Bhaskar Vira, MA MPhil PhD, FAcSS

Professor of Political Economy and Fellow of Fitzwilliam College

Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education, University of Cambridge

Environmental and development economics; political economy, particularly the study of institutions and institutional change; public policy in the developing world, especially India; state-society interactions in development.

Biography

Career

• 1993-1994: College Lecturer in Economics, St John’s College, University of Cambridge
• 1994-1997: WMI Research Fellow in Environment and Development, Oxford Centre for the Environment, Ethics and Society, Mansfield College, University of Oxford
• 1998-present: Department of Geography & Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge.

Qualifications

• BA (Hons) Economics, St Stephen’s College, University of Delhi
• BA (Hons) Economics, St John’s College, University of Cambridge (MA Cantab.)
• MPhil Economics, University of Cambridge
• PhD University of Cambridge

Research

My research focuses on the political economy of environment and development. I am concerned, in particular, with the often-hidden costs of environmental and developmental processes, and the need for scholarship to draw attention to the distributional consequences of public policy choices. My work focuses on the ways in which large-scale economic, societal and environmental transformations are governed, the values that frame how human societies engage with each other and with nature, and the networks of formal and informal institutions that are intertwined in everyday decision making across a variety of spatial and temporal scales.

I have led large scale intellectual and policy-oriented projects that involve interdisciplinary conversations across the natural and social sciences. Trained as an economist, but with a portfolio of research that now engages across the critical social sciences and their interface with the biological and environmental natural sciences, I inhabit the interdisciplinary intellectual ‘borderlands’ of a number of disciplines (Human Geography, Development Studies, Institutional Economics, Environmental Studies and Conservation), while being firmly rooted in the political economy tradition.

I was Founding Director of the University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute, one of the University’s Interdisciplinary Research Centres. I am closely involved with the Cambridge Conservation Initiative, and the Global Food Security Interdisciplinary Research Centre at the University of Cambridge, and also work with the Centre for Science and Policy , Cambridge Zero, and the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership.

I have contributed to international science-policy panels, including the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the UK National Ecosystem Assessment, and IUFRO-led Global Forest Expert Panels. In 2018, I was honoured with the Royal Geographical Society’s Busk Medal, in recognition of my contributions to interdisciplinary research on environment and development.

My research links to across the Department’s thematic research groups, with a focus on Vital Geographies. My projects also relate to work in Infrastructural Geographies and the Geographies of Knowledge. I am a member of the Political Ecology research group, which meets regularly to discuss research in progress, to hear visiting speakers, or to discuss published papers.

Current and recent projects

• Agrarian change and rural transformations in India
• Decent work and youth livelihoods
• ‘Fair’ community benefits and equitable land governance
• Biodiversity and Natural Capital
• Assessing the Role of Forests and Landscapes in Relation to Climate Change, Agricultural Production and Livelihoods
• Biodiversity, Nature and the UN Sustainable Development Goals
• Links between the natural environment, human wellbeing and poverty
• Pani, Pahar: water research in the Himalayas
• The political economy of water security, ecosystem services and livelihoods in the Western Himalayas

Completed doctoral research students

Publications

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Teaching

• Geographical Tripos (Undergraduate level)
• MPhil in Conservation Leadership

External

University governance

• Trustee, Gates Cambridge Trust
• Chair, Management Executive Group, ESRC Doctoral Training Partnership for Social Sciences
• Academic Lead, ESRC Impact Acceleration Account
• Member of the Management Committee, Centre for Science and Policy

International Science-Policy Panels

• IUFRO Global Forest Expert Panel follow up study: Biodiversity, Forest Management, and REDD+ 2021
• FAO Global Hub on Indigenous Food Systems
• IUFRO Global Forest Expert Panel on Forests and Water
• Committee on World Food Security High Level Panel of Experts report on Sustainable Forestry for Food Security and Nutrition
• IUFRO Global Forest Expert Panel on Forest and Food Security
• Human resilience to climate change and disasters: a Royal Society Working Group
• IUFRO Global Forest Expert Panel on biodiversity, forest management and REDD+
• UK National Ecosystem Assessment
• Millennium Ecosystem Assessment