AGRAWAL Vagisha
Vagisha Agrawal is a labor organizer and a graduate student based in Canada. She is a member of Hindus for Human Rights.
ALI Raghib
Dr Raghib Ali is an Honorary Consultant in Acute Medicine at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust and a Senior Clinical Research Associate at the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge. He is also Director and Principal Investigator of the Public Health Research Center and Associate Research Professor at New York University, Abu Dhabi. Additionally he is an Associate Fellow at Green-Templeton College at Oxford University and an independent expert adviser to the UK government on COVID and ethnicity. His main research interests are the aetiology and prevention of non-communicable diseases in populations which have not previously been studied, including populations in the UK, India and the Middle East.
BADHWAR Natasha
Natasha began her career in broadcast journalism with New Delhi Television (NDTV) as the first female videographer in news television in India. She quit thirteen years later as vice president, training and development. She now works as an independent film-maker, media trainer and columnist. She is a member of the Karwan e Mohabbat, a citizen’s initiative that seeks justice and livelihoods for victims of hate crimes across India.
BALA Sruti
Sruti Bala is an Associate Professor in Theatre Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Her recent research is on participatory theatre, political performance and feminist and de/postcolonial theory. She is a member of the collective InSAF India (International Solidarity Initiative for Academic Freedom in India), campaigning for the release of imprisoned academics and working towards a vision for academic freedom based on social and planetary justice.
BANERJEE Mukulika
BALCEROWICZ Piotr
Dr Piotr Balcerowicz is an orientalist, philosopher, professor at University of Warsaw. In 2002, he founded the Association for Peace Education. After receiving a PhD in Philosophy and Oriental Studies from the University of Hamburg, he has written extensively on South Asia and Afghanistan, Jainism, and has taught in Universities in South Asia.
BANWARIE Shawintala
Shawintala is a Surinami-Hindustani activist who has widely spoken out against Hindutva, institutional racism in Holland and against islamophobia. She also participates in interfaith (hindu-muslim) dialogues. Last year, she co founded the Desi Solidarity Platform Holland together with a Dutch Pakistani politician. Their goal is to create a voice from the Dutch Desi communities in Holland, speak out against institutional racism and discrimination and promote communal harmony.
BARADI Manvita
Manvita Baradi is the Director of Urban Management Centre, an organisation that helps local governments professionalise urban management through tailor-made solutions. She has served as Director-South Asia for the International City/County Management Association (ICMA), been a technical consultant for United Agency for International Development (USAID) and served as an expert on World Bank-funded programs for local governance, association development and urban planning programs in post-conflict regions like Afghanistan, Indonesia and Sri Lanka.
BHANDARI Esha
Esha Bhandari is the Deputy Director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, where she focuses on litigation and on the impact of big data and artificial intelligence on civil liberties. Her litigation career includes Alasaad v. Wolf, a challenge to suspicionless electronic device searches at the US border. Prior to that, she was an Equal Justice Works fellow with the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, where she was involved in litigating cases concerning a right to counsel in immigration proceedings and immigration detainer policies. Esha is a graduate of McGill University, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and Columbia Law School. She also served as a law clerk to the Hon. Amalya L. Kearse of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
BHATTACHARYA Dithhi
Dithhi Bhattacharya is the executive head of the Delhi-based Centre for Workers’ Management, a non-profit, pan-India organization which is a workers and trade union resource centre. Dithhi advocates for workers’ rights and focuses on the rights of workers within supply chain, informal sectors- She has authored several research studies on challenges of workers in the informal sector, mining sector, domestic workers.
BLANKENBACH Johannes
Johannes Blankenbach works at the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre as its Berlin-based EU Researcher & Representative. Prior to this, he was a researcher at the German Development Institute/Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) in Bonn for more than five years, contributing to knowledge cooperation across the institute’s Managing Global Governance (MGG) network with partner institutions from emerging economies. His research interests lie in the fields of corporate human rights due diligence and voluntary sustainability standards, as well as in their interconnections with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
CANNATACI Joseph
Dr Joseph Cannataci the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Privacy. He is the Head of the Department of Information Policy & Governance at the Faculty of Media & Knowledge Sciences of the University of Malta. He also holds the Chair of European Information Policy & Technology Law within the Faculty of Law at the University of Groningen where he co-founded the STeP Research Group. and Adjunct Professor at the Security Research Institute and the School of Computer and Security Science at Edith Cowan University Australia. He was overall coordinator for the SMART and RESPECT projects dealing with surveillance and currently also co-ordinates MAPPING dealing with Internet Governance. He also continues to act as Expert Consultant to a number of international organisations.
CARVALHO Mariana
Mariana Carvalho has more than 10 years of experience in cleantech and carbon emission reduction in the energy and industry sectors. She currently works for a multinational firm based in Finland, leading innovation in the energy sector through partnerships with customers and startups. Her background is in Chemical Engineering and Energy Technology, and her Doctoral degree in Sustainable Energy Systems.
CHAKRABORTY Debashis
Dr. Debashis Chakraborty is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), New Delhi. His research interests include international trade policy and WTO negotiations and environmental sustainability and has written numerous book and research articles. His last two published books include “India’s Trade Analytics: Patterns and Opportunities” (Sage, 2019) and “Trade, Investment and Economic Development in Asia: Empirical and Policy Issues” (Co-Edited with J. Mukherjee), Routledge, UK, 2016 (HB), 2018 (PB). He is also Associate Editor of Foreign Trade Review, Sage. Previously he was associated with Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies (RGICS), a policy think tank based in New Delhi.
