Dr Tahrat Shahid

Food Systems and Gender Advisor

Tahrat Shahid has over two decades’ international development and policy research experience in a variety of contexts. Her research interests include gender, agricultural development, food security, nutrition, and the politics of religion. Tahrat oversees the Food Systems challenge portfolio. She is also Gender Advisor across all six challenge portfolios.

Tahrat began her career as a corporate debt advisory analyst at Morgan Stanley in New York City, after which she co-founded a non-profit organisation offering free burns and reconstructive surgery in Bangladesh. Afterwards, her work ranged from macroeconomic analysis at the Central Bank of Turkey in Ankara to poverty and social impact analysis at the World Bank in Washington, DC. Additionally, she focused on impact evaluation at Oxford Policy Management, with particular projects on agricultural cooperatives in Rwanda and mobile banking in Kenya. Prior to joining GCRF, she also led research for advocacy on agricultural policy, food security, and nutrition in Sub-Saharan Africa for the ONE Campaign’s Global Policy Team in London.

Tahrat has a DPhil in Politics from the University of Oxford, a Master in Public Administration and International Development (MPA/ID) from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and an A.B. in Economics from Mount Holyoke College. She is currently writing a book on the results of her doctoral work (titled ‘Imaginary Lines? Islam and Secularism in the Politics of Family Laws in Bangladesh’) examining the political discourse around Islam, development policy, and women’s rights in Bangladesh.