Tufts – Feinstein International Center

Bapu Vaitla is a food security researcher focused on the causes of child under nutrition.

His work is split into three major areas:

1. Household-level determinants of rural under nutrition and food insecurity
2. The political economy of child nutrition, especially of agriculture and social protection policy; and
3. Theoretical modeling of cooperation in intra-household and community network contexts.

He has experience in econometric modeling, household survey design and analysis, and participatory qualitative research methods. He has in-depth country-specific knowledge of Brazil, where he was a Fulbright Scholar in 2013-14; India, where he conducted research as a David L. Boren Fellow on federal and state-level nutritional and food security policies; and Ethiopia, where as a Mickey Leland International Hunger Fellow he analyzed productive safety nets and foreign assistance programs. Bapu has a PhD in International Relations from the Fletcher School at Tufts University and a M.S. in International Agricultural Development from the University of California-Davis.