Professor Barbara Harriss-White
Professor of Development Studies
Professor Barbara Harriss-White researches agricultural markets, India’s socially regulated capitalist economy and corporate capital, and deprivation including poverty, gender relations, health, disability, destitution and caste discrimination.
About
Professor Harriss-White’s research interests have developed from the economics of agricultural markets to India’s socially regulated capitalist economy and corporate capital; and from the malnutrition caused by markets to many other aspects of deprivation: notably poverty, gender bias and gender relations, health and disability, destitution and caste discrimination. She has a long term interest in agrarian change in southern India and has also tracked the economy of a market town there since 1972.
She held academic posts at Oxford from 1987 until her retirement in 2011. Since then she has directed an ESRC-DFID research project entitled: Resources, greenhouse gases, technology and jobs in India's informal economy the case of rice.
She has been an adviser to the UK’S Department of International Development (DfID) and to seven UN organisations; as well as a trustee of the International Food Policy Research Institute and of Norway's Institute for Environment and Development.
Expertise
- Political economy of India
- Poverty and social welfare (malnutrition, poverty, disability, destitution, sex-biased development, discrimination against dalits), especially in South Asia
- Long-term village studies and agrarian transformation
- Primary field research
Media experience
Professor Harriss-White has media experience.