GAURAV SIKKA

Dr. Gaurav Sikka is the Chair of the International Geographical Union Commission for Young and Early Career Geographers (IGU–YECG) and currently serves as an Assistant Professor (Senior Scale) in the Postgraduate Department of Geography at A.N. College, Patliputra University, Patna, Bihar (India). He holds a Ph.D. in Human Geography from the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, one of India’s premier centres for social science research.
Dr. Sikka’s research interests lie at the intersection of social geography, youth and sustainability, policy research, and development-induced displacement, resettlement, and rehabilitation. His scholarly work critically engages with questions of social justice, youth agency, and sustainable development, particularly in the Global South.

Dr. Sikka has recently been awarded a prestigious research grant of INR 1.25 crores (USD 139,000) by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), Government of India, to lead a longitudinal study on the Birhor Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) in India. Additionally, he has secured funding of INR 10 Lakhs (USD 11,000) from the Bihar State Biodiversity Board, Government of Bihar, to undertake urban biodiversity assessment studies in selected cities of Bihar, India.

He has an extensive publication record, with research articles published in high-impact, internationally indexed journals such as Geography and Sustainability, Gender, Place & Culture, GeoJournal, AMBIO, PLoS One, Geography, Environment, Sustainability, and the SAGE Journal of Land and Rural Studies, among others. He has co-authored a textbook on Human Geography and co-edited an academic volume with reputed national publishers.
Currently, Dr. Sikka is editing an international volume titled Youth and Sustainable Development Agendas – Young People’s Agency and Participation for Global Sustainability, published by Palgrave Macmillan and endorsed by the IGU Commission for Young and Early Career Geographers. The book foregrounds youth as critical agents of change, addressing the persistent absence of youthful voices in Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) discourse and positioning young people as integral to building inclusive and sustainable futures.

Dr. Sikka has also served as Lead Guest Editor for two special issues dedicated to young and early-career geographers, published by the GES Journal of the Russian Geographical Society and the Romanian Journal of Geography (Romanian Academy). These initiatives were aimed at strengthening early-career scholarship, fostering international academic collaboration, and providing a global platform for emerging researchers to disseminate high-quality geographical research.

He is a reviewer for numerous reputed international journals published by Elsevier, Springer, SAGE, and Taylor & Francis, and has actively contributed to international collaborative research projects funded by the Urban Studies Foundation (UK), Rhodes University, South Africa and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

Beyond academia, Dr. Sikka has contributed to higher education governance by supporting the Bihar State Higher Education Council in planning, strategy formulation, and implementation of the Prime Minister Uchhatar Shiksha Abhiyan (PM-USHA) across Bihar state universities.

An active international academic representative, Dr. Sikka has presented research papers and delivered invited talks in China (Yuxi and Beijing), Ireland (Dublin), the United Kingdom (Manchester, London, Wolverhampton), and Russia (Moscow), among other global platforms, consistently advocating for youth perspectives in geographical scholarship. He has bagged travel grants from the University of Delhi, International Geographical Union, Yuxi Normal University, China and the Development Studies Association and Urban Studies Foundation in the United Kingdom.
From 2017 to 2024, Dr. Sikka served as Secretary and Treasurer of the IGU Taskforce for Young and Early Career Geographers, a tenure marked by exceptional institutional growth and outreach. During this period, he organised and co-organised over 20 international academic events, including masterclasses by eminent geographers at the 33rd International Geographical Congress (Beijing), poster competitions, best paper awards, Geo-Night events, training programmes, and capacity-building workshops at different IGU Thematic and Regional Conferences and Congresses. The Taskforce for Young and Early Career Geographers was elevated to a full commission by IGU during this period.
He played a key role in establishing collaborations of IGU-YECG with major global networks and IGU bodies, including the International Association of Young Geographers (IAYG), Asian Geographical Association – Young Geographers Working Group (AGA-YGWG), iGeo (International Geography Olympiad), the Jena Declaration, and the IGU Commission on Geography of Future Earth.
Dr. Sikka has also served on the committee of the Royal Geographical Society’s Gender & Feminist Geographies Research Group (2016–2022). He is a recipient of the University Grants Commission Junior Research Fellowship (UGC-JRF) for his doctoral research.