Haroon Akram-Lodhi teaches agrarian political economy. He is Professor of International Development Studies and Chair of the Department of International Development Studies at Trent University, Peterborough, Canada. He is also an Associated Research Professor of the Academic Unit in Development Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, Zacatecas, Mexico, Adjunct Professor of Economics in the Master's in Development Practice program at the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies, Emory University, Atlanta, USA, as well as being a Visiting Scholar in that School's Institute for Developing Nations.

Trained as an economist, his conceptual framework is shaped by what he calls 'rights-based economics': that global and local economic processes of production and distribution are shaped by the unequal sharing of unpaid care work between women and men which not only limits their individual and collective human rights but is also economically inefficient. He suggests that a rights-based economics would recognize that economic equity and efficiency requires taking steps to recognize, redistribute and reduce unpaid care work within and between households.  This approach is reflected in Haroon Akram-Lodhi's research interests, on the political economy of agrarian change in developing capitalist countries, on the economic dimensions of gender relations, and on the political ecology of sustainable rural livelihoods and communities in contemporary poor countries. It is also reflected in the teaching he does, on global human inequality, on the future of smallholder peasant communities in the world food system, on the sustainability of rural social structures, relations, institutions and communities, and on gender and economic policy.  Haroon Akram-Lodhi has lived, taught, and conducted research in numerous countries, published extensively in peer-reviewed journals, and has undertaken advisory services for a wide variety of multilateral, bilateral and non-governmental international development organizations.

Haroon Akram-Lodhi's most recent book is Peasants and Globalization: Political Economy, Rural Transformation and the Agrarian Question, which the Journal of Agrarian Change described as 'indispensable' and the Canadian Journal of Development Studies described as 'a landmark'. He is a Member-at-Large of the Executive Council of the Canadian Association for the Study of International Development and on the Board of the Canadian Consortium of Programs in International Development Studies. He also currently acts as a Gender and Poverty Advisor to the United Nations Development Programme's Gender Team in New York, working on gender-responsive economic policy in Africa, Asia and the Pacific.