T Jayaraman
T. Jayaraman was trained as a theoretical physicist and obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Madras, Chennai in 1984. He was professionally occupied for two decades as a theoretical high-energy physicist at various post-doctoral fellowships and as a faculty member at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai. Subsequently he moved to the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai as Professor in the School of Habitat Studies, where he worked from 2006 to 2020. At TISS, he began working on several aspects of climate change, climate policy, environmental issues and sustainable development and has published actively on these subjects. He initiated the Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Studies, in the School of Habitat Studies at TISS, where he led the development of a Master's Programme in Climate Change and Sustainability Studies and taught several courses and guided research as part of the program of the Centre. He has championed issues of equity in climate change and climate justice at the international and national level, including the role of the Earth System as a global commons, in his academic, advocacy and public interest work.
Apart from climate change and related issues, his other active interests at TISS and subsequently have included the history and philosophy of science, history of agricultural science in India, science and technology policy including nuclear policy, and philosophy and methodology in the social sciences.
Subsequent to retirement from TISS, he was Senior Fellow, Climate Change at the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai from 2020 to 2026. Among his key initiatives there was contributing to further institutionalization of the role of equity and carbon budgets in climate policy making in the global South. The Climate Equity Monitor whose development he co-led with colleagues, a joint MSSRF-NIAS project, is the first and sole web portal and knowledge/data repository devoted to climate equity that is developed and located in the global South.
He joined NIAS as Visiting Professor in April, 2026.
Alongside academic research, he has worked (and continues to do so) with both government and civil society on climate issues and has also contributed to the media on related matters. He has been a member of the Govt of India delegation to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for several sessions from 2018, including the approval of the Sixth Assessment Report and its Special Reports. He has been a technical expert in the delegation of the Govt of India to the Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change from COP26 till date and also participated in similar capacity in several mid-year Subsidiary Bodies sessions of the UNFCCC.