Aditi Mittal

Aditi Mittal is an Indian stand-up comedian, actress and writer. She is a regular at Canvas Laugh Factory, Comedy Store Mumbai and has performed at venues and humour festivals across the country, clubs in UK and at Laugh Factory, Los Angeles.

Anandi & Udayan Mehra

Anandi Mehra has recently graduated in Contemporary Art from Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology. Udayan is currently in his final year of schooling.

Apoorvanand

Apoorvanand is a professor of Hindi at the University of Delhi. He has published two books of essays in literary criticism: Sundar ka Swapna and Sahitya ka Ekant, and his critical essays have appeared in all major Hindi journals. Apart from his academic and literary writings, he is also a regular contributor in Indian Newspapers and magazines on the issues of education, culture, communalism, violence and human rights. He has been part of the core group that designed the National Curriculum Framework for School Education in 2005 and a member of the national Focus Group on Teaching of Indian Languages formed by the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT).

Ayesha Kidwai

Ayesha Kidwai is a professor at JNU’s Centre for Linguistics, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies and president of the JNU Teachers Association.

Dolonchampa Chakraborty

A poet, translator and editor for the language pairs of English-Bengali and English-Hindi,Dolonchampa Chakraborty works to expand the borders of languages in India. She is the editor of The Nilgiri Wagon and an editorial team member of INTER-ACTIONS. She also works as a transcriptionist.

Arnab Basu

Arnab Basu is an Associate Professor of Data Sciences at IIM Bangalore and an expert in Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Systems. He has done a PhD in Computer and System Sciences from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and BTech(H) in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Kharagpur. His main research interests are in the areas of Learning Theory, Multi- Agent Control Systems like Games and Stochastic Dynamical Systems.

Fernando Zalamea

Fernando Zalamea is Professor of Mathematics at Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Chancellor of Research (1998-2000) of the Universidad Nacional – Sede Bogotá. After his Ph.D. in category theory and recursion theory (University of Massachusetts, 1990, under Ernest Manes), Zalamea has been working in alternative logics, Peirce and Lautman studies, and the philosophy of modern (1830-1950) and contemporary mathematics (1950-today). A prolific essayist, he is the author of twenty books around cultural studies, philosophy, and mathematics.

Fouzia Dastango

Fouzia Dastango is an educationist and the first female Dastango of India. Her repertoire includes performances in various renowned festivals such as: Jaipur Literature Festival; Old World Theatre Festival; Kumaon Literary festival; Bookaru Children’s Literature Festival; Mahindra Sanatkada Festival; Lucknow Literary Festival; and Jashn-e-Rekhta, among many others. She closely works with the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) on workshops for children to learn this art form. She has also done several workshops with various colleges and is also currently teaching a paper on Dastangoi at the Jamia Millia Islamia University, a Central University in the country.

Gopalkrishna Gandhi

Gopalkrishna Gandhi is a retired IAS officer and diplomat, who was the 22nd Governor of West Bengal serving from 2004 to 2009. As a former IAS officer he served as Secretary to the President of India and as High Commissioner to South Africa and Sri Lanka, among other administrative and diplomatic posts. He is the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi.

Guerrilla Girls

The Guerrilla Girls are feminist activist artists. Over 55 people have been members over the years, some for weeks, some for decades. They have done over 100 street projects, posters and stickers all over the world, including New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Mexico City, Istanbul, London, Bilbao, Rotterdam, and Shanghai, to name just a few. They have also done projects and exhibitions at museums, attacking them for their discriminatory practices. Some of their most prominent works include retrospectives in Bilbao and Madrid, Guerrilla Girls 1985-2015, and our US traveling exhibition, and Guerrilla Girls: Not Ready To Make Nice.

Heike Fiedler

Heike Fiedler is a German and Swiss author, multilingual poet, and sound and visual artist living in Geneva. Since 2000, she has been performing in international poetry and music festivals, and has collaborated with many musicians. She gives workshops in creative and performance writing. Gender and the condition of women’s creation is an important topic in her work. She has been the recipient of the Fonds municipal d’art contemporain (Fmac) scholarship in Geneva and has received several awards from Geneva town and canton for her solo work, as well for the collaborative projects she realised. She has many publications in poetry magazines, anthologies, CDs. Her two poetry books are langues de meehr and sie will mehr (edition spoken skript, Luzern).

John Britto

Father John Britto is a catholic priest, belonging to a congregation called Missionaries of Mary Immaculate (MMI). He has worked in Sierra Leone and South Sudan for over 6 years, and has recently moved to Germany to do doctoral studies.

Joseph Koyippally

Joseph Koyipally is an Associate Professor at the Department of English and Comparative Literature, Central University of Kerala.