CHATTERJEE Saikat
Dr Saikat Chatterjee is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. As part of the Target Field Lab group, he is currently working on data validation, Open Science, and data tracing projects – with particular emphasis on text mining, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Natural Language Understanding (NLU) tasks, via exploiting deep learning networks. Target Field Lab currently hosts pilot projects to support publishers, editors and journalists from different media to develop fact-tracing/fact-checking frameworks by combining database and machine learning technologies.
DESTRADI Sandra
Sandra Destradi holds the Chair for International Relations at the University of Freiburg, Germany. She is currently a professor for political science with a focus on international relations, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. Some of her major publications include “Indian Foreign and Security Policy in South Asia: Regional Power Strategies”, “Populism and Foreign Policy: The Case of India” and “Populism and International Relations: (Un-) Predictability, Personalization, and the Reinforcement of Existing Trends in World Politics”.
DINKER Vidya
Vidya Dinker is an activist who lives in coastal Karnataka, India. She is a social justice warrior, with special interest in gender justice and food rights. She is part of the Karwan e Mohabbat and the President of the Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF).
FILIPPINI Simone
Simone Filippini is a former top diplomat and Ambassador. Among others she served as the Head of the Gender and Women Rights department in the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She was awarded the MFA Diversity Award in 2010. In 2013 she left the diplomatic service to become the CEO of CORDAID, after which she took over as Executive Director of NIMD, the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy.
GALTUNG Fredrik
Fredrik Galtung is the Chief Executive and co-founder of TrueFootprint, the first bottom-up impact verification solution for supply chains, helping companies improve the effectiveness of their sustainability investments. Before starting TrueFootprint, Fredrik spent over two decades in international development. He was Transparency International’s founding staff member and its Head of Research for a decade. In 2003, he co-founded Integrity Action, which delivered the largest-scale bottom-up monitoring of development projects and services. Fredrik has advised on advised five presidents and prime ministers in Africa, Asia and Latin America, several corporations and a number international development organisations and development finance institutions on integrity and corruption.
GARIMELLA Kiran
Kiran Garimella is a researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a recipient of the Hammer Fellowship. In July 2020, he published his findings on misinformation on WhatsApp in the form of image sharing, the first of its kind. Kiran collected and quantified images shared in politically-oriented WhatsApp groups in India prior to the country’s 2019 national elections. Kiran aims to develop technical solutions to the problem of the spread of rumors and misinformation on closed platforms such as WhatsApp by building tools that can collect and analyse massive social media datasets. His research focused on using digital data for social good, including areas like polarization, misinformation, and human migration. His work on studying and mitigating polarization on social media won the best student paper awards at WSDM 2017 and WebScience 2017.
GROVER Anand
Anand Grover, is a designated Senior Advocate, practicing in the Supreme Court of India and the Director of the Lawyer’s Collective (India), having offices in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. He was the UN Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health (Right to Health) by the UN Human Rights Council from 1 August 2008 to 31 July 2014. In his regular practice, Mr. Grover has argued several landmark cases in the field of public interest and human rights law, including mass eviction cases (Olga Tellis & Ors v. Bombay Municipal Council), environmental cases (the Bhopal Gas Disaster case), and LGBT rights (Naz Foundation case).
GUARNEROS-MEZA Valeria
Dr Valeria Guarneros-Meza is a Reader in Politics and Public Policy at De Montfort University, UK. Her research has focused on processes of public administration and citizen participation in local governance, with special interest in urbanisation, securitisation and extractivism in the UK and Mexico. In collaboration with colleagues based in the UK, Mexico and Spain, her research has been funded by the British Academy/Mexican Research Council (CONACYT) and European Union-Horizon 2020.
JABRI-MARKWELL Rita
Rita is a lawyer based with the Australian Muslim Advocacy Network (AMAN), a national body working to secure the physical and psychological safety of Australian Muslims through research and policy development. She is leading the organisation’s engagement with the tech industry and researchers, as well as its contributions to law and policy reform in Australia.
JAFFRELOT Christophe
Christophe Jaffrelot is a political scientist and the Avantha Chair and Professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at the King’s India Institute and also the Research Lead for the Global Institutes, King’s College London. His core research focuses on theories of nationalism and democracy, mobilization of the lower castes and Dalits (ex-untouchables) in India, the Hindu nationalist movement, and ethnic conflicts in Pakistan. He was Director of Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales (CERI) at Sciences Po, between 2000 and 2008.
JAIRAM Pradyumna
Submitted his PhD this year on the Politics of School History Textbook Writing in Rajasthan. Prior to this, he taught History and Political Science (between 2012 and 2016) at two Schools in New Delhi. He has an M.Phil in International Relations and MA in Modern History both from Jawaharlal Nehru University.
KADIWAL Laila
Dr. Laila Kadiwal works on the intersections of identity and education in conflict-affected settings. She examines policies, practices, and discourses of ‘othering,’ in and through education. Dr. Kadiwal has specialist interests in the role of education, youth and teachers in conflict and peacebuilding in the global South, mainly in Tajikistan, India, Pakistan and the UK, and in education and conflict in Muslim contexts. Dr. Kadiwal also co-runs Best Foot Music (https://www.bestfootmusic.net/), an intercultural music and arts organisation which connects refugee and marginalised musicians with music networks in the UK. Dr. Kadiwal is an alumna of Oxford and was awarded her DPhil at the University of Sussex from School of Law, Politics, and Sociology in 2015.
KAHLE Alena
Alena Kahle has a BA summa cum laude in International Justice from Leiden University and is currently training at Lund University to become a legal sociologist. Through her field research, several volunteer positions at grassroots NGOs in India and elsewhere, she speaks eight languages and has strong regional expertise in contemporary India. After working on topics ranging from India’s Mental Healthcare Law to the safety of activists, she is now looking forward to her new position with the London Story Foundation to work on drafting platform regulation legislation and further contribute to law for social change.
KALAM Mohammad A.
