Team Members

Wil A.H. Thissen has over 25 years of experience as a researcher, teacher and practicing analyst, working at the interface of systems analysis and modelling, on the one hand, and policy and decision making,on the other. Before taking up his present position in 1992, he was a junior researcher at Eindhoven University of Technology, a senior scientist and assistant professor at the University of Virginia, U.S.A., a senior policy analyst with the Netherlands' Ministry for Transport and Public Works, and an associate professor at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), Netherlands. Wil is the project leader for the Shifting Grounds project. His research interests are policy analysis theory and methodology, strategic environmental assessment, dealing with uncertainties, system dynamics, application fields: water resource management, land use planning, transport, energy systems  andinfrastructure.

Leon Hermans is an assistant professor of policy analysis at the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management atTU Delft.. Leon provides supportto Shifting Grounds project leader Wil Thissen, in terms of coordination activities and overall guidance, and acts as a supervisor to Ph.D. candidate Sharlene Gomes, who works on institutional analysis and game theory models. Beyond the Shifting Grounds project, Leon is interested in the development and testing of approaches to enhance collective learning in adaptive management, in particular, joint evaluation arrangements. His areas of interest include adaptive delta management, water governance and environmental management, as well as international development. Leon obtained a PhD from TU Delft and previously worked at the Water Service of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, in Italy.

Sucharita Sen has joined as the Executive Director of SaciWATERs in October 2016 and is on leave from position of Professor in the Centre for the Study of Regional Development, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She was a Nehru-Fulbright Fellow in 2009-10 and was associated with Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA during this period. She is an economic geographer and has published in areas of natural resources and livelihoods, specifically focusing on spatial dynamics of land and water and their connections with the society. Her recent engagement and publications are on labour and gender, with a spatial focus on peri-urban areas, which has experienced fast paced urban expansions and in-migration in the last two decades. She has just completed a major collaborative work on ‘Gender Atlas’ funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), and is currently a team member of the Inter-University Consortium on Cryosphere and Climate Change (IUCCCC) , where her role is to analyse adaptation and adaptive capacities in the Himachal Himalayas.

Vishal Narain is an Associate Professor at the School of Public Policy and Governance at the Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, India. He holds a Ph.D. from Wageningen University, Netherlands. His research spans a wide range of subjects in the realm of water policy and institutions, local governance and peri-urban issues. He is the author of a book Institutions, Technology and Water Control: Water Users Associations and Irrigation Management Reform in Two Large-Scale Systems in India(2003).

Manoj Jatav is working as a Research Fellow at SaciWATERs. His has done his MPhil. in 2009 from Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has more than 7 years of Research experience in the fields of water and gender studies, labour economics, and Informal Economy. He has proficiency in handling unit level data from various sources such as National Sample Surveys (NSS), Annual Surveys of Industries (ASI), Micro & Small Scale Enterprises (MSME Census), Economic Census, Population Census, NFHS and DLHS. Prior to his employment at SaciWATERs, he has been consultant with National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in New Delhi and V.V. Giri National Labour Institute (VVGNLI). He also has peer-reviewed articles in journals, including Economic & Political Weekly, and edited books of international repute to his credit.

M. Shah Alam Khan received a B.Sc.in civil engineering from BUET, Dhaka, Bangladesh, M.Sc. in civil and environmental engineering from the University of Rhode Island, and a Ph.D. from Drexel University, both in the U.S.A. His research focuses primarily on urban water systems, coastal engineering, coastal zone management, and water-related natural disasters, with special attention to coastal vulnerability and disaster risk reduction, storm surge and tsunami hazard assessment, estuarine hydro-morphology, and urban/peri-urban water systems dynamics. He has also explored the interdisciplinary areas of water security, hydro-climatic vulnerability and adaptation, ecosystem-livelihoods nexus, and community resilience. He teaches postgraduate courses in Urban Water Management, Coastal Zone Management, Water Resource Systems Analysis, and Interdisciplinary Field Research Methodology, and links his research experience to academic teaching and advising.

Mashfiqus Salehin is a Professor at IWFM, BUET. During his 21-year professional career at BUET, he has worked in both technical and interdisciplinary research areas, focusing on a variety of issues, including basin scale hydrologic modeling, hydrodynamics of river and groundwater interaction processes, hydrogeologic analysis of coastal aquifers, groundwater and seawater intrusion modeling, flood hazard, vulnerability and risk analysis, harmonization of multiple uses of water resources, and transboundary river water management. Currently he is involved in several collaborative research projects with regional and international partners to investigate interdisciplinary issues like ecosystem service-poverty alleviation linkages, climate change vulnerability and adaptation (with a focus on migration), and biophysical vulnerability and implications to water security for the poor. In the Shifting Grounds project, Mashfiqus acts as a daily supervisor for PhD candidate Md. Rezaul Hasan, who works on Groundwater system mapping.

Parthasarathi Banerjee has a B.Tech from Calcutta University, India. He is an independent researcher and partner of the consultancy firm The Researcher. He has worked as consultant and research associate in several research projects with the International Water Management Institute; Global South Asian Studies (Institute?) (also location?); University of Copenhagen, Denmark; Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi; Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi; Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata;Institute of Social Studies, the Netherlands; National Museum of Denmark; and several other government and non-governmental organizations. He has authored several books in Bengali and in English, including 'Contemporary Politics in West Bengal: Glimpses from the Left Front Regime'. In addition, he has published a number of articles in Economic and Political Weekly and other leading journals,edited books and made two documentary films on the debate about the conflict over land acquisition in West Bengal, India.

