Prof Bhaskar Vira

Bhaskar Vira is Professor of Political Economy at the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College. He is Head of the Department of Geography, and was Founding Director of the University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute. He is a member of the University of Cambridge’s Global Food Security Interdisciplinary Research Centre.

Bhaskar’s research examines the ways in which societies engage with land and nature, and the political and economic context within which communities, businesses and policy makers make choices and negotiate trade-offs over alternative resource access and use strategies. He works on the dynamics of societal transformations in contemporary South Asia, especially present and potential futures of agrarian and peri-urban lives and livelihoods in the context of the lived social and material realities of local communities and people. He has contributed extensively to global science policy processes and dialogues, including in the context of food and agriculture; he Chaired the IUFRO-led Global Forest Expert Panel on Forests and Food. He is currently leading a programme of research on agrarian change and rural transformations in India, as part of the GCRF TIGR2ESS project “Transforming India's Green Revolution by Research and Empowerment for Sustainable food Supplies”.