BINA AGARWAL is Director and Professor of Economics at the Institute of Economic Growth , Delhi University . Educated at the Universities of Cambridge and Delhi she has held distinguished positions at many universities in the USA and UK and lectured world-wide. She was Harvard's first Daniel Ingalls Visiting Professor and a research fellow at the Ash Institute, Kennedy School of Government. She has taught at Delhi , Harvard , Michigan ( Ann Arbor ), and the University of Minnesota where she held the Winton Chair. She has also been Vice-President of the International Economic Association, the first Southern President of the International Association for Feminist Economics, on the Board of the Global Development Network from its inception till 2006, and a member of the Commission for the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, instituted by President Nicolas Sarkozy and chaired by Joseph Stiglitz. She helped found the Indian Society for Ecological Economics and was recently voted President-elect of the International Society for Ecological Economics. She is also on the editorial boards of several international academic journals.

An economist with a keen interest in interdisciplinary and intercountry explorations, Bina Agarwal's publications include nine books and over seventy professional papers on a range of subjects: land, livelihoods and property rights; environment and development; the political economy of gender; poverty and inequality; law; and agriculture and technological change. Her most recent book, Gender and Green Governance , is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. An earlier book: A Field of One's Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia (Cambridge University Press, 1994) was awarded the A.K. Coomaraswamy Book Prize 1996; the Edgar Graham Book Prize 1996; and the K. H. Batheja Award 1995-96. She was the first Asian to win the first two awards. In 2002 she also received the Malcolm Adhiseshiah award for distinguished contributions to Development Studies, and in 2005 was the first recipient of the Ramesh Chandra award for “outstanding contributions to agricultural economics”. She holds an honorary doctorate from the Institute of Social Studies ( The Hague ), and was conferred the Padma Shri by the President of India in 2008. In 2010 she received the Leontief prize, which is awarded by GDAE at Tufts University for “advancing the frontiers of economic thought”.

Bina Agarwal's research is both theoretical and empirical in scope. Much of it focuses on the lives of the most disadvantaged. Her writings, especially on women's land rights, have been used extensively in framing policy by governments, NGOs and international agencies. In 2005 she catalyzed a successful campaign for gender equality in Hindu inheritance law in India . She has been consultant to the Indian Planning Commission and has participated in the formulation of several of India 's Five Year Plans. Currently she also serves on the UN Committee for Development Policy and on the Prime Minister's National Council for Land Reforms.