A few words about who we are

Kuntala and David are married to each other and form a team to together examine some of the social issues surrounding energy and coal mining in South Asia, including informal and illegal mining.

Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt is a Senior Fellow in the Resouce, Environment & Development Program, Crawford School of Public Policy, at The Australian University since 2002. Before joining the ANU, she was a Reader and Head of Geography department in The University of Burdwan in West Bengal, India. Kuntala has a wide range of research interests and expertise; her career began with research on urban and social studies, then took a turn from 1992-'93 to gender, environment and resource studies. At the ANU, Kuntala's research focuses on gender and community issues in mining and water management - both large-scale/formal and small-scale/informal institutions and practices. She has just published from Yale University (with her colleague, Gopa Samanta) "Dancing with the Rivers" a study of people living on the chars or river islands on the Gangetic flood plain; an ephemeral land with little or no legal title. The book was noted by an Australian TV channel - SBS. More detail of her research and current activities at ANU can be found on the ANU link of our home page. Kuntala's extra-curricular interests include Indian (Bengali) music and painting, and gardening.

Kuntala's father, Prof. Haransankar Bhattacharyya, was a prominent Communist leader in West Bengal and a renowned Marxist economist - two of his books (in English) can be found here and here.

David John Williams retired after a long career as a scientist with the Division of Energy Technology (DET) in Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australia. Born in the UK, he moved to Australia in 1963. He is an expert in measuring urban and industrial air quality and has a great experience in working on greenhouse gas emissions from coal mining. This led to him being part of the IPCC process in regard to coal mining-related emissions and earned him a squillionth of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. David was the Project Leader of World Bank's Air Quality Management Project in Bangladesh in 2001-2002. In 2002, He was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science (DSc.) degree by The University of Newcastle, Australia. David is a conjoint fellow of Newcastle University. He is a keen reader of history, particularly the lead-up to the Industrial Revolution, and a lover of cricket and Western classical music.

Another interest Kuntala and David  have in common is the paintings on the rickshaws of Bangladesh - 'rickshaw art' as it is often called. Together, they have written a book titled "Moving Pictures: The rickshaw art of Bangladesh" published in 2010 by Mapin Publishing House Pvt Ltd, Ahmedabad, India. For more go to Rickshaws