Ishaan Patil

I am currently a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh studying how colonial cartography has affected environmental conservation.

Over the years I have worked on a wide variety of projects in India and in the UK which have tried to link science and art. Some of them are showcased below.

I have a Bachelors in Life Science from St Xaviers College, Mumbai and a Masters in Environmental Anthropology from the University of Kent. I have most recently worked as a Research Assistant at the James Hutton Institute, and my staff profile can be found here.

Uncaged Conservation

Uncaged conservation is an online platform that creatively represents the (sensory) realities of a bird market in Indonesia. This project was in collaboration with Sicily Fiennes and Louis Lugas.

The project is based on Sicily's PhD fieldwork from January to June of 2023, which has generated rich insight into local cultural norms and social dynamics, providing an important perspective on the relationship between technology, culture, policy and enforcement in the Indonesian wildlife trade.

I have helped conceptualise the project and create the illustrations for it. Click on the icon for the full website experience.

Packed together

This children's book was made in collaboration with the Centre for Wildlife studies, India as part of their WildShaale program.

We created it to share ecological facts about wolves with children living in areas where they share the landscape and perceptions of wolves are often negative.

Confronting Xenophobia Through Food—and ComicsAn anthropologist who migrated from India to the U.K. illustrates how fellow migrants from India maintain cultural heritage through food.

Confronting Xenophobia Through Food- and Comics

This work was based on research conducted for my Masters dissertation titled 'One Fish, Two Fish, English Fish, Indian Fish: Migrant Consumer Choice of Seafood and its Implications on Transnationalism'.

The research was converted into a popular science article for Sapiens magazine alongside illustrations to support it.

Tune in for a Frog Orchestra

This is an interactive website which was designed for NatureInFocus to highlight the diversity of frogs in the Western Ghats region of India. Click on the image to access the website.