EDUCATION:
2004 PhD, Anthropology, University of Delhi, Delhi
1998 MSc, Anthropology, University of Delhi, Delhi
1996 BSc (Hons), Zoology, University of Delhi, Delhi
Countries: India, Bangladesh, Australia
States: Delhi, Manipur, Rajasthan, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Assam, Karnataka, Gujarat, Maharashtra, West Bengal
Cities: Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata, Pune, Imphal
Languages: English, Hindi, Bengali, Odia, Axomiya
Aruna Bhattacharya is a Medical Anthropologist working in the domain of health systems research and public health. She uses an anthropological lens to study how power, hierarchy and marginalisation affect access to public good. She is the lead of Academics and Research at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) in Bengaluru, India and currently engaged with the School of Human Development building up the urban health and public health component.
Aruna’s previous research has focused on drug resistant Tuberculosis in the slums of New Delhi and Mumbai; harm reduction programmes for injecting drug users as well as the non-injecting sexual partners; child protection interventions in constructions sites and railways stations; access to nutrition programmes among particularly vulnerable tribal groups; sexual and reproductive rights for female sex workers. In recent times, she has conducted an ethnographic study of COVID-19 health seeking behaviour in urban and peri-urban Bangalore.
She has worked with DANIDA, The World Bank, Population Council and led national and international research collaborations. She was an Associate Professor at IIPH-D, PHFI and taught public health courses (PGDPHM and MPH) from an interdisciplinary context. At IIPH-D, she led many research projects as Principal Investigator (PI) and Co- Principal Investigator (Co-PI) with national and international funding. She has also collaborated with Harvard School of Public Health, University College of London and University of Sydney for research, interventions as well as developing collaborative curriculum in public health. Before joining IIHS, she was a faculty member in the School of Development, Azim Premji University in Bangalore.
She has written (and edited) a book on ‘Innovations in Family Planning’ – Case Studies from India, which was published by SAGE India in 2015. Currently, she is working on a book of case study for creating pedagogy in public health using social science lens. This work initially received funding from Health Systems Global (SHAPES grant).