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I study livelihoods and natural resource management, with focus on resource-dependent people, the conflicts arising out of contested rights, and community struggles to reclaim these rights. My research is primarily focused on South Asia, but I have also led research projects in Indonesia, Lao PDR and Mongolia.

My work is informed by feminist scholar-activist research methodologies, and has contributed to broadening the understanding of gender in, and the social impacts of, large-scale, capitalised extractive industries, leading to efforts to engender the extractive industries.

Through this research, I have contributed to reframing the debates around informal, artisanal and small-scale (ASM) extractive practices of mineral-dependent communities of the Global South by bringing the moral economy of resource extractive livelihoods to the forefront.

In a book, ‘Dancing with the River’ (Agrarian Studies Series, Yale University Press, 2013) I show that rivers and people’s lives are inextricably enmeshed with each other. I argue that rivers are not just physical entities but are ‘imagined’, and that tiny pieces of land called ‘chars’ (river islands) can blur the well-established conceptual boundaries between land and water to create spaces that are ungovernable.

Further, I have examined how the agrarian crisis in South Asia is increasingly ‘feminising’ rural livelihoods, leading to unforeseen consequences and fundamental changes in labour and production relations.

I have also studied how water use practices of middle class, urban households are changing, and how feminists chart new ways of thinking about water as a resource. Currently, I am investigating how women experience climate change differently differently in chars.

Some of my research have been useful to global policy agencies. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) used my work in their Extractives and Resource Governance group of the International Resource Panel to produce a policy document: ‘Mineral Resource Governance in the 21st Century’, the full report, can be found here. I have also advised other UN agencies such as the UNDP. After Covid, I worked with UN-WOMEN as a member of its ‘Core Advisory Group’ to develop a ‘Feminist Plan’ for Sustainability and Social Justice. Of other global agencies, the World Bank has sought my advice on gender challenges in extractive industries, and has published my report ‘Just Transition for All: A Feminist Approach for the Coal Sector’. Within Australia, the Australian Council for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), and Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade (DFAT) have engaged me. My international policy advocacy work includes service as an elected member of the Steering Committee of Gender & Water Alliance (GWA).

Within the ANU, I have been a proponent of gender equity and diversity, and believe that encouraging more diversity and ‘difference’ within the academia can benefit everyone, in every respect.

I teach two courses: ANTH8038 Gender and Development: Critical Issues in Policy and Practice (6 units in second semester) and ANTH8039 (12 units of the same course), and EMDV8013 Development and Environment in the Anthropocene. Both courses are offered every year during the Second semester, and are fully online with the option of face-to-face contact. In my academic career, I have prioritized training students to develop critical perspectives on gender/social science through these masters courses, and through the supervision of Masters dissertation, MPhil and PhD students.
Currently, I am researching, jointly with Dr Patrik Oskarsson of Swedish Agricultural University, Uppsala, and funded by the Swedish research Council’s FORMAS grant, how coal dependent communities in India can hope to get justice from energy transition.

I have completed, as the sole Chief Investigator, a large ARC Discovery Project grant, ‘Beyond the Resource Curse’ (see video on an aspect of this study) to explore the livelihoods of quarryworkers in India. Another, similar, initiative was the ARC Linkage Project, ‘Going for Gold’, in which I was the lead-Investigator. Both projects linked informal mining to agrarian change, and highlighted the extractivism of peasants and their mineral-dependent livelihoods. These projects covered a large ground in India, Laos and Indonesia.

Another recently completed research project is ‘Farmers of the Future’, also funded by the Australian Research Council as a Discovery Project. The study focuses on feminisation of agriculture and food security in India, and partly builds upon her fieldwork-based report of women’s experiences of rapid rural change, undertaken for ACIAR. This three-year project involved scholars from the University of Sydney, James Cook University, ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences, and the Gujarat Institute of Development Research in India. Two related research projects are currently underway: women in pulses value chain in Pakistan, funded by the Australian Council for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), and learning from women farmers’ collectives in India and the MENA region.

I was awarded the Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in January, 2024, as recognition for my distinguished service to natural resource management research and innovation, to gender equality and to tertiary education. Here are some stories about me: Crawford; ANU and Canberra Times.