Dr Mehroosh Tak

Dr Mehroosh Tak is a Reader/Associate Professor in Economics at SOAS University of London. 

Her research investigates financialisation of our food systems and the constraints of neoliberal policymaking with specifical focus on the de-development. Much of her work evaluates the role of dominant world systems in creating inequities in global majority countries using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Her research uses a multi-scalar approach interlinking the global economic policy environment to meso and microeconomic trends in production and consumption. 

Her recent work focuses on the political economy of industrial animal agriculture employing a structural One Health lens. Using the case of poultry production systems in South Asia she demonstrates the role of corporate concentration in diminishing space for sustained economic participation for small and marginal farmers in globalising national value chains. She is the founder and convenor of the Critical Research on Industrial Livestock Systems (CRILS) Network, which brings together academics and practitioners to challenge and nuance narratives surrounding livestock production systems.

Dr Tak has a background in international development. She regularly provides monitoring and evaluation expertise on food systems and nutrition financing to international donors such as FCDO and UNICEF. She has conducted multiple public expenditure reviews for multi-sectoral nutrition financing.

Outside of SOAS she is a Council member for the Council for At-Risk Academics (CARA), providing oversight for programmes that support displaced researchers, and a trustee for Rethinking Economics. Dr Tak co-chairs the WOAH/FAO Network of Expertise on Animal Influenza (OFFLU) Socioeconomics Working Group to promote critical social science engagement with animal disease research and policymaking. She is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) and has successfully supervised multiple doctoral and post-doctoral researchers. 

• Political economy of food and agriculture
• Critical approaches to food, diets and nutrition
• Financing for sustainable and green agricultural development
• De-development and de-linking