Mohammed A. Kalam was founding Dean and Professor of Anthropology at Krea University. Prior to that Kalam was Professor of Eminence at Tezpur Central University, Assam. He was also Professor of Anthropology and Chairperson (Dean) at the University of Madras, Rockefeller Resident Fellow at Duke University, Human Rights Fellow at Harvard University, Commonwealth Academic Staff Fellow at the London School of Economics, and Visiting Professor at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. Kalam has undertaken anthropological fieldwork among South Asians in England, the USA and France. Kalam was Member of the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) as also a Member of the Expert Group on Diversity Index, Ministry of Minority Affairs, Government of India.
KATE Anubandh
Anubandh Kate is a Paris based Railway Engineer. While in India, in its initial days, he was an active volunteer of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Having moved to Paris, Anubandh established The Liberal Indians – France group that organises discussions, events, and protests to highlight the social, cultural and political realities in India. Some of the long term goals for The Liberal Indians – France include: counter the stereotypes that exist in France about India, help bring in realistic coverage about India in the French mainstream media, facilitate smooth integration of Indians into the French society and widen the Indo-French, people to people exchanges. The group runs a Ciné-club in a small library of a Parisian suburb, screening one Indian movie a month that tries to showcase the linguistic, cultural and artistic diversities of India. The group is open to all and is committed to harmonious, meaningful interactions between different nationalities.
KATE Tarak
Dr. Tarak Kate is a plant scientist committed to sustainable rural development through the appropriate use of Science and Technology tools. Tarak Kate is an Ashoka fellow since 1994. For the last three decades, he has been introducing bio-diverse, non-chemical regenerative agricultural practices to small and resource-poor farmers, mostly located in the drought-prone Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, India, to help them optimize the use of their lands through locally available bio-resources. He has also been facilitating a transfer of agricultural “best practices” through a rural network of Farmers’ Study Groups and is the founding member of many organizations working in the field of environment, appropriate technology and watershed management. From 2003 to 2012, he served as a visiting faculty to Stellenbosch University in South Africa to teach a module on ‘Biodiversity & Sustainable Agriculture’ at Sustainability Insititute. He has also been instrumental in promoting nutritional gardens in rural areas to help poor families in combating malnutrition.
KAUR Nodeep
Nodeep Kaur is a Dalit labour rights activist and member of the Mazdoor Adhikar Sangathan (MAS), a union of industrial workers. She comes from a family of fiercely politically active women. During her fight against unduly withheld wages and support for the 2020–2021 Indian farmers’ protest, Kaur was arrested and subjected to police abuse.
KAUR Ravinder
Ravinder Kaur, Associate Professor of Modern South Asian Studies directs the Centre of Global South Asian Studies. Kaur works across the disciplines of history, anthropology, and international politics. Her long term research has focused on two critical transformations in the history of modern India. She is the author of Brand New Nation: Capitalist Dreams and Nationalist Designs in Twenty-First-Centuty India (2020) and Since 1947: Partition Narratives among the Punjabi Migrants of Delhi (2007, 2018).
KELLER Marie-Sophie
Marie-Sophie Keller is a Business and human rights lawyer in Germany and currently works for the German Parliamentarian Michel Brandt. Formerly, she worked with the Chennai-based Vettiver Collective, India in the field of environmental protection and community empowerment and was involved in the struggle to hold Unilever accountable for its criminal mercury contamination in Kodaikanal. Marie has worked for the international NGO network “International Civil Society Centre” and is part of the globalisation-critical movement attac.
KHAITAN Shreya
Shreya is a writer and editor at IndiaSpend, and writes on education, gender issues and health. She is a graduate of the Global Human Development program at Georgetown University, Washington D.C. and has previously worked with the Mumbai bureau of The Wall Street Journal. There she researched for a series on drug resistant tuberculosis and wrote on a number of topics, ranging from reservation for women in Indian politics to the black and yellow taxis plying the city’s roads. Her report on a pilot TB care programme in Gujarat’s Mehsana district won the 2017 REACH Media Award for excellence in reporting on TB.
KHAN Amir Ullah
Dr Amir Ullah Khan is a development economist and former civil servant of Government of India. Dr Khan has worked for the Ministry of Finance, Government of India and the UNDP at Project LARGE (Legal Adjustments and Reforms for Globalising the Economy) and has extensively worked on developments issues in the Health, education and agriculture sectors. He is a former Deputy Director and policy advisor to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Dr Khan is a Visiting Professor at the Indian School of Business and at NALSAR in Hyderabad, Professor of Economics at the Maulana Azad National Urdu University and Manipal University, and Adjunct Professor of Business and Law at the Edith Cowan University in Western Australia. Dr Khan is also a Senior fellow and Director at the India Development Foundation and a member of the Board of Governors at the Digital Empowerment Foundation and GyanShaala.
KHAN Umair
Dr Umair Khan is a Paediatric Critical care Consultant at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children Edinburgh. He completed his undergraduate and initial medical training in India and then trained in the UK. He has worked across different health systems in India, the Middle East and UK and is passionately interested in equity of healthcare access for all. He remains a firm believer in the wider benefits of the NHS system of healthcare. He is keen on medical education at both undergraduate and postgraduate level and is an Hon Senior Clinical lecturer at the University of Edinburgh.
KHORANA Sangeeta
Professor Sangeeta Khorana is an international trade expert with 25 + years of academia and management consulting experience including, between 1993 and 2001 as a civil servant with the government of India. Prof Khorana leads research on international trade policy, in particular on free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations and WTO issues. She has advised EU institutions on FTA negotiations with India and Vietnam and served on expert committees advising the UK departments for international trade and international development.
