Harry Barkema
Professor of Management and Chair, Research Committee
Professor Barkema is the founding Director of the Innovation Co-Creation Lab, which explores how to design innovative teams, innovation communities around websites, science parks and corporate campuses, and successful business model innovation in close cooperation with companies.
Maitreesh Ghatak
Professor of Economics
Professor Ghatak is an applied microeconomic theorist with a focus on economic development. His research studies the micro-foundations of market and non-market institutions that govern the allocation of resources in underdeveloped countries; incentive issues in the public sector; property rights and tenancy reform; and microfinance. Ghatak’s recent work on India analyses land acquisition and compensation policies in West Bengal; continuing preference for intra-caste marriage; and welfare beneficiary attitudes toward cash and in-kind transfers. He is also the lead economist of the International Growth Centre’s India (Bihar) programme.
Naila Kabeer
Professor of Gender and Development
Professor Kabeer's research interests include gender, poverty, social exclusion, labour markets and livelihoods, social protection, and citizenship. Much of her research is focused on South and South East Asia. Her publications include studies on Bangladeshi women and labour supply decision-making, the impact of social mobilisation and microfinance South Asia and social justice in relation to the MDGs.
David Lewis
Professor of Social Policy and Development
Professor Lewis’ research focuses on Bangladesh's politics and society, and particularly on how the country has been impacted by four decades of international development policies. His PhD research was based on fieldwork that explored the social and economic dimensions of village level technological change in agriculture during the late 1980s and he has regularly undertaken research in the region ever since. In 2011 he published Bangladesh: Politics, Economy and Civil Society (Cambridge University Press). David Lewis has also worked extensively on the roles of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society actors in South Asia—mainly in Bangladesh but also in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. An anthropologist by background, he has strong interests in ethnographic appraches to the study of organisations and policy processes. His most recent book is Anthropology and Development: Challenges For the 21st Century' (with Katy Gardner, Pluto, 2015).
Mahvish Shami
Assistant Professor in International Development
Dr Shami’s research focuses on patron-client relationships established between peasants and their landlords. While historically landlords’ exploitative powers are argued to stem from the level of inequality in the rural economy, her research in Pakistan shows that it is the interaction of inequality with isolation that limits peasants exit options and creates a monopolist/monopsonist landlord. Dr Shami is currently exploring the types of collective action projects peasants undertake in villages with varying levels of connectivity.
Siva Thambisetty
Associate Professor in Intellectual Property Law
Dr Thambisetty has previously been the School’s first Regional Champion for India; and has a research interest in the intellectual property protection of biotechnological inventions, bioethics, and comparative patent law. She studies the effect of patents on innovation in emerging technologies and is particularly interested in the institutional structure of the patent system and its effect on the quality of legal doctrine, including in developing countries. She has been consulted by the UK Commission for Intellectual Property Rights, Justice Jackson’s Review of Civil Litigation Costs, the Nuffield Bioethics Council and the World Health Organisation, India. She has previously held the post of visiting Fellow at Imperial College, London where she worked on an EPRC funded project on synthetic biology. She is currently working on a EU Horizon 2020 funded five-year project (2015-2020) on the Nagoya Protocol and Marine Biodiversity Resources. She has written on the implications for India’s pharmaceutical industry of the Supreme Court decision to uphold the grant of the first compulsory license on a patented drug; India’s death penalty and criminal justice system; and accessibility legislation in India.
Rajesh Venugopal
Assistant Professor in International Development
Dr Venugopal’s primary research interests are in the political sociology of development and violent conflict, particularly with reference to South Asia. He has researched and written on post-conflict reconstruction, nationalism, development aid, private sector development, and liberal peacebuilding. His recent publications on Sri Lanka explore the politics of market reform during conflict, post-conflict economics, and military fiscalism.