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Priya Tallam Ed.D., is a 2025 graduate of the Ed.D. program in Educational and Professional Practice at Antioch University.

Dissertation Committee:

Richard Kahn, Ph.D., Committee Chair

John Scott, Ph.D., Committee Member

Gopal Krishnamurthy, Ph.D., Committee Member

Keywords

non-androcentrism, just ecological territories, self-determined multispecies geographies, wild animal welfare, queer ecologies, pluralistic worlds, pluriverse, womanism, pluralism, phenomenology, decoloniality for animals, grassroots urbanism, and re-localization

Document Type

Dissertation

Publication Date

2025

Abstract

My dissertation focuses on my thesis question: How might an NGO’s grassroots efforts in urban Visakhapatnam, India, propagate living justly with animals we encounter and severely Othered humans, beyond attitudes of guardianship, mitigating universalized harms to nature and society? In a transdisciplinary approach examining grassroots programs, my phenomenological study breaks down an animal advocate’s assertive practices of—inclusivity and decolonialized lived norms, which persistently transcend cultural antagonisms of caste, ability, gender, sex, class, and form/species—toward creating just pluriversal multispecies communities in Visakhapatnam. Universalized urbanization across the planet has driven irreversible socio-ecological transformation marked by record ecosystem decline. Sustaining the urban via historically patriarchal and colonialized human dominion over other animals and Earth’s natural resources reveals our existential disconnect with nature, including our human nature. My analysis claims phenomenologically realized premises observing real actors materializing grassroots formations of interspecies coexistence—working through nexuses of the political, economic, cultural, and religious systems of harm—in efforts toward creating self-determined, just, multispecies communities in Visakhapatnam. This attempts to bridge this gap in scholarship from within the intensities of Visakhapatnam city in urban India. Undoing normative, essentially androcentric, harm that oppresses many and despoils nature is possible. How to wrest political power and demand change-making to address biodiversity loss, food and water insecurity, and unacceptable inequities for Othered humans and animals in urban geographies has been observed and analyzed. More communities and societies applying these phenomenological realizations can help build momentum, lending to many just worlds in one pluriversal world becoming the norm. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA (https://aura.antioch.edu) and OhioLINK ETD Center (https://etd.ohiolink.edu).

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ORCID No. 0000-0002-2486-2102


Bio: In India, Priya worked as an architect on historic preservation and residential & sweat equity housing for five years. As an urban planner at the cities of Milpitas, Pleasanton, San Ramon, and San Jose, as well as the counties of Alameda and Santa Clara in California, Priya worked in public service for twenty years. Having utilized and managed geospatially intelligent systems (GIS) across these jurisdictions, she focused on water management, water conservation, and emergency notification across the state at CA Water Services Co. over the next ten years. She is open to sharing her expertise in creating GIS Strategic and Tactical Plans that present problem-solving using geospatial technology in land use, urban planning, water management, habitat conservation, public health, safety, and welfare, disaster management and recovery, and urban and wild animal welfare and conservation.

Supporting the Visakha Society for the Protection and Care of Animals (VSPCA), Priya accomplished her doctorate in education (Ed.D.) in 2025, working toward the pluriverse of many worlds in one world. Focused on multispecies justice, she applied the phenomenological method to communal biodiversity practices and grassroots inverse infrastructures. Working with VSPCA along the east coast of India, Priya has been ensuring local knowledges augment science and technology in building coastal resiliency for biophilic cities and towns in this region. Pluralism, womanism, and queer ecologies are the socio-ecological theories underpinning this work.

This is Priya’s LinkedIn profile. She is also developing her Substack account, which will share the nuances of her dissertation and dive deeper into her Findings and Conclusions chapters

Publications:

Tallam, P. (2017). VSPCA USA. Retrieved from Kanvz: https://www.kanvz.com/vspcausa/feed

Tallam, P. (2018, February 3). Priya Tallam. Retrieved from Medium: https://sweetpea04.medium.com/

Tallam, P. (2024). Leveraging Human–Natural World Intersections for Climate Change Adaptation. In N. Bikkina, & R. M. Turaga, Climate Change Adaptation: Traditional Wisdom and Cross-Scale Understanding (pp. 95-107; https://link-springer-com.antioch.idm.oclc.org/book/10.1007/978-981-97-1076-8; • DOI: 10.1007/978-981-97-1076-8_10; 1. https://link-springer-com.antioch.idm.oclc.org/book/10.1007/978-981-97-1076-8). Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India: Palgrave McMillan.

Tallam, P., & Nath, P. K. (2021, September). A Food-Smart Animal Sanctuary. Pre-Print, DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.21576.85769; 1. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357392609_A_Food-Smart_Animal_Sanctuary .

Tallam, P., & Nath, P. K. (2022, May). VSPCA’s Kindness Farm: A Food Smart Animal Sanctuary. Biophilic Cities Journal, 4(2), 30-35; https://www.biophiliccities.org/bcj-vol-4-no-2; https://www.biophiliccities.org/s/Kindness-Farm.pdf.

Tallam, P., Nath, P. K., Tallam, K., Loganathan, A., & Veeravalli, S. G. (2021, April). VSPCA Sea Turtle Conservation Program. Biophilic Cities Journal, 4(1), 16-25; https://www.biophiliccities.org/bcj-vol-4-no-1; https://www.biophiliccities.org/s/VSPCA-Sea-Turtle-Program_Tallam-et-al.pdf.

Tallam, P., Nath, P. K., Varma, H. K., Virendranath, Veeravalli, S. G., Loganathan, A. S., . . . Tallam, K. (n.d.). vspca_vizag. Retrieved from Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vspca_vizag/

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