Lara Farrar is a visiting fellow with CSDR as part of the Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship India. An award-winning journalist, Farrar is in India researching the development of the country’s critical minerals sector. Her research focuses on the evolution of India’s policy for mining critical and rare earth minerals. It also examines opportunities for the country to develop midstream and downstream supply chains to offset China’s dominance and to create new avenues for cooperation among the United States, South Korea, and other Southeast Asian countries.
Farrar worked as a foreign correspondent in China for a decade, covering trade, manufacturing, higher education, and information and communication technology. Farrar holds two master’s degrees in Global Media and Communications from the London School of Economics and Fudan University and completed her undergraduate studies in journalism and Spanish at Boston University. She is also an alumnus of Asia Society’s Asia 21 Young Leaders.
Farrar completed an investigative data journalism fellowship with USC Annenberg’s Center for Health Journalism in 2025. Additionally, she has held teaching positions at Fudan University, Shanghai International Studies University, the Africa Digital Media Institute, and the University of Arkansas School of Journalism and Strategic Media. In 2024, she served as a moderator at the Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi; in 2022, she led discussions on artificial intelligence at the Foundation for Armenian Science and Technology (FAST) Global Innovation Forum in Yerevan, Armenia. 

Her work can be accessed HERE.