My research investigates skills, rural livelihoods, and sustainability. Geographically, my focus has been India, but more recently I have also undertaken research in Japan and the Philippines. While my training was in sociology, my work now engages in debates from a range of disciplines, including human geography, development studies, education, and philosophy.
Earlier, I worked on projects related to the social and political dynamics of sustainable farming movements, regional town development, rural-urban migration, and youth issues.
My more recent work – and now my main research focus – is on skills. I examine skills not just as technical phenomena (economic assets with only instrumental value) but as vital sources of meaning and identity that are part and parcel of the processes by which we apprehend and value the world around us. From this perspective, I am interested in the socio-spatial factors that nurture the development and utilisation of skills, and whether certain types of skills might foster more sustainable and caring modes of being-in-the-world. I am exploring these themes through studies of skills in agriculture, beekeeping, and craft – as well academic and I.T. skills.
At Tokyo College, I am the convenor of the Sustainability and Society Collaborative Project.
2022 – Associate Professor, Tokyo College
2018-2021 – ARC DECRA Fellow, School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, The University of Melbourne
2016-2018 – Research Assistant, Australia India Institute, The University of Melbourne
2014-2016 – Casual staff member, The University of Wollongong
2013-2014 – Postdoctoral Research Associate, Australian Catholic University
2009-2013 – PhD in Sociology, University of Wollongong
2008 – Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Sociology, University of Wollongong
[Books]
Brown, T. & De Neve, G. (2025). The Social Life of Skills in the Global South. London: Routledge.
Powell, L., Cooper, A., Brown, T., & McGrath, S. (2025). Youth, skills, and informal sectors in the global South: theoretical and methodological lenses on learning and livelihoods. Learning for Livelihoods in the Global South: Theoretical and Methodological Lenses on Skills and the Informal Sector. London: Routledge.
Harriss, J., Jeffrey, C., & Brown, T. (2020). India: Continuity and Change in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Brown, T. (2018). Farmers, Subalterns and Activists: The Social Politics of Sustainable Agriculture in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[Articles]
Brown, T. (2025). Agricultural skill development in neoliberal contexts: Upskilling, deskilling, or skills’ subsumption? Outlook on Agriculture, 54 (2), 162-170. https://doi.org/10.1177/00307270251337768
Brown, T. (2025). Skill India’s Unmet Promises: Raising Expectations for Financial Assistance in Training for Informal Sector Livelihoods. Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 77 (2), 322-342. https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2023.2211968
Brown, T. (2024). Disrupted coping and skills for sustainability: A pluralist Heideggerian perspective. Environmental Values, 33(6), 585-605. https://doi.org/10.1177/09632719241265394
Brown, T., Phillips, C., Ali, S. S. (2024). Skill acquisition within a (more-than-human) community of practice: A study of beekeeping in Punjab, India. Journal of Rural Studies, 110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2024.103358
For a complete list of publications, see my Google Scholar profile.
