Ecology, Resilience, and Livelihood: Science and Policy in Agriculture

Author Biography

Sankar Kumar Acharya, PhD, is a Professor and Dean PG Studies and is the former Head of the Department of Agricultural Extension and Director of Extension Education at Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya (BCKV), Mohanpur, West Bengal, India, where he began his career as an assistant professor. He has been in teaching, research, and extension over 36 years. Dr. Acharya has delivered keynote addresses, acted as lead speaker at international congresses, chaired sessions at international conferences, and presented 79 conference papers, and published 251 journal papers and 117 book chapters along with one German patent to date. He has also edited a score of national and international journals. He has been awarded 29 best paper awards at national and international conferences. He also acted as organizing secretary of two international conferences that were jointly organized by the Department of Agricultural Extension at BCKV, WB and Krishisanskriti, New Delhi, India. He has also been selected as the Convener of Panel (PE-32) on hunger, poverty and silence, sponsored by the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, University of Manchester, UK, 2013. To date, he has successfully guided 23 PhD and 108 postgraduate scholars. He is a fellow of the Indian Society of Extension Education, WAST, BIOVED and Mobilization Society, and IARI, and has acted as course coordinator of nine ICAR-sponsored winter/summer schools. He visited Italy, France, Germany, China, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Bangladesh on academic missions. Amit Baran Sharangi, PhD, is a Professor of Horticulture, former Head of the Department of Plantation, Spices, Medicinal and Crops and Dean-Faculty of Horticulture at Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya (Agricultural University), India. He has been in the profession of teaching for more than 27 years. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Professor Cousens laboratory at the University of Melbourne, Australia; a Visiting Professor at Prof Picha laboratory at Louisiana State University (USA); and a Visiting Scientist at Dr Dobson lab at the James Hutton Institute, UK, where he continued research on herbs and spices. One of his papers has ranked among the top 25 top articles in ScienceDirect. He has published over 112 research papers in peer-reviewed journal, 75 conference papers, and 40 books from reputed publishers as well as several book chapters and scores of popular scientific articles. Presently he is associated with 75 international and national journals either as editor in chief, associate editor, technical editor, editorial board member, or active reviewer. Two patents (one Indian and another German) granted to him to date. Prof. Sharangi has been nominated as a member of the National Level Broad Subject Matter Area (BSMA) Committee constituted by the DG, ICAR (Horticultural Sciences); awarded a professorship degree by Cypress International Institute University (Texas, USA); and was featured in the World Scientist and University Rankings for last several years consecutively. He has given invited lectures in UK, USA, Australia, Thailand, Israel, and Bangladesh; is associated with a number of research projects as principal and co-principal investigator; and has mentored and supervised about 32MSc and PhD scholars to date. He is a fellow and member of many professional organizations in his field, chaired/co-chaired six international conferences and delivered a good number of invited/lead and key note lectures in India and abroad. He visited USA, UK, Australia, Israel, Jordan, Thailnd and Bangladesh on academic missions.