Kuntala's research is on people's lives and livelihoods in natural resource sectors such as mining, water and farming.

She teaches courses on Gender and Development (ANTH 8038/39) in the second semester (July-October), and an intensive course on Gender in Resource and Environmental Management in second semester (July-August) every year.

Career highlights

• Rockefeller Academic Writing Residency, Bellagio Centre, Italy, June-July 2017
• Senior Visiting Fellowship, Australian Academiy of Sciences, December, 2012
• Senior Visiting Fellowship, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
• Career Award, University Grants Commission, India (1999-2002)
• Panos Institute, Oral Testimony Project of mining-displaced indigenous people in Jharkhand (2002)
•  NASA Post-Doctoral Fellowship (1987)

Women, gender and development; environmental sustainability; women's empowerment in relation to water and mining; communities' roles and livelihoods in natural resources, such as in large-scale and artisanal mining, and the water and sanitation sectors. A theme that is currently being researched is informal mining as part of agrarian transition in Asian countries. This is funded by the Australian Research Council through a Discovery Project (2013-2015), titled 'Beyond the Resource Curse' and an ARC Linkage Project, 'Going for Gold'. For more on this topic, see www.asmasiapacific.com. Other areas of continuing interest includes gender and development, and and community-based natural resource management, including feminisation of agriculture in India funded by an ARC Discovery Project, 'Farmers of the Future'(http://womenfarmersofindia.org/).

Kuntala's research is primarily on South Asia, mainly India, but she has also worked in Bangladesh and Nepal. Earlier, she has undertaken research (funded by an Australian Research Council Linkage Project) in Indonesia, and a World Bank Project in Lao PDR. A DFAT-funded project led her to studying informal flurospar mining in the Middle Gobi areas in Mongolia.

Doctoral students currently working with Kuntala are writing theses on the feminisation of agriculture in Nepal, the oppression of women from minority communities in South Asia, and the multiple development discourses in water resources management in South Asia. Her former doctoral students have written theses on gender and development in a mining region and informal mining in Indonesia.