Divya Narain

Profile

Divya Narain is an interdisciplinary researcher at the forefront of Food Systems Finance, driven by a commitment to tackling the environmental consequences of industrial animal agriculture. Through her work, she aims to help shift the flow of global capital away from destructive industrial models and toward resilient, climate-positive food systems. 

She earned her PhD from the University of Queensland, Australia, in 2022, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Oxford in 2024. Her academic journey began in biodiversity and international infrastructure finance, but her growing alarm over the far-reaching externalities of factory farming inspired a decisive shift toward food systems research. Today, her work bridges climate change, industrial livestock production, and global finance—seeking pathways to transform how food systems are funded and governed. 

Her research has been published in leading academic journals such as Nature Sustainability, Science, One Earth, and Conservation Biology, and has been featured by media outlets including The Independent, Forbes, The Banker, The Guardian, ABC National Radio, China Dialogue, and The Conversation Australia. She has also served as a Lead Author for the Business and Biodiversity assessment under the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). 

Divya holds a Master’s in Biodiversity Conservation and Management from the University of Oxford, where she was also a fellow of Merton College.