Since 1969, Professor Harriss-White has worked in field economics, agricultural economics, socio-economics and political economy. Grounded in field-work her research interests have developed from the economics of agricultural markets to India’s socially regulated (informal) capitalist economy and corporate capital. She used experience in a medical school to branch out from the malnutrition caused in part by markets to many other aspects of market-related deprivation: notably income and assets poverty, shocks and dynamics, gender bias and gender relations, health and disability, caste discrimination, destitution and citizenship, and marginalisation in the economy of waste. Throughout this field-exploration of contemporary India she has also studied policy processes on the ground. With a long term interest in agrarian change  she has also tracked the economy of a market town in southern India since 1972. In retirement, she has contributed to knowledge about the rural-urban economy as a waste-producing system – gaseous, liquid and solid waste. She remains active in the study of rural markets and neglected aspects of agricultural history. 

In Retirement

• 2011+ Emeritus Professor and Associate, School of Area Studies; Emeritus Fellow, Wolfson College; Honorary Associate, Oxford Department of International Development, Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford University

• 2023-28 Distinguished Research Fellow, Max Weber Forum for South Asian Studies, Delhi, India

• 2022+ Chair, Young Scholars’ Seminar, Foundation for Agrarian Studies, Bangalore, India

• 2015+ Visiting Professor, Centre for Informal Sector and Labour Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India, 

• 2014+ Professorial Research Associate, Department of Development Studies, SOAS