Director-at-large

Ranjan is a Canada Research Chair in Community Disaster Research at Indigenous Studies, Department of Humanities, Mount Royal University, Canada. He is a colour settler in Canada, born and raised in a minority family in Bangladesh. Previously, Dr. Datta served as a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow in the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Regina, Canada. Ranjan's research interests include advocating for anti-racist climate change resilience, community-disaster research, Indigenous environmental sustainability, decolonization, environmental justice, and cross-cultural community-led sustainability. 

Dr. Datta is widely known as an international expert on community-based environmental sustainability research and positively impacts the community. He has received numerous accolades for research excellence. For example, his research activities were awarded the Excellence in Aboriginal Research Award from the Graduate Student Students' Association (GSA), University of Saskatchewan and the Interdisciplinary Social Sciences Research Award from the Common Ground at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Dr. Datta's key advisory accomplishments include the Council Chair, Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS) and Council Member, Terrestrial Multidisciplinary distributed Observatories for the Study of Arctic Connections (T-MOSAiC). He has a strong community service activity experience beyond the academic community, including active participation in social and justice movements such as Idle No More, First Nation's land-water rights, minority rights, and Two-Spirit and LGBTQ rights movements. Formally, he served as a Board of directors for several community organizations, including the Multicultural Council of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon  Open Door Society, Saskatoon Car Share Co-operative, and CFCR 90.5 Community Radio. Dr. Datta and his spouse (Jebunnessa Chapola) are blessed with three daughters (Prarthona, Prokriti, and Prithibi).