Vandana Shiva

About Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva, the woman who coined the phrase "Think globally, act locally," is one of the world's most dynamic and provacative thinkers. A physicist, ecologist, and activist, she won the Right Livelihood Award in 1993. She directs the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Natural Resource Policy in New Delhi, India, and is an Associate Editor of The Ecologist magazine. Before becoming an activist, Shiva was one of India's leading physicists. She completed her Ph.D. in the Philosophy of Science in 1978. After that she did research at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore until 1982, when she left to set up her Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy in her home town of Dehra Dun in the foothills of the Himalaya. Shiva's record over the last 10 years has been that of the totally committed, very productive and effective activist- advocate-intellectual. As an activist she has co-ordinated, supported and learned from grassroots networks on a wide range of issues across India. As an advocate, especially in international fora, she has proved one of the most articulate spokespersons of counter-development in favour of people- centred, participatory processes. As an intellectual she has produced a stream of important books and articles which have done much both to form and address the agenda of development debate and action. Her Foundation is an informal network of researchers working in support of people's environmental struggles, part of the objective of which is the articulation and justification of people's knowledge. In the last 20 years the Foundation has done important work in a number of areas. (source:www.ecobooks.com)