Smita Mishra Panda is Professor at the Centurion University of Technology and Management, Odisha. She coordinates the doctoral programme at the University. She has a background in Social Anthropology (Masters, Delhi University) and Development Planning  and Gender Studies (Ph.D, Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand). Her teaching and research focus primarily on gender and development, natural resource management (climate change, livelihoods, policies and institutions), governance, rural development, indigenous people’s life and livelihoods and transgender issues. She has more than 30 years of teaching, research and consulting experience in South East Asia and India. Smita has worked as a researcher at the Asian Institute of Technology (Thailand); UN Researcher at the UNCRD (Nagoya, Japan); taught at the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (Gujarat); and has been a visiting faculty at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norway), Monash University (Australia) and Curtin University (Australia). Widely travelled, she has presented papers in several national and international conferences. She has also published extensively in a number of scholarly journals. Smita has authored Engendering Governance Institutions: State, Market and Civil Society (Sage, 2008); Co-authored Gender, Mobilities and Livelihood Transformations: Comparing indigenous people in China, India and Laos (Routledge London, 2013); Co-authored Social Exclusion and Policies of Inclusion: Issues and Perspectives across the Globe (Springer, 2022).