Shriya Bajaj

Shriya is an interdisciplinary researcher, and her research interests are situated around the intersection of the food environment, inequalities and intersectionality, environment sustainability and public health, majorly in low and middle-income countries. She joined the Department of Geography and Institute for Sustainable Food as a PhD student in November 2023. She is also a part of the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures. She has academic and research experience; before joining the University of Sheffield, she was working at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India, as a Research Associate.

Inequalities in Market Access to Nutrient Dense Foods: A Mixed Methods Investigation in Rural India

Her research is trying to look at the inequalities in market access to nutrient-dense foods using a mixed methods investigation in rural India. In the Indian setting, an individual’s interaction with a food market can be shaped by their gender and/or wider intersecting identities. For instance, rural women in India often lack access to timely market information, face challenges in negotiating prices with buyers, and have difficulty physically accessing markets due to limited transport opportunities and restrictions on their mobility. Caste (Social Class) is also a potential factor in the lived experience of how individuals interact with the market, and disadvantaged castes in India consume significantly less fruits and vegetables than other castes. As such, combinations of market characteristics (e.g., seasonality, remoteness, physical infrastructure), individual food choice preferences (e.g., taste and food culture), and inequalities faced by individuals can produce highly unequal access to nutrient-dense foods.

Shriya‘s project aims to discover key inequalities in access to nutrient-dense food markets and how these inequalities occur during the different seasons and changing climatic conditions. She will examine this using mixed methods, which can provide a more comprehensive understanding of the whole problem and provide comprehensive insights into the structural and societal drivers of the disparities in nutritional outcomes.

Supervisors: Prof Bhavani Shankar, Dr Katie Powell, Dr Gregory Cooper