Nonurban Foundation is a Section 8 company based in Chennai, set up in 2020 with rural advocacy as its primary goal. It has run international research and design competitions and engaged thousands of rural community members across 18 villages in Tamil Nadu. In 2020 it presented FAIR, the Framework for Autonomous Investments in Rural areas (FAIR), a white paper, to the Tamil Nadu government, under the leadership of J.

Jeyaranjan, then Vice-Chairman of the State Planning Commission, and S. Narayanan, former Finance Secretary. Fellows from LSE, Princeton, Pratt and Oxford, and from 21 various countries, have worked with the Foundation.

The Foundation is now setting up the Nonurban Lab, a research-led lab on non-urban entrepreneurship with a Global South perspective, starting from Tamil Nadu. The lab studies how rural enterprises relate to their place, product and process, and why programmes often miss the ones that matter most. Research is the means. Field impact is the measure.

Role Description The Nonurban Lab is looking for two Field Researchers to spend time in villages and workshops across four districts of Tamil Nadu, listening to the people who run rural enterprises and learning how they work.

Your days will be spent with weavers, farmers,



fisherfolk and craftspeople. You will map the practitioners in your districts, have conversations and group sessions with them, and gather the material that becomes our enterprise case studies. Together with the practitioners, we will also run market pilots and follow how they go.

You will record each visit in structured field notes, so that what you see is kept carefully. Using the lab’s 7-stage entrepreneurial ladder, you will place each enterprise at the stage where it stands.

The two Field Researchers travel as a pair, and each leads two of the four districts. We plan about 24 visits in the year: two a month, three days each, with overnight stays. The lab books every stay and pays for travel, food and local transport.

You will be based at the Huecraft office in Chennai and work closely with Dr Thein Manimekalai Sowrirajan, Lab Director. This is a 12-month position, January to December 2027, with a review at three months and written feedback.

We will teach you the lab’s frameworks, mentor you, and include you as a co-author on our outputs. At the end of the year you will receive a certificate of work.

📌 Field Researcher (Chennai)
🏢 Nonurban Foundation
📍 Chennai