Madhu Ardhanari is a joint PhD candidate at the Global Centre for Mineral Security and the Camborne School of Mines (Universities of Exeter). Her research is around scaling ore-sand sustainably and systemically towards a low-carbon future. Ore-sand is a mineral co-product encouraging total resource use from mining value chains, with the potential to reduce burden on natural sand sources such as oceans and rivers. Sand is the world’s most extracted solid aggregate material. Her research interests include rethinking resource extractivism, labour rights and ecosystem conservation as part of achieving a just transition.
A sustainability and futures practitioner, Madhu has over a decade of experience coaching businesses and facilitating multi-stakeholder collaborations towards systemic leadership in the face of climate breakdown and social inequalities. She has extensive work experience in areas such as sustainable value chains and livelihoods, and radical decarbonisation.
Madhu is also a Next Generation Foresight Practitioners Fellow and a Senior Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity. Her Masters dissertation on land reclamation, sand use and resource inequalities in Southeast Asia won the 2021 LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre UK Postgraduate Dissertation Prize.