Professor Siddiqur Rahman Osmani of the School of Economics of the University of Ulster, United Kingdom, has joined the Institute of Microfinance as a Visiting Fellow. He obtained Ph.D in economics from the London School of Economics and then worked at the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, Dhaka and at the World Institute for Development Economics Research, Helsinki before joining the University of Ulster.
He has published widely on issues related to poverty, inequality, hunger, famine, nutrition, rights-based approach to development, and development problems in general, and his books include Economic Inequality and Group Welfare, Nutrition and Poverty, The Macroeconomics of Poverty Reduction: The Case Study of Bangladesh (with W. Mahmud) and The Employment Nexus between Growth and Poverty: An Asian Perspective.
He has been an Economic Adviser to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and has worked in an advisory capacity for various international organisations. He has sat in the editorial boards of a number of international journals (e.g. Development and Change, Economics and Human Biology, European Journal of Development Research). He is currently a member of the Research Advisory Panel of the South Asian Network of Economics Research Institutes (SANEI) and a Fellow of the Human Development and Capability Association.
While at the InM, Professor Osmani will collaborate in several research programmes, and take a lead role in carrying out a longitudinal study on poverty monitoring. The objective of the study is to examine the nature of poverty dynamics in Bangladesh, with special focus on the role of microfinance in shaping the life trajectory of poor people. He will also co-author with Professor Wahiduddin Mahmud a book with the working title “The Theory and Practice of Microfinance” based largely on the experience of Bangladesh.
