Prof 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 Gas Emissions, Technology And Work In Production And Distribution Systems: Rice In India.
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.
Recent media work
- A New Approach to Informality (Growth and Distribution Lab, 2026)
- Economists discuss ways to boost economy of North East (Financial Express, 2015)
- The politics of waste management (The Hindu, 2016)
- Informal economy (The Hindu, 2021)
- The idea of Modi in power fills us with dread (The Independent, 2014)