KINGABY Harriet
Harriet Kingaby is an award-winning campaigner, who has worked with some of the world’s biggest (and smallest) brands, start-ups and social enterprises to land international climate change campaigns, build brands with purpose, and create behavioural change programs with impact. She is also partially responsible for the Boris/Trump kiss mural that galvanised millennials to vote in the UK’s EU referendum. She co-founded The Conscious Advertising Network with Jake Dubbins of Media Bounty in 2018 and has since seen it gain international recognition, partner with ISBA and the UN, and grow to over 90 members from O2 to Accenture Interactive. She’s a former Mozilla Fellow, working with Consumers International to map the opportunities and impacts of AI-enhanced advertising, globally.
KOCHENOV Dimitry
Professor Dimitry Kochenov leads the Rule of Law Workgroup at CEU Democracy Institute and teaches at the Department of Legal Studies. An author of multiple books, including Citizenship, which has been translated into several languages and reviewed in NYRB, Dimitri served as a consultant to several governments and international organisations including the government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands on the application of EU law in the Caribbean parts of the Kingdom in preparation for the constitutional reform which led to the restructuring of the Netherlands Antilles. He has also been a consultant to the government of the Maltese Republic, on the recent citizenship law reform.
KRISHNAN Kavita
Kavita Krishnan is a feminist and left activist and writer. She is National Secretary of the All-India Progressive Women’s Association and a politburo member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist). She is the author of Fearless Freedom (Penguin, 2020).
LEIDIG Eviane
Dr Eviane Leidig is a Research Fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism in The Hague, Netherlands and an affiliate at the Center for Research on Extremism at the University of Oslo. Her research specializes in the far right, gender, and online radicalization, recruitment, and propaganda in India and the West. In addition to her academic pursuits, she serves as the Head of Policy for the London-based Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right, and is an Associate Fellow at the Global Network on Extremism and Technology. Eviane regularly consults and gives talks for policymakers such as the U.S. State Department, the European Commission, and national and regional intelligence agencies and law enforcement. Her work has appeared in international news outlets such as Foreign Policy, Al Jazeera, BBC, Huffington Post, and Radio Free Europe.
LOVELL Sharron
Sharron Lovell is a visual journalist and storyteller. She is based between Italy and China. Her work has been published in National Geographic books, Newsweek, The Guardian, Global Post, PBS NewsHour, ChinaFile, Politiken, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Irish Times, Forbes, The Independent, Le Monde and The Financial Times.
MAHARAJ Biraj
Brij Maharaj is a senior professor of geography at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban South Africa. He is the Deputy President of the South African Hindu Maha Sabha, and former President of the Shree Sanathan Dharma Sabha of South Africa.
MALIK Inshah
Dr. Inshah Malik is an independent researcher based in Afghanistan and at the University of Washington. She was awarded a Ph.D. degree from the Center for Comparative Politics and Political Theory, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. A Former Fox Fellow at Yale University, her monograph on Muslim Women, Agency and Resistance Politics: The Case of Kashmir was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2019. Her research interests include Political Theory, History of Islam, Political Movements, Internet Activism and Gender Studies in Central and South Asia particularly India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Kashmir.
MANDER Harsh
Harsh Mander, social worker and writer, works with survivors of mass violence, hunger, homeless persons and street children. He is Director, Centre for Equity Studies and was Special Commissioner to the Supreme Court of India in the Right to Food case. He is the founder of the campaigns Aman Biradari, for secularism, peace and justice; Nyayagrah, for legal justice and reconciliation for the survivors of communal violence; Dil Se, for street children, and ‘Hausla’ for urban homeless people. He worked formerly in the Indian Administrative Service in Madhya Pradesh and Chhatisgarh for almost two decades. As Member of India’s National Advisory Council from June 2010-12, he convened the working groups on the Food Security Bill, Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation Bill, Child Labour Abolition, Manual Scavenging Abolition, Urban Poverty and Homelessness, Disability Rights, Bonded Labour, Street Vendors and Urban Slums, and co-convened the groups on the Communal and Targeted Violence Bill, Dalits and Minorities, Tribal Rights, among others.
MANDALPARTHY Nikhil
Nikhil Mandalaparthy is the Advocacy Director for Hindus for Human Rights. Prior to joining HfHR, Nikhil worked and conducted research at the Aspen Institute, World Bank, the Stimson Center, and the University of Washington. He received a B.A. in Public Policy Studies from the University of Chicago, and an M.P.P. from the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. He also serves on the executive board of Sadhana: Coalition of Progressive Hindus. Nikhil regularly writes on religion and politics in South Asia and its diaspora.
MANUVIE Ritumbra
Ritumbra Manuvie is a Lecturer of Law at the UCG Groningen in the Netherlands. She is the CEO of Foundation the London Story and is currently on a mission to stop hate speech & associated violence, and promote accountability, integrity and pluralism at all levels and across all sectors of society. She has been a fellow with the United Nations University in Tokyo and Bonn. A well-versed lawyer in international laws, her work traverse between immigration, citizenship and asylum laws, and policies governing transnational issues. She is also a recipient of the prestigious Commonwealth Scholarship and has conducted her doctorate research at the University of Edinburg, Scotland, United Kingdom on governance of climate migration in Assam.
MANZAR Osama
Osama Manzar is a global leader on the mission of eradicating information poverty from India and the global South using digital tools. He is a social entrepreneur, author, columnist, impact speaker, angel investor and mentor, and sits on several government and policy committees in India and on international organisations working in the areas of internet, access and digital inclusion.
MARINGANTI Anant
Anant Maringanti is the director of Hyderabad Urban Lab, a multi-disciplinary urban research centre based in Hyderabad. He is a geographer with a PhD from University of Minnesota and has taught at several universities in India. He spends most of his time thinking about, teaching about, writing about cities and urbanization in South Asia.