Lori Thicke

Lori Thicke is an author, entrepreneur, non-profit founder, certified translator, mother. Lori founded her first business at 12, and sold her first company at 19. After completing an MFA in creative writing, she established a translation company in Paris in 1986; today Lexcelera has offices in France, Canada, the UK, Singapore and Argentina. Lori also founded Translators without Borders, the world’s largest translation charity. She is currently writing Dacker’s Daughter, a warm and funny account of growing up with an eccentric dreamer who fails at everything - except at being a father.

Namita Jacob

Namita Jacob is Program Director of a volunteer - based, non-profit organisation in India, the Chetana Trust, that pioneers projects promoting access to good health and quality education for all. She is also one of the founding Directors of Enability, a not-for-profit company established to bring assistive technology to the market in India at affordable prices. Dr. Jacob is the Asia Pacific Region, Education Specialist for Perkins International, an arm of Perkins School for the Blind in the USA, enabling development of services for infants and children who are deafblind or have vision impairment and additional disabilities.

Natasha Ginwala

Natasha Ginwala is a curator, researcher, and writer. She trained in Visual Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU in New Delhi and participated in the de Appel Curatorial Programme, Amsterdam. She is curatorial advisor for documenta 14 as well as curator of CONTOUR Biennale 8 (2017). Recent projects include My East is Your West featuring Shilpa Gupta and Rashid Rana at the 56th Venice Biennale; Mind Moves Matter at L'appartment 22, Rabat; Corruption...Everybody Knows with e-flux journal, SUPERCOMMUNITY issue.

Praveen Bavadekar

Praveen Bavadekar studied architecture at BMS College of Engineering, Bangalore and did his Masters at the Architectural Association in London. Since 2002, he has led Thirdspace Architecture Studio. The work of the studio has won several awards and its projects are frequently published in magazines and architecture blogs. Praveen has extensively lectured about architecture and urbanism at various forums and conferences. Besides architecture, Praveen has a passion for writing and is also a keen agriculturist who likes to spend time cultivating his family farms near Belgaum.

Priyamvada Gaur

Priyamvada has studied architecture and is presently engaged with developing and prototyping different kinds of spatial systems.

Rizio

Rizio is a bilingual writer, educationist, governance thinker and the Founder and Patron of LILA. Her engagement and mediation with ideas and words are aimed at initiating and driving a politico-aesthetic discourse relevant to the times and charged with transformative content.She is currently the Chief Executive Officer and Publisher at The Marg Foundation, Mumbai.

Ronald Patrick

Based in Leipzig, Ronald Patrick has been working in the photo-documentary field as well as in corporate photography. He has worked on personal projects and commissioned work all over the world, having published in Time Magazine, Stern, Monocle, Vice, In-Lan, The Guardian, International Herald Tribune, Lens Culture, Friday Magazine, Tagesspiegel and The Wall Street Journal, amongst others. To this date, he has published four photography books and his work has been exhibited in solo and collectively in various galleries and photo festivals in the USA, Spain, Japan, Georgia, Cambodia and Chile.

Shivani Karmarkar

Shivani Karmarkar is an anthropologist with specialisation in social development and a background in journalism, research and project coordination. Her experience includes designing and conducting surveys and interviews for academic as well as journalistic projects and developing courses and pedagogic methodologies for adult learning programmes. Having worked as a journalist with organisations like Bloomberg and Cogencis (formerly Newswire18), she also has a natural disposition to engage with diverse people and document their stories.

Smriti Vohra

Smriti Vohra is a freelance editor focussing on the Humanities and Social Sciences. She is interested in all aspects of language, literature, cultural history and creativity in the performing and visual arts.

Sumit Roy

Alumnus of MSU Baroda, Sumit Roy is an artist and a rap musician. His art has featured as exhibitions such as the India Art Fair 2018, while he has performed at various venues across the country. He has recently formed a band called ‘Rolls Roys’ that fuses jazz influences with hip-hop music.

Team Interactions

TM Krishna

TM Krishna is a Karnatic music vocalist, author, speaker, and public intellectual. He has performed widely at various festivals and venues across the world, including the Madras Music Academy, National Centre for the Performing Arts (India), John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, to name a few. He is part of the team of activists that started the Urur-Olcott Kuppam Festival and the Svanubhava initiative, and has been part of many other inspiring collaborations.

Tridip Suhrud

Tridip Suhrud is a renowned scholar in the field of political science and cultural history. He has extensively worked on the life and thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi and the social and cultural history of modern Gujarat. His past academic affiliations include the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, the DAIICT, Gandhi Nagar, and the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. He has also translated various literary and social science texts between Gujarati and English. He was given the Katha Award (1999) and Sahitya Akademi Award (2010) for his translation work.

Zack Moir

Zack Moir is a Lecturer in Popular Music at Edinburgh Napier University, UK. His research interests are in popular music in higher education, popular music composition pedagogy, the teaching and learning of improvisation, and real-time networked audio performance. Zack is also an active composer/musician performing as a soloist and in ensembles internationally. Recent compositions include pieces for saxophone and tape, solo cello, and a reactive generative sound art installation for the Edinburgh International Science Festival.