Editorial team
Editors
Carla Gras is Senior Researcher for the National Council of Scientific and Technological Research of Argentina (CONICET) in the Interdisciplinary School of Social Studies at the University of San Martín. Her research focuses on the political economy of agrarian change in Latin America with particular reference to Argentina. Her research interests include agrarian class differentiation, agribusiness expansion, the financialization of farmland and agriculture, and corporate and family farming organizations.
Jens Lerche is Reader in Agrarian and Labour Studies in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS University of London. His research focuses on India. His research interests include the political economy of agrarian transformation, and class and caste relations in agrarian transition; the political economy of labour relations, unfree labour and rural labour migration; and struggles, movements and labour organisations.
Jonathan Pattenden is Associate Professor of the Political Economy and Sociology of Development. His research on the political economy and political sociology of rural India and Indonesia has been published in journals such as Development and Change, the Journal of Peasant Studies and the Global Labour Journal, as well as the Journal of Agrarian Change. He is the author of the monograph Labour, State and Society in Rural India and editor of Class Dynamics of Development.
Helena Pérez Niño is an Assistant Professor at the International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, Netherlands. Her research focuses on the political economy of development in Southern Africa, and on the articulation of agricultural producers and workers with global production networks. She has published on migrant labour, natural resources and foreign aid in Southern Africa.
Shreya Sinha is Lecturer in Business and Society at Queen Mary University of London. She works on the political economy of development, agrarian change, political ecology and geographies of production with a focus on India. She has a PhD in Development Studies from SOAS University of London. Shreya was previously a Book Review Editor of the Journal.
Qian Forrest Zhang is Associate Professor of Sociology and the Associate Dean for Research at the School of Social Sciences, Singapore Management University. His research focuses on China’s agrarian political economy and rural development but extends to a range of other issues in contemporary China, including self-employment, stratification and inequality, social mobility, and family relations. His recent works have investigated agricultural cooperatives, industrial pig farming, the agrarian capitalist class, and land politics. He is the recipient of the 2015 Bernstein & Byres Prize in agrarian change.
Kees Jansen is Associate Professor in Rural Sociology at Wageningen University, The Netherlands. His research centres on critical agrarian studies, political ecology, and the sociology of pesticide risk. Most of his fieldwork has been done in Latin America. He is interested in rethinking the issues of nature/technology, knowledge, and risk within an agrarian political economy framework. (www.keesjansen.eu)
Book Review Editor
Enrique Castañon is Lecturer at the Department of Development Studies, SOAS University of London and has a PhD from the same department. Funded by a SOAS Research Studentship, his PhD project explores the contradictory development of agrarian capitalism amongst smallholders in eastern Bolivia. Before joining SOAS, he has conducted research and consultancy work for various organizations in his home country of Bolivia, including Oxfam, Trocaire, the United Nations and the Ministry of Rural Development.
Editorial Assistant
Carlos Muianga, economist, is a PhD Candidate in Development Studies at SOAS University of London and associate researcher at the Institute of Social and Economic Studies (IESE) in Mozambique. Over the last 12 years, he has published extensively on various issues, including patterns of investment, debt, employment, agriculture and natural resources. His recent publication was on the contradictions of social reproduction of rural labour in the context of the expansion of large-scale capitalist agriculture in Mozambique (Review of African Political Economy, March 2022). He is interested in agrarian political economy and political economy of development more generally. His current research includes the agrarian question and dynamics of agrarian accumulation, and finance and development of the productive base in Mozambique.
Editorial Assistant
Amod Shah is a PhD candidate at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in the Hague, The Netherlands. His research focuses on conflicts over coal extraction in India and their linkages to the wider dynamics of agrarian change, rural development and climate politics. Amod co-curates the Agrarian Questions website and supports the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (ERPI) secretariat.
Editors Emeriti
Terence J. Byres
Terence J. Byres is Emeritus Professor of Economics at SOAS University of London. He is one of the founding editors of the Journal of Agrarian Change, as well as of The Journal of Development Studies and The Journal of Peasant Studies. He has seminal publications on agrarian questions, class differentiation, rural social movements and the state and planning in the developing world, especially India.
Henry Bernstein
Henry Bernstein is Emeritus Professor of Development Studies at SOAS University of London. He is one of the founding editors of the Journal of Agrarian Change. He has made pioneering contributions to peasant studies, agrarian political economy and development studies, especially in relation to Africa.
Cristóbal Kay is Emeritus Professor of Rural Development and Development Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) at The Hague, The Netherlands and Professorial Research Associate in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS. He was one of the editors of the Journal of Agrarian Change from 2008-2021. His work centres on agrarian political economy and critical development theory, with reference to Latin America and the contribution of its thinkers.
Carlos Oya is Professor in the Political Economy of Development in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS University of London. He has done research and fieldwork in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly on and in Senegal, Mozambique, Mauritania, Ethiopia and Uganda. His main research interests are: agrarian political economy, political economy of development, development of capitalism, development policy, the political economy of liberalisation and agrarian reforms, poverty, rural labour markets, development aid, and research methodology.
Former members
Bridget O’Laughlin is currently doing research on the political economy of gender, work and rural health with a regional focus on Southern Africa, particularly Mozambique. Her teaching and research have been interdisciplinary: anthropology in her early career, (Marxist) development studies at the Centre of African Studies in Mozambique, and finally population and development, rural development and research methodology at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in the Hague from which she is now retired. Bridget is a member of the Journal's International Advisory Board.
Liam Campling is Professor of International Business and Development at Queen Mary University of London. His research has examined the articulations of industrial fisheries, global production networks, environment and development, with a particular focus on the Indian and Pacific oceans. He is co-author of Capitalism and the Sea: The Maritime Factor in the Making of the Modern World (Verso, 2021) and Free Trade Agreements and Global Labour Governance: The European Union’s Trade-Labour Linkage in a Value Chain World (Routledge, 2021), and an editor of Labour Regimes and Global Production (Agenda, 2021). Liam is a member of the Journal's International Advisory Board.
Deborah Johnston is Professor in Development Economics at SOAS University of London. She researched the political economy of food and nutrition, the analysis and measurement of poverty, and the interrelationship between economics, labour markets and health. Deborah was a long-term Editor of the Journal.
Hannah Bargawi is Senior Lecturer in Economics at SOAS University of London. Her recent research focuses on issues of gender and work in the Middle East and in Europe. She also works on East Africa where her research interests span gender, employment, macroeconomic policies and agriculture. Hannah was a long-standing Book Review Editor of the Journal.