As a teacher and scholar, Environmental Studies Prof. Monica Ogra studies the intertwining of challenges related to sustainable development and wildlife conservation. A common feature of her work is an interest in how people frequently conflict with one another and with members of other species over questions of space, place, and belonging.
For more than 25 years, Ogra has studied the values, practices, and societal structures that shape humans’ complex interactions with nonhuman animals. Her fieldwork and studies in India emphasize the experiences of local communities living in and around wildlife-protected areas. While she continues this work from afar, her attention has more recently been on sites closer to home, where she focuses on challenges and opportunities for equitable, sustainable development and more peaceful species coexistence here in the United States.
Over the years, Gettysburg students have joined Ogra in research on a wide range of topics, including the implications of climate change for humans and wildlife in the high-altitude Himalayas, the trade in captive-bred wolf-dog hybrids in the United States, and efforts to promote “rewilding” in the United States through endangered species reintroduction.
In partnership with the locally based environmental nonprofit Project Gaia (PGI), Ogra has also guided students through explorations of the potential of the PGI CleanCook cookstove model to promote sustainable livelihoods for women, improve health outcomes, and support biodiversity conservation across a range of locations including India, Vietnam, and Tanzania.
She is currently working on a long-term book project that explores the circumstances of captive wildlife that find sanctuary through “rescue” and the people who labor to care for them. A set of poems reflecting on some of her related fieldwork experiences, entitled “In the Meat Shed,” is forthcoming.
In addition to her teaching and research, Ogra is the faculty advisor to the Gettysburg Environmental Concerns Organization (GECO) and Farm House, our sustainable living student community, and serves as a faculty liaison to the Painted Turtle Farm. With Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGS) and Sociology colleague Prof. Alecea Standlee, she also co-advises Students for Sexual Justice (SSJ).
As a scholar with training that integrates work in the natural, social, arts, and humanities, Prof. Ogra teaches courses across the curriculum with enthusiasm. “As an interdisciplinary teacher-scholar, I find it deeply rewarding to share my passions for the work with students at all levels in a way that helps them to meet their personal and professional goals,” she said. “I feel so fortunate that every day I get to work alongside such wonderfully curious and committed students!”
Related Links:
External Links:
Main photo by Miranda Harple; headshot photo by Casey Martin
Posted: 03/17/26