-led craft co-operatives, and international heritage co-operation at architectural firms, NGOs and executive agencies, including INTACH Hampi, Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands and ILUCIDARE, an EU-Horizon project in Belgium. Currently, she also serves as Co-Convener of Climate-Heritage Network Youth Forum (2024–present), a global arts- and culture-based climate resilience and advocacy initiative.
She holds a Bachelor of Architecture (B.Arch.) from the University of Pune, India, and a Master of Science in Conservation of Monuments and Sites (M.Sc.) from KU Leuven, Belgium.
