Dr. Richa Minocha is a researcher, an environmentalist, a gender practitioner, a social worker other than a teacher. She works as an Associate Professor with the Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts (SSLA), Symbiosis International University (SIU). At SSLA, she is teaching courses on Politics of Ecology and the Environment in Developing Countries, Social Work & Inclusion and Environment Studies, and is actively involved in building the Women & Gender Studies department. She is also SSLA’s nodal officer for Symbiosis Community Outreach Programme and Extension (SCOPE). Richa is a resource person at the Himachal Pradesh Institute of Public Administration (HIPA) in Simla, India, where she has been teaching issues related to gender mainstreaming and analysis, and the environment. She has had a varied academic record which spans the disciplines of anthropology, particularly environmental anthropology, political ecology and development issues, along with gender concerns. She has been core in-country faculty for the course of “Agriculture, Ecology and Sustainable Futures” for the program of Rethinking Food Security: People Agriculture and Politics under the International Honors' Program (IHP), a study abroad program offered to American Universities students at under graduate level by the School of International Studies, World Learning, USA. She has also earlier been the Member Secretary and Founder of a grassroot level organization called Jan Abhiyan Sanstha (JAS), working on issues such as agriculture, food security, livelihoods, gender and disaster in the Himalayan region.

Richa has been a post doctoral fellow at the London School of Economics for her research on ecological and cultural dimensions in development. She has worked at the Institute of Integrated Himalayan Studies as Lecturer in Social Sciences, whereby apart from conducting research and capacity building, she played a significant role in initiating the “Himalayan Studies Journal”. She has done Consultancies for ActionAid on sustainable cities, migration and livelihoods in urban and rural areas; on children’s issues for Butterflies Child Rights Organization and has been team leader for a community based ecotourism project, on behalf of JAS. She has been teaching Travel and Tourism Studies at Saint Bede’s College Shimla and has been affiliated to other organisations such as the People’s Science Institute (PSI) in Dehradun in India, working on issues related to environment, climate change, livelihoods, agriculture, and mountain cities. With PSI she was actively engaged in teaching a Development Practitioner’s Training course, aimed at building human resources for the social sector, as also for building consciousness related to impacts of climate change in young minds. Apart from the Himalayan and mountainous region, Richa has/is expanding her research on Development projects, land acquisition and impacts on livelihoods and food security to coastal regions like Kutch, Gujarat and Maharashtra.