Aisha Dasgupta is based in Malawi, where she conducts research for her doctorate. She is interested in the links between population and the environment. In particular, she is concerned that the high population growth and high fertility rates that exist in much of sub-Saharan Africa may be responsible, in part, for the depletion of local environmental resources in rural Africa.
This issue has led to her interest in the effect of family planning on fertility. Dasgupta is collecting new data from more than 6,000 Malawian women on family planning use, method/provider-switching, and discontinuation of family planning. Dasgupta’s academic background is in anthropology and demography. She is a Ph.D. student at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and a Research Fellow at the College of Medicine at the University of Malawi. Dasgupta carries out her research through the Karonga Prevention Study, and is funded by the Leverhulme Trust.
Photo: Arjunan Sanjayan