Dr Shailaja Fennell

  • Partner - Cambridge Heritage Research Centre
  • Professor in Regional Transformation and Economic Security - Department of Land Economy
  • Deputy Head of Department - Department of Land Economy
Dr Shailaja Fennell

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About

Shailaja Fennell is Professor of Economic Security and Resilience in the Department of Land Economy. She obtained her B.A, M. A. and M.Phil. in Economics from Delhi University, before coming to the University of Cambridge to obtain another M.Phil. and then her PhD. in Economics at the Faculty of Economics. She is a fellow of Jesus College, and also Director of the Centre of South Asian Studies.

Her research interests include economic security and ecological change, community and national resilience, and institutional reform and regional transformation. She has a particular focus on local and sub-national decision making in rural and urban policy design, agricultural sustainability and food security; youth, migration and employment aspirations; provision of public goods in the spheres of education and health. 

Research

Shailaja is the lead social scientist on the NERC funded grant (£10 million) awarded to the University of Cambridge. The grant has led to the establishment of the Centre for Landscape Regeneration to host a research programme that aims to provide the knowledge and tools to deliver successful landscape regeneration programmes in the United Kingdom (with fieldsites in the peatlands of the Fenlands, Cairngorms and Cumbria) by ensuring strong connections between research, policy and practice and developing solutions that are resilient, inclusive, and sustainable. Shailaja is also PI on the Ecologies in Place project, Philomathia Programme of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the PI on the British Council Climate Connections programme. Her role on these projects is to mentor and support and managing Early Career Researchers to digitally record evidence of climate change and to document climate change actions by communities in the Global South. The outputs of the projects are part of the collaborative knowledge work of the Consortium of the Global South within the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. The outputs will also contribute to UK's Climate Connections programme (originally created as part of COP26 actions).