Dr Ashrika Sharma
Research Associate in Human-Centred Climate Engineering
Ashrika Sharma is a social scientist with expertise in interdisciplinary research on Disaster Risk reduction (DRR), climate governance, evidence-informed policy, and knowledge mobilisation. She was originally trained as a civil engineer in Nepal and spent several years working as an engineer and practitioner in disaster and climate resilience interventions before transitioning into research.
She completed her PhD at the School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh in April 2025. Her doctoral research, ‘Public Participation for Disaster Risk Reduction in Nepal: Gaps between Rhetoric and Practice’, examined participatory approaches in DRR interventions. Drawing on in-depth empirical research in Nepal, her study demonstrates how participatory practices, often framed as democratic tools, have become detached from their emancipatory roots and are embedded within global power hierarchies, technocratic logics, and dominant knowledge systems.
Over the years, her research has predominantly focused on the roles, perspectives, and practices of state actors (such as civil servants, policy makers) and non-state actors (such as NGOs) involved in climate and disaster risk reduction efforts. Her work examines the complex interplay between power, agency, and the institutional structures within which these actors operate, while also recognising the capacity of these very actors to negotiate, navigate, and at times transform these structures through everyday practice.
In FeME, she is interested in exploring how inclusive design and co-creation methods can integrate community knowledge and lived experiences into engineering design and practice. While there is considerable rhetoric and aspiration around these approaches within disaster and climate science, there remains a limited understanding of the institutional and cultural conditions that enable or constrain this integration. In particular, she will explore how institutional incentives, professional norms, and accountability structures shape practitioners’ willingness and capacity to engage with plural knowledge systems, and what forms of training, facilitation, and reflexive practices can support this engagement.