MICHON Caroline
Caroline Michon holds a doctorate in anthropology from the School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS, Paris). She is currently a teaching assistant in educational sciences and gender studies at the University of Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis. Her research focuses on women’s movements in India and more specifically on the city of New Delhi, development and NGOnization and feminist cultures in India.
MISHRA Sukumar
Dr Sukumar Mishra is working as a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. He is a recipient of the INSA medal for young scientist, the INAE young engineer award, and the INAE silver jubilee young engineer award. He has earned the credit to become the youngest fellow in the electrical engineering section of INAE at the age of 38 in the year 2009. He is also a fellow of IET UK, IETE India and IE India. He is currently holding the position of INAE chair professor.
MISHRA Amb Dr. Malay
Amb. Dr. Malay Mishra belonged to the Indian Foresign Service and was posted to France, Senegal, Mauritius, USA, Iran, Germany, Seychelles, Trinidad and Tobago, and Hungary. As the Head of Mission in his last 3 postings he represented India in its multifaceted dimensions. While paying a good deal of emphasis on economic diplomacy he equally promoted India’s culture and heritage, Yoga and Ayurveda. Among his many assignments at headquarters, he looked after policy making in the then Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs which gave him broad exposure to handle the ubiquitous Indian overseas community and leverage their connection with the motherland in multiple ways. A career diplomat, Amb Mishra is also a research scholar and a visiting faculty and calls himself “a global citizen by design”. He has been a motivational speaker at several forums both in India and abroad and spoken extensively on diverse subjects.
MODY Gautam
Gautam Mody is the General Secretary of the New Trade Union Initiative (NTUI) of India. He was with Kamani Employees union in Mumbai. Formed in 2001, NTUI is an amalgamation of different trade unions in the organised and unorganised sector. Its core constituent is the National Centre for labour, a trade union of informal sector workers. It has built a democratic organization that now represents more than 1 million workers with a special emphasis on informal workers.
MOULAERT Frank
Dr Frank Moulaert is Professor of Spatial Planning at the Department of Architecture, Urban Design and Regional Planning at Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. His recent works focus on urban development and the institutional dynamics of social innovation and social exclusion. He has worked extensively on citizen participation in local governance and proposes a model of bottom-linked governance. He is an active figure in European Research Networking in social sciences, and has worked on European Commission Framework Projects on Cities and Social Cohesion in the area of urban development.
MUKHERJEE Victor
Dr. Victor Mukherjee is working as a Senior Research & Development Engineer in ABB OY, Finland. His research interest includes electrical machine, drives, battery optimization and e-mobility. He is also serving as a reviewer for different IEEE, IET and Springer journals, primarily focused on electrical machine.
NAIK Raqib Hameed
Raqeeb Naik Hameed is a Kashmiri multimedia journalist based in the United States. A Jamia Millia Islamia and University of Bolton graduate, he focuses on conflict, human f rights, refugees and climate change. His work has been published in dozens of national and international publications.
NAIR Ravi
Ravi Nair is the Executive Director of the New Delhi-based South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre. He began his life as a journalist and political activist in New Delhi, and in 1986, he moved to a wider arena, working with Amnesty International in London first and as regional liaison officer for Asia Pacific region and then as one of its four global campaign coordinators. He founded the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre in 1990 which investigates and documents violations of civil and political human rights and campaigns for their eradication. Through petitions at the Supreme Court and several High Courts, Nair is currently closely involved with stopping the deportations of Rohingya refugees to Myanmar.
NATT Navkiran
Navkiran Natt works on transnational Punjabi migration and its reflections in Punjabi popular culture. She also did a podcast series on the health implications of the Green revolution in Punjab. Currently, she is co-editor of Trolley Times, a newsletter that started from within the current Indian farmers’ movement.
NUNDY Karuna
Karuna Nundy is an advocate at the Supreme Court of India as well as an international lawyer, specialising in constitutional law, human rights law and commercial litigation and arbitration. She has also advised several organisations, including the United Nations on policy matters. She is an alumnus of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University, University of Cambridge and Columbia Law School. She is known for her work in support of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy’s victims, her contribution in the drafting of India’s anti-rape bill and her fight for free speech.
OBEROI Pia
Pia Oberoi is Senior Advisor on Migration and Human Rights for the Asia Pacific Region based in the Bangkok office of the United Nations Human Rights Office (OHCHR) where she is responsible for developing and implementing research and policy on migration and human rights in the region. Previous to this function, she was the head of the migration team at UN Human Rights headquarters in Geneva, where she led the Office’s global work on policy and legal issues related to the human rights of migrants and the intersections between migration and human rights. Before that, she headed the migrants’ rights work of Amnesty International’s International Secretariat, and has been an expert consultant on migration, refugee and human rights issues for NGOs and policy think tanks around the world.
PADMANABAN Sanjeevikumar
Dr. Sanjeevikumar Padmanaban is working as a professor with the CTIF Global Capsule (CGC) Laboratory, Aarhus University, Denmark. He has worked with different international universities and institution like VIT University and National Institute of Technology, India, Qatar University, Dublin Institute of Technology, University of Johannesburg, Aalborg University. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers, India, the Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers, India, and the Institution of Engineering and Technology, U.K. He is an Editor/Associate Editor/Editorial Board for different IEEE , IET, Wiley journals.
PAIN Bedabrata
One of the inventors of CMOS digital image sensor technology that enabled the digital camera revolution – from cell-phones to movie cameras – Dr. Bedabrata Pain holds over 90 patents and is an inductee to the US Space Technology Hall of Fame. He was an award- winning senior research scientist at NASA and Caltech for over 15 years, till he quit NASA to become a film-maker. And with his debut film Chittagong (2013), he won four Indian National Awards, including the prestigious Golden Lotus as the best first film and the best debut director, as well as awards in several international film festivals. He is currently working on a number of feature films, documentaries, and web-series.
