Akshaya Kumar has a Masters in Sustainable Development from Sikkim Manipal University, Gangtok. He has worked with MSSRF, Orissa, since 2001 in the areas of biodiversity conservation, food, nutrition and health security and participatory livelihood improvement. He has experience and understanding of pro-nutrition agriculture interventions, knowledge and experience of participatory assessments, training methodologies, ICT tools and documentation skills. 

Aliza Pradhan, an agronomist by profession, has five years experience of working in sustainable management of agro-ecological resources for tribal societies in India. She holds a PhD in Natural Resources and Environmental Management from University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA. Her research interest includes developing and validating location specific agricultural production systems in an area for sustainable crop intensification. 

For LANSA

Aliza is the coordinator of Farming System for Nutrition (FSN) study in Koraput, Odisha and Wardha, Maharashtra.

Avinash Kishore is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at IFPRI.  He has a PhD in Public Policy from Harvard University and a Masters in Public Affairs from Princeton University. Avinash studied at IRMA and worked for four years with International Water Management Institute (IWMI) before going to the US for higher studies. He is interested in agriculture, environment, and development economics and works on projects that seek to bridge the gap between laboratories and farms in Indian agriculture using action research in collaboration with agricultural universities, agribusiness firms and farmers.

Barbara Harriss-White directed Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford University before founding the Contemporary South Asian Studies Programme, with the world’s first masters in Contemporary India. Author or editor of 40 books/monographs and over 200 journal papers/chapters, and Edgar Graham prize-winner for originality in development studies, she has engaged with India’s rural development since 1969. Through first-hand fieldwork she explores the development of agrarian and rural capitalism and varied dimensions of deprivation. Her nutrition research focussed on gender biases, food systems and interventions, and alcohol. At LSHTM she was a major contributor to ‘Agricultural Development and Nutrition’ (Pacey and Payne, 1984). She now directs research integrating environmental and social aspects of India’s informal economy focussing on rice.

For lansa

Barbara Harriss provides strategic guidance from an external perspective via LANSA’s Consortium Advisory Group.