Bina Agarwal is Professor of Development Economics and Environment at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, UK. Earlier, she was Director and Professor of Economics at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi, where she is still affiliated as Professor on projects.

She has been President, International Society for Ecological Economics; President, International Association for Feminist Economics; Vice-President, International Economic Association; and held distinguished visiting positions at Harvard, Princeton, Cambridge, Minnesota, and other universities. She has taught law at the NYU School of Law. She is also a member of the Accademia dei Lincei, the International Science Council, and The World Academy of Sciences.

Agarwal’s books and academic papers cover diverse subjects in agriculture, environmental change, land rights and law, especially from a gender and political economy perspective. Her writings on gender inequality in property and on environmental governance have had global impact. Her prize-winning book, A Field of One’s Own (Cambridge University Press, 1994), opened up new research pathways and placed the issue of women’s land rights centrally on the global policy agenda. Her subsequent books include Gender and Green Governance (Oxford University Press (OUP), 2010); Gender Challenges (OUP, 2016) a three volume compendium of her selected papers, and Gender Inequality in Developing Economies (2021) translated into Italian.

She combines theory and empirical analysis, and academic excellence with policy advocacy. In 2005 she led a successful civil society campaign to make the Hindu Inheritance law gender equal, benefitting over 550 million Indian women and girls.

Agarwal’s many awards include a Padma Shri from India’s President in 2008; three book prizes; the Leontief Prize “for advancing the frontiers of economic thought”; the Louis Malassis International Scientist Prize (France) for “an outstanding career in agricultural development”; the Order of Agricultural Merit (France); and the International Balzan Prize 2017, “for challenging established premises in economics and the social sciences by using an innovative gender perspective”. In 2023 she won the Kenneth Boulding award in Ecological Economics; and in 2024, the first Global Inequality Research Award, France.

See also full cv and website: www.binagarwal.com