Himani Dhanot (they/them) is an educator, writer, and emerging scholar based in Toronto. They are currently completing a Master of Arts in Adult Education and Community Development at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, with a Collaborative Specialization in Environmental Studies. They also work as a Knowledge Mobilization Intern with the Visionary Communities Project, a community-university partnership involving the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and community organizations in Kingston-Galloway-Orton Park (KGO), supporting collaborative efforts toward sustainable and equitable neighbourhood futures.
Himani’s work is rooted in a question: what becomes possible when we take seriously the relationships people, especially those at the margins, hold with the more-than-human world? Their research explores how racialized migrant women and gender-diverse people make meaning of these relationships, and what those experiences reveal about dominant assumptions surrounding environmental engagement, action, leadership, and change. Rather than asking how communities can fit within existing environmental frameworks, they are interested in what those frameworks fail to see and what alternative possibilities emerge when care, culture, migration, place, and other lived experiences become starting points for understanding environmental futures.
Through storytelling, community engagement, and arts-based approaches, Himani explores how communities cultivate resilience, belonging, wellbeing, and collective action in times of ecological and social upheaval.