Dr. Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned ecological feminist and activist who has campaigned against GMOs, intellectual property rights and free trade. Time magazine named Dr. Shiva an “environmental hero” in 2003.
In 1972, she graduated with a bachelor’s in science after studying Physics at the University of Punjab in Chandigarh. Afterwards, she pursued a master’s in the philosophy of science from the University of Guelph. She wrote her thesis on “changes in the concept of periodicity of light” in 1977. The following year, she received her doctorate in philosophy from the University of Western Ontario in Canada. Dr. Shiva’s dissertation was on the topic “hidden variables and locality in quantum theory”.
After completing her degrees, Shiva returned to India, where she worked for the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Management. In 1982 she founded RFSTN, later renamed the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (RFSTE), in her mother’s cowshed in Dehra Dun.
Shiva has written numerous books, including “Monocultures of the Mind: Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology“, “The Violence of the Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology, and Politics” and “Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge”. She is on the boards of a number of organisations, including the World Future Council, International Forum on Globalisation and Slow Food International. In 2004 she founded Bija Vidyapeeth, or the School of the Seed, an international college where, among other things, meetings on organic farming techniques and natural insecticides are held.
