Manjula M

Areas of Interest & Expertise

  • Ecological Economics
  • Climate Change Adaptation
  • Gender & Political Economy of Resource Access
  • Sustainability Issues in Agriculture
  • Agrobiodiversity & Natural Resource Conservation
  • Social Enterprises

Biography

Manjula is an Agricultural Economist by academic training, who has an experience of dabbling with ecological and behavioural economics. She teaches courses in the broad domains of sustainability and livelihoods. She works around the ecological, social, and economic concerns of rural livelihoods, conservation of natural resources, food and nutrition security, ecology, ecosystem services, gender, community-based adaptation to climate change, agrobiodiversity, and sustainability issues in agriculture. She is also interested in the political economy of gendered access to productive resources. 

She comes with more than two decades of programme management and organisational skills in the development sector. She has designed, coordinated and implemented various multi partner, multi-country, research and development projects supported by multilateral organisations (UNDP, ISCB, ENERGIA), government agencies (MoWCD, ICSSR, MoRD, DST, MoEFCC, NABARD), and international/​national donor agencies (SANDEE, AusAID, WFP). 

As Principal Scientist at the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation, she has conducted research studies around sustainable production systems, ecosystem service valuation, climate change adaptation, food security, gendered resource access, and farming systems for climate resilience. 

She has hands on experience in designing and implementing development programmes aimed at strengthening livelihoods of resource poor rural women across diverse agro ecologies. These include developing gendered agricultural value chains, promoting women managed agribusiness enterprises and nurturing women farmers’ producer companies. She has also facilitated community-based programmes on agrobiodiversity and natural resource conservation.

She has several journal papers, book chapters, popular writing, and research reports in her areas of expertise and development work. She is the Vice President of the Indian Society of Ecological Economics (INSEE) (2024−26) and was the Executive Council Member of INSEE during 2022 – 24 and 2018 – 20. 

She continues to engage with the social sector through her research and practice, as well as through teaching and capacity building engagements in various certificate programmes for social sector professionals. 

Certificate Courses

Quantitative methods for research design and implementation
This is a part of the certificate course, Basic Research Skills for Development Practitioners”, of PG Diploma in Research for Social Action

Publications

Journal Articles

Chapters in Edited Books

Online Articles

Current Projects

  • Towards a Framework for Sustainability in AgricultureResearch Centre Grant, Azim Premji University (Principal Investigator) 
  • Inclusive Approach to Sustainability in a Subsistence Economy: A Comparative Study of Two Scheduled Tribe Dominant Districts of Odisha and Kerala,’. Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) (Project Director)