Dr. Sarbani Banerjee Belur

Dr. Sarbani Banerjee Belur

Asia Regional Coordinator, APC, and Advisory Council Member, Digital Equity Accelerator

Dr. Sarbani Banerjee Belur is currently the Asia Regional Coordinator for Association for Progressive Communications (APC) for the Community Networks Connecting the Unconnected project. She is also the Senior Project Executive Officer hosted by the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India. She has been working in the domain of rural connectivity for the past 6 years and have been associated with the Gram Marg project in the Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Bombay. She holds a PhD in Demography from the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. She has published in international conferences, journals, contributed book chapters and has authored a book in the areas of demography and social issues around rural connectivity. Her current work involves increasing digital outreach to remote and rural areas of India, deployment of new technology alternatives for the middle and last mile internet connectivity, development of a sustainable models supporting Public – Private – Panchayat – Partnership (4-P model), seeding the growth of community networks, gender and access, developing community technologies and impact assessment studies of connectivity in the lives of people. The impact studies that she focuses on are based on gender, social and economic impacts of connectivity.