Shaping environmental migration: Lakshmin’s PhD journey at RegNet

Lakshmin Mudaliar is a Fijian geographer with roots in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia, specialising in human mobility and climate change governance in the Pacific. Before her PhD, she consulted for international organisations including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Global Migration Lab, researching climate mobility, labour migration, missing migrants and training for prospective migrant workers, and contributed to Fiji’s National Labour Mobility Policy.

Last year, Lakshmin relocated to Auckland to work as a Protection Researcher with New Zealand’s Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, conducting research on human rights, geopolitical conditions in countries of origin and trafficking in persons. She also remains connected to academia through research at the Australian National University (ANU), contributing to projects examining how Pacific actors participate in UN climate change governance. Her work bridges interdisciplinary research, policy analysis and applied governance, linking academic insight with real-world impact in the Pacific.

Lakshmin’s PhD journey began unexpectedly with a conversation with her mentor, Professor Alan Gamlen, just before submitting her Master’s thesis. “At the time I did not really know what a PhD involved or what it represented. What I did know, however, was that I loved doing research, and the idea of being able to continue thinking, writing and asking questions for a living stayed with me long after that conversation,” she recalled.

She began her PhD at Monash University’s Geography Department, using the policy mobilities framework to study how policies for managing environmental migration and displacement travel across space and time. Working largely alone as the only geographer focused on Pacific policy issues, Lakshmin sometimes questioned the reach of her work beyond the discipline. When Professor Gamlen moved to the ANU and invited her to join the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet), she knew it was the right move.

Once I began interacting with the scholars, I realised how much I had been missing an intellectual community that could both challenge and support the direction my work was taking. Engaging with researchers from different disciplines exposed me to new ways of thinking about policy, regulation and governance, and helped me move beyond simply tracing how policies circulate to reflecting on their political and practical implications.

Joining RegNet also gave her the confidence to name and develop what she calls the “Environmental Mobility Governance Assemblage.”

“This was not something I had initially set out to do, and at times it felt risky to theorise a phenomenon that was still emerging. Yet RegNet’s openness—its lack of rigid theoretical boundaries and inclusive intellectual culture—made it possible for me to take that risk. More than a change of institution, enrolling at RegNet marked a shift in how I understood my project, my disciplinary identity and my place within broader scholarly conversations,” she added.

Her thesis examined the emergence of “best practices” for managing environmental migration and displacement in and beyond the Pacific, including planned relocation, labour migration and humanitarian protection. She explored how these policies travel, gain legitimacy and why some approaches become standard while others do not. Lakshmin’s interest is both personal and academic. She spent many of her childhood summer holidays in Fiji during the cyclone season. In 2008/2009, she witnessed Tropical Cyclone Gene inundate the township of Ba. Riverbanks collapsed, the marketplace was submerged, electricity and clean water were unavailable and tourists rushed to leave. Seeing an entire town paralysed by a climate-induced disaster was a formative moment that made the impacts of environmental change tangible and urgent to her. Later, university courses and postgraduate exposure to environmental migration scholarship deepened her engagement.

“Although my initial plan was to examine whether internal climate relocations led to international migration, by the time I began my PhD, environmental mobility had become a major global policy and academic concern,” she said.

Highlights of her PhD included collaborating with scholars and practitioners from diverse backgrounds. She credited interactions with Professor Terri Halliday and Professor Kate Henne for shaping her theoretical framework and strengthening her empirical chapters. Fieldwork and internships, including missions to Fiji and placements with the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNOHCHR), were also pivotal.

“I worked alongside people who treated me not just as a researcher or intern, but as part of a community. They generously shared their knowledge and insights, and taught me a great deal about how international organisations operate in practice, as well as the everyday realities of governance and human rights work,” she said.

Reflecting on her journey, Lakshmin emphasises the importance of passion and mentorship. She advises future PhD candidates to be clear about why they want to pursue a PhD and how it might shape their career.

For me, the appeal of a PhD was the opportunity to engage deeply with new theories and see how they can be applied to real-world issues—understanding their complexities, exploring their nuances and identifying possible solutions.

She also stresses the value of working with mentors who invest time and energy in your development. During her postgraduate studies, Professor Gamlen introduced her to the academic literature on environmental migration and encouraged her to take it further at PhD level. “His guidance was invaluable, not only in shaping my research project, but also in helping me secure scholarships and opportunities that made my PhD possible.” she added.