Binoy Majumdar graduated from Calcutta University and worked as an office assistant at the Ramakrishna Mission Ashrama, Divyayan Krishi Vigyan Kendra in Ranchi,India, until 2010. He has beenat The Researcher, a research consultancy firmsince 2010, working in several projects commissioned by theInternational Water Management Institute (IWMI), the National Museum of Denmarkand the Institute for Resource Analysis and Policy (IRAP (location of city/country?). He is presently working as a field and data supervisor in the West Bengal Minor Irrigation Scheme study, conducted by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India Pvt. Ltd and funded by the World Bank, as a freelance consultant with the Population Council, New Delhi,and a project staff member for the peri-urban study of the Shifting Grounds project in West Bengal.

Remi Kempers is program officer at Both ENDS, a foundation in the Netherlands working on development and environmental issues. In the Shifting Grounds project, he will coordinate the implementation of the Negotiated Approach and support the development of serious gaming as a new tool in this methodology. Besides this project, he has worked for many years with partners in Bangladesh and India on issues related to water and sanitation, river basin management, water quality, land, human rights, gender and forestry. For the past few years, he has also been working with partners in western and eastern Africa on similar subjects. Besides his activities for Both ENDS,he is interested in groundwater issues in integrated water resource managment(IWRM) programs and in climate change issues concerning the melt and hydrological behaviour of glaciated areas. He has a Master's degree in Geographical Hydrology and Hydrogeology from the Free University in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and previously worked as a consultant on GIS-related research and in the business sector.

A.T.M. Zakir Hossain is the the founder and Executive Director of Jagrata Juba Shangha(JJS). He earned his Master's degree in commerce from Rajshahi University, Bangladesh. He has done an International Project Manager certificate program from Globalverkstan, Gothenburg, Sweden. Organisational development is one of his areas of expertise as highlighted by his leadership role at JJS for nearly 30 years. In addition to his vast experience Hossain has demonstrated skills in research, project design and implementation, human resource management, liaison and coordination. He has expertise in policy analysis, capacity building, participatory monitoring and evaluation, and development support communication. He possesses extensive and diverse partner management experience gained through involvement in partnership based projects, and networking and alliance building. His research areas are climate change, gender, human rights and governance.

Kazi Faisal Islam has earned B. Sc. Degree from Urban and Rural Planning Discipline of Khulna University, Bangladesh. He has been working in the development field since last two and half years in different NGO’s. He has completed his internship from Shushilan under “Comprehensive Disaster Management Programme (CDMP)” Project in 2013. He has worked as an Associate Researcher in Initiatives for Right View (IRV) in 2014. He has also worked as a Monitoring and Documentation Officer in Society for Peoples Action in Change and Equity (SPACE) under “MAX Value for WASH in Blue Gold Polders in Patuakhali Sadar (MF- SPACE)” project in late 2014. He has worked as a Project Development and Documentation Officer in Society for Peoples Action in Change and Equity (SPACE) in 2015. He has also worked as an Advocacy Officer in Environment Council Bangladesh under “Advocacy for Strengthening Tobacco Advertising, Promotion and Sponsorship Ban in Bangladesh in the Light of Tobacco Control Law” project in 2015. Since July 2016, he has been working as a Research Officer in Jagrata Juba Shangha (JJS). He has received training on Urban Development Plan at Khulna University organized by Higher Education Quality Enhancement Project in 2013. He has received training on Gender Equality and Women Empowerment at BRAC CDM, Rajendrapur organized by Gender & Water Alliance (GWA), Netherlands in 2014. He has also received training on Communication Strategy for Advocacy at BRAC Centre, Dhaka organized by Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids (CTFK) in 2016.

Sharlene Gomes is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management at TU Delft. As part of the Shifting Grounds project team, Sharlene is examining the role of institutions in peri-urban groundwater management within the Ganges delta. Her work features the application of game theory models and the development of serious gaming methodologies for capacity building activities. Sharlene holds an M.Sc. from the University of Oxford and completed her thesis on urban water governance in Mumbai, India. More recently, she worked as a policy analyst with the national government of the Philippines on a Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA)-funded economic development program.

Md. Rezaul Hasan is a PhD candidate in the Shifting Grounds project. Besides, he has been working in the Institute of Water Modelling (IWM) since January 2004 and now on study leave for pursuing Ph D programme at BUET. Mr. Hasan obtained B Sc in Agricultural Engineering in 1997 from Bangladesh Agricultural University. Later he completed his Masters degree in Water Resources Engineering in 2001 from BUET. As a Senior Specialist of IWM, he has been assigned as Project Leader (PL) as well as resource person for a number of projects. During the last four years he has been working as PL of several projects. One of these projects focused on the assessment of groundwater (GW) resources at some areas of coastal region of Bangladesh. The main objectives of other studies included assessment of salinity extent in the aquifer, zoning of GW salinity and impact evaluation of climate change on GW salinity using mathematical model of a pilot area in the Khulna region.

Poulomi Banerjee is a post-doctoral fellow under this project. She holds a Ph.D. in watershed management from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Prior to joining SaciWATERs,she was working as a researcher in the Water Resource and Policy Management (WRPM) division of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), New Delhi, India. She has been working in the field of water supply and sanitation, natural resource management, climate change, agriculture, governance and policy issues for the past seven years. As a Senior Fellow in SaciWATERs, she focuses on peri-urban issues and deals with the Disappearing Lakes Project.