Sarbani Banerjee Belur

Biography

Dr. Sarbani Banerjee Belur holds a PhD in Demography from the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. She has a MA in Sociology from the University of Hyderabad. Currently she is a senior research scientist in the Gram Marg Rural Broadband initiative at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, Mumbai, India. Prior to this, she was a visiting research fellow at Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research (IGIDR), Mumbai and Future Ideas, Mumbai. She has also taught courses in sociology and development as a guest lecturer at IIT Bombay and Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. She has published in international conferences, contributed book chapters and has authored a book in the areas of demography and social issues.

Her current work involves increasing digital outreach to remote and rural areas of India, women and their usage of connectivity, development of sustainable business models supporting the Public-Private-Panchayat Partnership (4-P) model, seeding the growth of community networks, developing community technologies, meaningful usage and utilisation of connectivity, and impact assessment studies of connectivity in the lives of people. The impact studies that she focuses on are based on gender, social and economic impacts of connectivity.