Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt has over thirty years of research and teaching experience in the interdisciplinary field of resources and the environment in developing countries. She researches the interesting dynamics, conflicts, and coexistence that occur at the interface of the environment and natural resources, and ordinary people’s daily lives in developing countries. Here she puts particular attention to the precarious and gendered livelihoods in environmental resource dependent communities. Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt has published extensively on river island communities, on the gendered challenges of farm- and non-farm-based livelihoods in developing countries in South and Southeast Asia.

She has researched the length and breadth of social and ecological aspects of resources and resource conflicts, livelihoods in large, industrial, and informal, artisanal and small-scale mines and quarries, water resource management, and feminisation of agriculture in rural communities. Her work has been used by both international and grassroots-level development organisations. She has recently published a ‘Feminist Manifesto’ that shows how the global coal sector transition can be gender-just, instead of adding the economic, social and political burdens on women in coal-reliant communities, with special emphasis on less affluent countries in Asia. Currently, Kuntala is researching how grassroots voices can be integrated into India’s coal transition.