Achyut Kumar Banerjee
Hello!
I’m Achyut, a plant ecologist specializing in biological invasions — I study how plants spread beyond their native range and why some become invasive. I’m also an Assistant Professor at Azim Premji University, Bhopal, where I teach quantitative and conservation-focused courses.
Please explore my work and feel free to connect.
Research
Plant invasion ecology
Teaching
Courses at Azim Premji University
Publications
Papers, articles, and ongoing work
Recent blogs
Have you ever wondered how history often selectively celebrates one person while pushing another into oblivion? This blog is to bring one Mongol princess into the light from the darkness of time, whose name was linked to and overshadowed by more powerful names like Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, but...
Coffee is probably humanity’s favourite drink. As a storytelling ape species, we humans often attach stories to our beloved things, and coffee is no exception. Although coffee is not India’s ‘cup of tea’, it has a very fascinating history of its arrival in India, which I came to know while...
Google will tell you that Mikania micrantha arrived in India in the 1940s. Old herbarium sheets, forgotten botanical books, and a trail of British surgeons, foresters, and explorers tell a different story — one with three separate points of entry, decades earlier than anyone thought...
What’s new
Research
- Mongabay Feature – Explainer: Why is Conocarpus being banned across states (Read here)
- IFIB is now SISER (Society for Introduced Species Education and Research) – a registered society (More here)
- Showcased ILORA in the 2nd Indian Wildlife Ecology Congress (Check here)
- New paper published: Climatic niche shift of invasive alien plant species in India, in OIKOS (Read here)
Teaching
- August 2026 semester started: 2 courses – Geospatial Technology and Introduction to Biodiversity and Conservation (More about my teaching)
- Invasive species elective for Indian Forest Service probationers at FRI, Dehradun (More here)
- Climatic niche characterization at the 3rd Species Distribution Modelling workshop at ISI, Kolkata (Check here)
Others
Reading: Why we sleep by Matthew Walker
Working on my new blog: A tale of two marigolds (read my blogs here)