Doctoral candidate dies
September 12, 2014
Archana Bali, UAF interdisciplinary studies doctoral candidate, died of cancer Sept. 7 in New York City, surrounded by her family.
Born in 1978, Bali grew up in India. She earned a bachelor's degree in information technologies and systems management, worked for Greenpeace India and then earned a master’s degree in wildlife biology and conservation at the Center for Wildlife Studies in Bangalore. She came to UAF in the fall of 2007 as the first George Schaller Fellow to be a student in the resilience and adaptation program. She touched the hearts of many with her zest for life, warm smile, intense intellectual curiosity and empathetic nature.
For her dissertation research, Bali examined human-caribou systems in the context of climate change and worked closely with members of the CircumArctic Rangifer Monitoring and Assessment Network. As a part of her research, Bali lived with indigenous peoples from Alaska to Quebec, documenting through video their knowledge and observations of change. She made countless friends wherever she went.
Based on her field work, Bali produced the “Voices of Caribou People Project,” an important legacy of the International Polar Year that resulted in an award-winning film with international recognition. View the film here: http://carma.caff.is/index.php/caribou-people.
A separate aspect of Bali's dissertation drew on regional climate data to examine past effects of mosquitoes on caribou in the four barren-ground herds of Alaska. At a resilience seminar in 2009, Bali presented these two very different dimensions of her research to raise profound philosophical questions about the potential and limitations of knowledge integration.
“Archana soon came to see Alaska as her home and had great hopes of working in the future on conservation issues in the North and in India,” said Gary Kofinas, her major professor. “It is her promise for future, her love and affection to all of us, and the happiness that we felt when she was around, which make her passing so very devastating.”