Dr. Madhura Dutta is a development sector professional working in the area of culture and development for the past twenty three years. She has extensive experiences in working hands-on at the grassroots community level, programme design, strategy development, and management, as well as socio-cultural research at national and international levels. She has worked in NGOs, and UNESCO, and has led organizations working with handicrafts and traditional creative skills for developing grassroots cultural entrepreneurship, women empowerment, protection of cultural rights, policy research and advocacy. She is an active member of the ICH NGO Forum of the UNESCO 2003 Convention on Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage. She is also a member of the National Scientific Committees of Intangible Cultural Heritage and Cultural Tourism of the International Council on Monuments and Sites network. She has a PhD from the School of Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and MA degrees in Sustainable Development from Staffordshire University, UK under a Commonwealth Scholarship, and in Sociology from the University of Calcutta. She has recently authored a book published by Routledge, "Creative Economy and Sustainable Development: The Context of Indian Handicrafts".