background

Originally from Scotland but raised in Canada Haroon Akram-Lodhi worked in the food service industry until his mid-twenties and was an activist in the United Food and Commercial Workers Union before commencing his academic career, which led to him receiving his PhD in economics from the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada in 1992. His doctoral research was on the intersection of gender relations and agrarian class formation in the North-West Frontier Province, now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, of Pakistan. In addition to conducting field research in Pakistan, he has conducted fieldwork in China, Ethiopia, Fiji, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Thailand and Vietnam. He has taught at the University of Manitoba, at London South Bank University, UK, and at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Hague, the Netherlands. Haroon Akram-Lodhi joined Trent University in 2006 as Professor of International Development Studies, and currently works in the Department of International Development Studies as a Professor of Economics and International Development.

His major research interests are in engendered agrarian political economy, gender relations and the economy, and the political ecology of gendered sustainable rural livelihoods in contemporary low- and middle-income countries. As such, he has researched and written on the economics of gender relations in agrarian development, on the theory and practice of the economics of the household, on the political ecology of engendered agrarian relations, institutions and communities, on the empirical estimation of agrarian classes and their gender dimensions, on water governance and engendered social and community institutions, on the operation of socially-embedded ‘real’ markets in rural communities, on access to land, natural resources and the sustainability of gendered agrarian structures, and on gender and the ‘agrarian question’. He has also conducted research and written on structural adjustment, the use of structural macromodels in policymaking, health economics, gender relations and macroeconomic dynamics, gender relations and the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and the gendered characteristics and impact of government revenue and spending. In addition to undergraduate and graduate degree, diploma and occasional teaching in these areas, he has taught extensively in the area of rural economics research methodology.

Haroon Akram-Lodhi has provided policy advice to a number of organizations, including UN Women, the United Nations Development Fund for Women, the United Nations Capital Development Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Environment Programme, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Canadian International Development Agency, the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the European Commission. He has, in the course of this work, been responsible for the financial and programmatic management of several large projects. He has also conducted tailor-made training for, among others, the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Development Fund for Women, UN Women, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 

Haroon Akram-Lodhi’s current research includes: the impact of globalization and the climate crisis on the sustainability of gendered peasant social institutions, relations and communities; gender and agricultural productivity; the evolution of global land governance; the dynamics of the global subsistence crisis, including the impact of COVID-19 on unpaid care and domestic work; the potential of agroecology to enhance the rural productive forces; and gender, economic theory and economic policy.

He has published research in a variety of peer-reviewed journals, including:

He has co-edited:

and has edited

In 2013 he published:

He is currently working on: