Prof. Dr Kristoffel Lieten

Profile

Kristoffel Lieten (Belgium, 1946) studied in Antwerp, The Hague, Reading and New Delhi, where he obtained degrees in linguistics, political science and history respectively. He did his PH.D. under the guidance of late professor Gerrit Huizer at the University of Nijmegen on the triangular relationship between the trade union movement, the nationalist movement and the colonial state in Mumbai, 1928-29. He has worked extensively on political developments in South Asia and on issues related to development sociology. For a long time, he combined his academic work with journalism as the correspondent for the Dutch and Belgian radio in South Asia.
Lieten joined the department of Anthropology and Non-Western Sociology at the University of Amsterdam in 1978. He presently holds the Child Labour chair at the University of Amsterdam and at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. He is also a visiting professor at the Institute for Human Development in New Delhi. He is the director of the IREWOC Foundation (Institute for Research on Working Children) and in that capacity Dr. Lieten has initiated several research projects on child labour and child agency in various countries across the globe.
His present research interests relate to aspects of child labour, globalisation and development and development aid.

Selected publications

In addition to several books on development issues in South Asia, he has co-edited:
- Child Labour and Child Health (1998)
- Child Labour. Policy Perspectives (2001); also as Trabajo Infantil, Politicas y Optiones (2002, with Ben White)
- Small Hands in South Asia. Child Labour in Perspective (2004)
- Across the World. Child Labour in Perspective (2004)
- Kinderarbeid. Prangende vragen en countouren voor onderzoek. Inaugurale Rede, 21 november 2004.

His other most recent books on other issues are:
- Unequal Partners. Power Relations, Devolution and Development in Uttar Pradesh, with Ravi Srivastava (2002)
- Power, Politics and Rural Development (2003)
- Globalisation and Social Exclusion. Special Issue Indian Journal of Labour Economics, edited (2003)
- Reflections on Development (2004)