Research fieldtrip to India by Dr Nita Mishra

Nita Mishra’s research, funded by AHSS and carried out in India this summer included lectures and meetings in universities, fieldwork trips to villages of Khorda district, especially Balianta block in Odisha, where she conducted numerous informal interviews with women duty bearers at grassroots village level, NGO workers, panchayat ward members, school principals, and self-help groups. The outputs include building UL coalitions (internationalisation) with three universities in Delhi (SDG17), upcoming peer-reviewed papers, and primary research for her book (2025).

She had the opportunity to sit with women, discussing challenges faced working at the village level to achieve food security (SDG2), gender-based violence, and narratives of agency (SDG16) and empowerment creation (SDG5) in the process. Nita also participated in a tree plantation event during one of the field trips organized by the NGO PECUC with support from the Forest Department, which provided saplings of fruit and flowering trees at a subsidized rate to encourage climate action (SDG13).

Her visits to the Anganwadi centers led to informal interviews with workers, helpers, and beneficiaries of the adolescent food entitlement scheme and the digitalised cash transfer scheme of the government for poor pregnant women. This intersects with a number of the UN Sustainable Development Goals: SDG1, SDG2, SDG10.