PARPIANI Maansi
Dr Maansi Parpiani leads the research programmes at Aajeevika Bureau, a labour-rights non-profit working across the rural and urban in western India. Aajeevika’s research is primarily constituted of action-oriented inquiries into informal work conditions, occupational safety and labour migration. Dr Parpiani has a Masters from the School of Oriental and African Studies and a PhD from University of Copenhagen.
PATEL Aakar
Aakar Patel is a senior journalist, podcaster, author and former head of Amnesty International India before it was shut down in 2020. An anti-establishment scribe and BJP-critic, Patel recently published his book “Our Hindu Rashtra”, in which he examines where India stands today with respect to its constitutional promise of being a secular and democratic state. Apart from his own writing, Patel in 2014 also translated the Urdu non-fiction writing of Saadat Hasan Manto in 2014.
PHILIPOSE Pamela
Pamela Philipose is the Public Editor of TheWire.in. She is a former advisor to the Media Task Force of the Government of India’s High-Level Status of Women Committee Report. She began her career with The Times of India. Two decades later, as a senior associate editor with The Indian Express, she anchored its edit page. She has been honoured with the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Woman Journalist, and the Zee-Astitva Award for Constructive Journalism.
PHILIPPIN Yann
Yann Philippin is an investigative journalist and reporter for the French Mediapart. In his journalistic career, he has investigated the crash of the Rio Paris flight of Air France, the SNCF accident in Brétigny and politico-financial cases such as the Dassault and Rafale deal controversies. Specialized in financial cases, tax fraud and corruption, he works in particular on data “leaks” published by Mediapart with its partners from the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) network, on which Yann is also a board member.
PIETRUCCI Sophie
Sophie Pietrucci is a Paris based feminist and co-author of the book “Contre les publicités sexistes“. For the last few years, she has been regularly organising India centric socio-political events at the participatory library BAM (Bibliothèque Associative de Malakoff).
PODUR Justin
Prof. Justin Podur is an activist and a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction. He is an Associate Professor at York University’s Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change. The overarching theme of his activities is anti-imperialism in its very general and global sense.
RAFI ATAL Maha
Dr Maha Rafi Atal is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Copenhagen Business School where she studies the political economy of corporate power. Her current research interests include the politics of “corporate social responsibility”; corporate influence in the media; technology platforms and data regulation; and the accountability of corporations under international law. In addition to her academic research, she is an award-winning business and economics journalist, with work published in Forbes, Fortune, BusinessWeek, The Guardian and The New Statesman, among others. She is the former Editor-in-Chief of the Cambridge Review of International Affairs, and the co-founder and Executive Director of Public Business, a non-profit supporting reporting, research and discussion about the wider impact of business actions.
RAINA Arjun
Arjun Raina is a playwright, actor, teacher and Kathakali dancer based in Australia. His original works for the theater have been performed extensively in India, Australia and around the world. He is a member of Hindus for Human Rights-Australia.
RAM N.
N. Ram is an Indian journalist, chairman of Kasturi & Sons Limited and publisher of the second most circulated English-language newspaper in India, The Hindu. An investigative journalist at heart, Ram exposed the Bofors Scandal, a major weapons-contract between India and Sweden and received the Asian Investigative Journalist of the Year award in 1990. In his youth, N. Ram was also the vice-president of the Students Federation of India (SFI).
RAMPAL Anita
Professor Anita Rampal was Dean, Faculty of Education, Delhi University and presently leads an initiative on Transformative Education. She was a Nehru Fellow, Director, National Literacy Resource Centre at the National Academy of Administration, was associated with the National Curriculum Framework 2005 and Chairperson of the NCERT Primary Textbook Development Teams. A member of national and international committees on policy, she has been actively involved with educational initiatives, the Right to Education Act, the people’s science movement, and the National Literacy Campaigns. Her areas of work are Policy Studies, Curriculum Studies, Education for Sustainable Development, Critical Mathematics Education, Science-Technology-Society Studies and Teacher Education.
RAZVI Saleema
Dr. Saleema Razvi is Senior Research Economist at the Copenhagen Consensus Centre working on prioritization of policy options based on economic, social and environmental cost-benefit analyses. She has written extensively on public health issues in India, including health insurance regulation and growth, and the impact of liberalization on healthcare service delivery. She has been associated with the National Council for Applied Economic Research, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, Population Foundation of India and UNICEF.
REINERS Nina
Nina Reiners is a postdoctoral researcher in International Relations at the University of Potsdam. She is associated with the Berlin/Potsdam research group “International Rule of Law“ and the Global Governance Centre/Graduate Institute Geneva. Her research focuses on questions related to the politics of international human rights law, inequality and social and economic rights, and agency of non-state actors in global governance.
ROY Indrajit
Indrajit Roy is Sr. Lecturer- Global Development Politics at the University of York. He worked in the development sector for seven years prior to undertaking his doctoral studies at the University of Oxford. Since obtaining a doctorate in development studies, he has held the ESRC Future Research Leader Fellowship at the Oxford Department of International Development (ODID) as well as a Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) at Wolfson College, University of Oxford. His research and teaching contribute to critical approaches to studying the politics of global development, with a focus on ‘new development futures’ that promise to reframe the discipline. Accredited as a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy, Indrajit has innovated teaching and curriculum design over the last several years of his academic life. He won a Teaching Excellence Award at the University of Oxford in 2016. Since joining the University of York in 2017, he is working with colleagues to diversify and decolonise the departmental curriculum.
