Bill Pritchard is Associate Professor of Human Geography at the University of Sydney. He is a global expert in the area of rural livelihoods and food security, with extensive research interests in India and Southeast Asia. He is the co-author of Feeding India (Routledge, 2014) and is co-editor of the Handbook of Food and Nutrition Security (Routledge, forthcoming). He has published more than 50 refereed journal articles and chapters, and his research has been publicised through a 2013 TEDx talk at the Sydney Opera House.
Professor Pritchard is currently Chief Investigator on two major research projects dealing with food security issues in Asia: “Farmers of the Future: The Challenges of Feminised Agriculture in India”, and “Nutrition insecurity and rural livelihoods in rural Myanmar”. The common element in both these projects is the need to develop an understanding of how changes in livelihood arrangements – the practices and activities people use to make a living – influence their food security, and vice-versa. Sometimes, lack of food drives people to new livelihood activities. On other occasions, changes to livelihood circumstances (sometimes driven by external forces) have adverse or unexpected impacts on the quantity and types of nutrition available to people. Bill Pritchard’s work is centrally focused on finding insights into these processes.