Overview

Samira Choudhury is a development economist by training where her research chiefly focusses on sustainable diets, nutrition and food systems. She joined the Health Economics Group at the University of Exeter in February 2021 to support the development of the Health Economics framework aligned to Food Standards Agency policy agenda of food safety, affordability, security and sustainability. In this role, she is working on estimating the burden of chemical contaminants in food.

Before joining Exeter, she was a Research Associate at Imperial College London where she worked in the scientific team of the Malabo Montpellier Panel. She was also a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Food Systems, Health and the Environment at SOAS, University of London where she was involved in the Sustainable and Healthy Food Systems (SHEFS) project. Her recent research focused on analysing the economic and food systems drivers of fruit and vegetable consumption, primarily using India's National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) household data.

During her Ph.D., she was a research consultant for the Advancing Research on Nutrition and Agriculture (ARENA) project at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Prior to pursuing her Ph.D., she was a research analyst at International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research (ICDDR, B) in Bangladesh.

Qualifications

• B.A. (HONOURS) Economics, Ithaca College, USA 2006
• M.A. Development Economics, University of Sussex, UK 2008
• PhD. Economics, University of Adelaide, Australia 2017

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Research

Research interests

• Health
• Nutrition
• Food safety
• Economic Evaluation

Publications

Choudhury, S., Shankar, B., Aleksandrowicz, L., Tak, M., Dangour, A., 2021. Caste-Based Inequality in Fruit and Vegetables Consumption in India. Food Nutr. Bull. 037957212110268. https://doi.org/10.1177/03795721211026807

Choudhury, S., Shankar, B., Aleksandrowicz, L., Tak, M., Green, R., Harris, F., Scheelbeek, P., Dangour, A., 2020. What underlies inadequate and unequal fruit and vegetable consumption in India? An exploratory analysis. Global Food Security 24, 100332. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2019.100332

Choudhury, S., Headey, D.D., Masters, W.A., 2019. First foods: Diet quality among infants aged 6–23 months in 42 countries. Food Policy 88, 101762. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2019.101762

Alae-Carew, C., Bird, F.A., Choudhury, S., Harris, F., Aleksandrowicz, L., Milner, J., Joy, E.JM., Agrawal, S., Dangour, A.D., Green, R., 2019. Future diets in India: A systematic review of food consumption projection studies. Global Food Security 23, 182–190. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2019.05.006

Choudhury, S., Headey, D.D., 2018. Household dairy production and child growth: Evidence from Bangladesh. Economics & Human Biology 30, 150–161. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2018.07.001

Choudhury, S., Headey, D., 2017. What drives diversification of national food supplies? A cross-country analysis. Global Food Security 15, 85–93. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2017.05.005

Kacapyr, E., Choudhury, S., 2006. Determinants of Alcohol Consumption By College Students. New York Economic Review 37, 3–19.

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