SAGLIO-YATZIMIRSKY Marie-Caroline
Marie-Caroline Saglio-Yatzimirsky is a French anthropologist and clinical psychologist. She is a professor in anthropology at Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO), Paris, a researcher at Centre d’Études en Sciences Sociales sur les Mondes Africains, Américains et Asiatiques (CESSMA) laboratory and a clinical psychologist at Paris Nord Regional Psychotrauma Center. She mainly works on migration issues and social exclusion. Some of her major publications involve “Untouchable Bombay”, “Dharavi : from mega slum to urban paradigm” and “La voix de ce qui crient”.
SAHA Amrita
Amrita Saha is a research fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS). Her work with international organizations and development agencies focuses on trade policy, agriculture, innovation, and political economy questions in development. She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Sussex. Her past research roles have included working with the Commonwealth Secretariat in London, and the Ministry of Commerce and Industry in India. She has also taken up various teaching roles, including at IDS, LSE, SOAS, and University of Sussex. Her recent work has examined questions on trade, technology, and agriculture, with a strong gender and inclusive agenda at the core.
SAHA Tapas Kumar
Dr Tapas Kumar Saha is currently working as a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at National Institute of Technology Durgapur, India. His research interests include power electronics, electrical machine drives, converter topologies, control of power converters, renewable energy system and the grid integrated distributed generations. He is actively engaged in different projects in the area of solar and wind energies including National Institute of Wind Energy (NIWE) under MNRE, Govt. of India.
SAMADDAR Ranabir
Ranabir Samaddar is the Director of the Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, and belongs to the school of critical thought. He has pioneered along with others peace studies programmes in South Asia. He has worked extensively on issues of migration and refugee studies, nationalism and post-colonial statehood in South Asia, and new regimes of technological restructuring and labour control. Ranabir Samaddar authored a three-volume study of Indian nationalism, and his political writings also include “The Materiality of Politics” and “The Emergence of the Political Subject”, that have challenged some of the prevailing accounts of the birth of nationalism and the nation state, and have signaled a new turn in critical post-colonial thinking.
SEBASTIAN Manu
Manu Sebastian is the Managing Editor of Live Law. Live Law is a comprehensive legal news portal which is committed to providing accurate and honest news about legal developments around the world. Manu is interested in strengthening the role of judiciary in a constitutional democracy. He is a regular commentator on matters related to public policy and law and his articles have been widely discussed.
SENGUPTA Hindol
Hindol Sengupta is a historian, public policy columnist and author of nine books.
SHARMA Daniel
Dr. Daniel Sharma, L.L.M. is a Partner at DLA Piper, and Chair of the firms’ global India Group, with particular expertise in international arbitration and regulatory and governance issues. He has extensive experience in advising clients in international disputes, across a range of industry sectors and under different global rules including ICC, SIAC, DIS, CIETAC, UNCITRAL and ICSID, and regularly sits as an arbitrator. He is also a lecturer on Indian business law at the University of Applied Sciences in Graz (Austria).
SINGH Harjeet
Harjeet Singh is the global lead on climate change for ActionAid. Based in New Delhi, India he supports countries across the world on climate change policy and advocacy. Prior to this, he managed a disaster resilience programme globally and coordinated emergency response and preparedness work in Asia and the Americas. Until 2007, he led the tsunami response programme in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands for ActionAid India. He writes regularly on climate change and disaster resilience issues.
SINHA Pratik
Pratik Sinha is the co-founder of Alt News. He is an ex-software engineer and launched Alt News along with two more co-founders to combat the phenomenon of fake news. At Alt News, Pratik looks after the administrative and editorial responsibilities, especially, writing about and exposing fake news on social media. He pursued his Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics & Communication from Bangalore Institute of Technology affiliated to V.T.U., Belgaum.
SINHA Shumona
Born in Calcutta, Shumona Sinha is a French Academy award winning author for her contribution to the French language and literature, who lives in France since 2001. Her harsh, but multilayered poetical literary reckoning with France’s asylum system, Assommons les pauvres! (Knock out the poors!) was critically acclaimed in France and abroad, won several awards in France, was in the short list of Renaudot Award, won Internationaler Literaturpreis in Berlin, adapted to theater in Germany and Austria. Translated into English, German, Italian, Hungarian, Arabic, Shumona Sinha’s books are part of scholarly programs at different universities in France, Germany, USA and India. She has a M.Phil degree in French linguistics and literature from Sorbonne University. Shumona Sinha actively protests against Hindutva, India’s nationalist supremacist politics and expresses her opinions in French media.
SRIVASTAVA Kavita
Kavita Srivastava is General Secretary of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), India’s largest human rights organisation. The PUCL strives to defend civil liberties and human rights of all members of society. With PUCL, she has filed cases in India’s highest courts seeking protection against exploitation for children and indigenous peoples, and fought against state-sponsored violence, including by mobs as well as armed forces.
SOUNDARARAJAN Vivek
Dr. Vivek Soundararajan is a Senior Lecturer at Centre for Business, Organizations and Society in University of Bath, where his research focuses on worker exploitation, the governance of decent work in supply chains, and oppression and inequalities in and around organizations. He is also an editorial board member of the Journal of Business Ethics, and Business & Society.
SUD Nikita
Nikita Sud is an Associate Professor of Development Studies at the University of Oxford. She is the author of two books – The Making of Land and The Making of India (Oxford University Press, 2021) and Liberalization, Hindu Nationalism and The State: A Biography of Gujarat (Oxford University Press, 2012). Her recently published book on the social and political life of land is the result of research conducted over more than a decade in west, east and south India. She focuses on the reciprocal processes of land-making as state-, market- and politics-making. Her work speaks to human-nature co-production in an era of climate change.
