Dr Mondira Bhattacharya

Mondira is an interdisciplinary social scientist working on issues of agriculture and rural development and policy implications on the concerned farmer segment, especially in low- and middle- income countries (LMICs). A Geographer by training she specialises in field based research, large data management and analysis and works with both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Mondira joined SAPD as Postdoctoral researcher in March 2020 and worked on projects that focused on food security and health among rural adolescents in India and Nepal (GCRF) and knowledge exchange and economic evaluation of autonomous robots in the soft fruit sector in UK (Innovate UK). Her current research on ‘Plasticulture’ and ‘Zero budget natural farming’ spans several LMICs such as Egypt, India, China, Vietnam and Sri Lanka. She also takes lectures on agrarian issues, nutrition security and research methodology. Before joining the University of Reading, she had worked for non-profit organisations in India for several years in various capacities. She was Assistant Professor at the  Council for Social Development (CSD), New Delhi. Here she was the principal investigator in several rural development research projects. Before CSD, she worked at the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) as Associate Fellow where she was involved in preparing ‘Agricultural Outlook and Situation Analysis Reports’ for the National Food Security Mission (NFSM), Ministry of Agriculture, Govt. of India. During her PhD, she also worked as Junior Consultant, Ecological Economics at the Institute of Economic Growth (IEG) in New Delhi.