Dr. Vandana

Dr. Vandana completed her Ph.D. in Public Policy and Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, following around three years of experience as a development professional. She has a Masters in Social Work (MSW) from Visva-Bharati Shantiniketan, West Bengal, and Bachelor in Business Administration (BBA) from BIT, Mesra, Ranchi. She has extensive experience working in multi-stakeholder contexts, including government, non-government, and market actors and communities.

Her research expertise lies in political ecology, sustainable development focusing on food security, and post-growth thinking in India. She studies the impact of conservation and development initiatives on communities with the objective of highlighting alternative ways of looking at human-nature relationships. Her work examines resistance, discursive struggles, and the process of subjectivity formation at the frontiers of development. Her previous ethnographic work in Jharkhand and Odisha uncovered alternative perspectives on food and health anchored on traditional ecological knowledge in the community. It highlighted new barriers to the important global developmental agenda of achieving nutritional security in the most vulnerable populations. It is a significant contribution to the ongoing discussions on the South Asian Enigma of malnutrition.