SWAIN Ashok
Ashok Swain is a Professor of Peace and Conflict Research, UNESCO Chair of International Water Cooperation, and the Director of Research School of International Water Cooperation at Uppsala University, Sweden. Ashok Swain has written extensively on new security challenges, water sharing issues, environment, conflict and peace, and democratic development issues. He has published 20 books (authored and edited) more than 150 journal articles and book chapters. He has worked as a consultant on environment, climate change, migration and development issues for various UN agencies, OSCE, NATO, EU, IISS, Arab League, OXFAM, Governments of Sweden, Netherlands, UK and Singapore.
SWAMI Kamayani
Kamayani Swami is a labour rights activist from Bihar, India. An alumnus of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, she began her activism journey after joining the Shramik Adivasi Sangathan (SAS, Madhya Pradesh) and the National Campaign for the People’s Right to Information (NCPRI). She has also been an active part of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), an organisation at the forefront of India’s Right to Information campaign. Currently, she works as the founder of a rural workers trade union called Jan Jagaran Shakti Sangathan (JJSS) which works for labour rights in Bihar.
TADEPALLI Sravya
Sravya Tadepalli is a board member of Hindus for Human Rights and works on poverty alleviation in rural Oregon.
TRUSCHKE Audrey
Dr. Audrey Truschke is a historian of South Asia and an associate professor at Rutgers University. Her 2016 work Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court focusses on the literary, social, and political roles of Sanskrit in Mughal courts from 1560 to 1650. Her other works discuss extensively the Mughal Empire, such as Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India’s Most Controversial King and The Language of History: Sanskrit Narratives of Indo-Muslim Rule. In 2021, organizations across the globe came forward in support of Truschke when was subjected to hate speech by a group of Hindu students, who circulated a petition that called for Rutgers University to terminate Truschke’s teaching assignment, alleging a distortion of Hinduism. The University faculty affirmed faith in Truschke’s scholarship.
UDUPA Sahana
Sahana Udupa is Professor of Media Anthropology at LMU Munich and Joan Shorenstein Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University (2021). In 2016, she received the European Research Council (ERC) grant award for a five-year study on digital politics. In 2020, she received the ERC proof of concept grant for developing an AI assisted process model for online content moderation, and the Henry Luce Foundation grant for a multimedia project on online nationalism and religious politics. Keen to create conversational spaces between research and communities, she has founded the Centre for Digital Dignity, an international network of researchers and civil society groups, which aims to promote enabling spaces of political expression online. Her publications include Making News in Global India: Media, Publics, Politics, Cambridge University Press, UK, 2015 and Digital Hate: The Global Conjuncture of Extreme Speech, Indiana University Press, 2021.
VATSA Aviral
Dr Aviral Vatsa works with NHS Scotland as a clinician. His professional background includes clinical work, research (PhD in bone), teaching and a short stint in the corporate world. For the last one year of the current pandemic he has made efforts in bridging the gap between credible, scientific information and common people- primarily in India. He has utilised social media, print, television, radio and independent media as means to reach out to the lay public and share key scientific information regarding Covid. His strength is an ability to demystify scientific jargon and align it with practical requirements of the common people. He is a keen believer in evidence based practice – both in clinical management and in health policy initiatives.
WAHI Namita
Namita Wahi is an academic working with the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), India. She is a former litigator with Davis Polk and Wardwell in New York, where she practised primarily in the areas of bankruptcy, securities, criminal defence and asylum law. Namita also holds an LLM from Harvard Law School, where she was awarded the Laylin Prize for the “Best Paper in International Law”. She is also an author and has contributed immensely to the Right to Property jurisprudence in India. Currently, she is leading the Land Rights Initiative at CPR.
WALAWALKAR Rahul
Dr. Rahul Walawalkar is President & MD of Customized Energy Solutions India Pvt. Ltd. He leads the Emerging Technologies domain for Customized Energy Solutions globally, which under his leadership has emerged as a thought leader in the areas of energy storage, renewables, demand response, electric vehicles, and smart grid technologies. He has served as a member of the national task force for renewable integration by the Central Electricity Authority & Ministry of Power and took part in drafting the national energy storage mission and battery manufacturing mission for MNRE and NITI Aayog.
WIDMALM Sten
Sten Widmalm is a Professor in political science at the Department of Government, Uppsala University, Sweden. As a comparative political scientist he has worked extensively in South Asia, parts of Africa, and several countries in Europe. His research has focused on political tolerance, democratic development, conflict studies, crisis management, decentralization, and corruption, mainly employing qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Sten Widmalm is the author of many renowned works, including “Political Tolerance in the Global South – Images from India, Pakistan and Uganda”; “Decentralisation, Corruption and Social Capital – from India to the West”; and “Kashmir in Comparative Perspective – Democracy and Violent Separatism in India”.
WIHTOL DE WEDEN Catherine
Catherine Wihtol de Wenden was the former Research Director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and is currently a senior researcher at the Institute for International Political Studies. Wihtol de Wenden specializes in migration studies. She is also an activist for the right to immigration in France. Wihtol de Wenden has been a consultant to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Council of Europe, and the European Commission as well as an external expert to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Her many publications and comparative research focus on migration flows, migration policies and citizenship in Europe and around the world.
WILSON Kalpana
Dr Kalpana Wilson’s research and writing explores questions of race/gender, labour, neoliberalism, imperialism and reproductive rights and justice, with a particular focus on South Asia and its diasporas. She is the author of Race, Racism and Development: Interrogating History, Discourse and Practice (Zed Books, 2012) and co-editor of Gender, Agency and Coercion (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). She is a founder member of South Asia Solidarity Group.
WILSON Richard
Richard is the Director and co-founder of Stop Funding Hate, and sits on the Board as an Executive Director. He previously worked in fundraising for Amnesty International UK and the Child Poverty Action Group, and has been involved in human rights campaigning since 2001. Richard is the author of two books – Titanic Express (2006) and Don’t Get Fooled Again (2008).