Abhas Abhinav

Abhas Abhinav is a hacker, entrepreneur and free software activist. I lead DeepRoot GNU/Linux, a Free Software Business and Mostly Harmless, a one-person hardware development and consulting company.

Amita Baviskar

Amita Baviskar is currently Professor of Sociology, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi. After studying Economics and Sociology at the University of Delhi, she received her PhD in Development Sociology from Cornell University. Her research focuses on the cultural politics of environment and development in rural and urban India. A recipient of the 2010 Infosys Prize for Social Sciences, she was also awarded the 2005 Malcolm Adiseshiah Award for Distinguished Contributions to Development Studies, and the 2008 VKRV Rao Prize for Social Science Research. Her writings explore the themes of resource rights, popular resistance and discourses of environmentalism.

Ashis Roy

Ashis Roy is a Psychoanalytic Therapist and Faculty at Centre of Psychotherapy and Clinical Research, Ambedkar University Delhi. As a clinician and a researcher, his areas of expertise and interests involve Clinical and Cultural applications of Psychoanalysis. His doctoral work has focussed on constellations of Otherness in Intimate Hindu Muslim Relationships. He is a training candidate at Indian Psychoanalytic Society, Kolkata.

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.

EP Unny

Unny is one of the most important Indian political cartoonists of our times, and has been one of LILA’s greatest supporters. It is EP Unny’s lila that one sees on the Inter-Actions masthead. His little figures have helped us retain the human touch in a largely digital world. On The Indian Express, he has been doing ‘Business as Usual’ for the past 15 years without a day’s break!. His publications include Spices and Souls – A Doodler’s Journey through Kerala and Santa and the Scribes: The Making of Fort Kochi among others. Currently, he is working on a comparative ‘biography of cartoons’ in India. His regular panel Leelatoon will be a permanent feature on Inter-Actions.

GN Devy

GN Devy writes in three languages – English, Marathi and Gujarati – and has won literary awards for his various works in all three languages. He is the founder of the Bhasha Research and Publication Centre, Baroda, the Adivasi Akademi, Tejgadh, and the Budhan Theatre, Ahmedabad. He headed and led the 50 volume People’s Linguistic Survey of India. His major books in English include After Amnesia, A Nomad Called Thief and The GN Devy Reader. He received the Prince Claus Award for his work with Adivasis and the Linguapax Award for his work towards language conservation.

Hardeep Singh

Hardeep Singh is a Deaf Artist, Multimedia Specialist, and a Deaf Empowerment Trainer from Delhi. He has completed various skill trainings for Deaf adults from reputed training centres in Delhi/NCR and Noida Deaf Society. He has also been a part of the Centum GRO Initiative (A Training Center for Deaf Adults). He used his multimedia skills to make creative videos in Indian Sign Language for Centum GRO's curriculum and managed their Social Media handles. Hardeep is presently volunteering as with Access Mantra Foundation by working on various projects from multi-media to creating content for workshops. As well, a freelance graphic designer.

Harikrishnan Sasikumar

S Harikrishnan recently completed his PhD in political science from Dublin City University. He works on social spaces and political culture in modern Kerala. He is also co-editor of Ala.

Junhi HAN

Junhi Han has worked for over 20 years at the UNESCO Headquarters mainly in the field of cultural heritage, including World Heritage Centre. She joined the UNESCO Cluster office for Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka based in New Delhi in April 2018. In addition to her work on advising state parties to the World Heritage Convention of Asia in their policy/strategy for cultural heritage, she has developed/implemented and coordinated various UNESCO flagship projects for cultural heritage sites in Asia notably for Afghanistan, Cambodia, China, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Iran and Pakistan, among others. She also pioneered the exploration of unknown areas for cultural heritage such as Siberia through “Preservation of the Frozen Tombs of the Altai Mountains (the Russian Federation)”, the first UNESCO project in cultural heritage implemented in the Siberia. In addition, she served coordinator of the first UNESCO-UNV Joint Programme 'United Nations Volunteers for Cultural Heritage'. She has worked for Intangible cultural heritage programme during the conceptual phase of the Convention for Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. A curator by training, she has made several publications and authored a number of articles in various journals relate to heritage. She is a member of ICOMOS and ICOM.

Kannan Gopinathan

Kannan Gopinathan is a former Indian Administrative Service Officer and activist from Kerala. He quit the services in 2019 as a mark of protest against government restrictions imposed in Jammu and Kashmir following the abrogation of Article 370. The officer initially came to limelight due to various initiatives in the Indian state of Mizoram, especially the efforts to improve state run schools, drive to revive Chite Lui and setting up of badminton academy in association with Tata Trusts and Pullela Gopichand. During the 2018 Kerala floods, his volunteering efforts without revealing his identity as an IAS officer was widely reported and appreciated.

Kapil Yadav

Dr. Kapil Yadav is a public health expert currently working as faculty at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi. His area of interest includes Public Health Nutrition, Micronutrients, Iodine Deficiency Disorders, Medical Education, Urban health, Social Determinants of Health, Health Policy, Epidemiology and Community based research.

Lijo Stephen Chacko

Lijo Chacko is Executive Director at Government to Citizen Changemakers Foundation and The Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam Foundation. He is also the Head of CSR of Synergy Marine Group, and a fellow traveller for various organisations/initiatives in the social space, such as Gurupuraskar Foundation, Estah, Mauna Dhwani, Citizens for Public Leadership to mention a few. Commissioned into the Indian Navy in 1996, Lijo was part of the team which constructed India’s first indigenous nuclear propelled submarine, and headed the Submarines’ Division in the Naval Dockyard, Mumbai. Lijo is an avid outdoorsman, and the author of Everest Diary, a journal on his ascent of Mt Everest, which has been published in Malayalam.

Maitrayee Chaudhuri

Maitrayee Chaudhuri teaches at Jawaharlal Nehru University. She has written on feminism, media and the academia. Her most recent books are: Refashioning India: Gender, Media and Public Discourse; and Doing Theory (co-ed) It is her engagement with teaching that led to a broad interest in social science education and its role in a democratic society. This led to an involvement with writing of sociology textbooks for NCERT in 2005.

Nobina Gupta

Nobina Gupta was born and brought up in a small town, Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, and grew her artistic wings amongst nature in Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan, West Bengal. Her art works aim to learn from the nativity of the environment around us and measure its impact on our lives, thus empowering lives deeply to realize the symbiotic relationship that they share with environ and their past. As an artist she has been represented at national and international Art fairs such as India Art Fair (2014 & 2011), Art Fair Cologne, Germany (2013), Art Stages, Singapore (2012), Art Asia Miami (2011) and Art Dubai (2011). She has also done solo shows in India at Gallery Sanskriti (2015 & 2011), in Switzerland at Jan Kossen Contemporary Gallery (2014) and Galerie Kashya Hildebr (2011), along with eminent group shows in London, Sweden, Indonesia and India.

Reetika Khera

Reetika Khera is a development economist. She is currently an associate professor (economics) at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. She works on social policy in India, and has been involved in conducting field studies on these issues for the past 20 years

Revue

Revue is a two member team of an artist and a media practitioner, Sreejata Roy and Mrityunjay Chatterjee. During her MPhil studies in media art at the Coventry School of Art and Design, UK, Sreejata Roy evolved a culturally embedded personal art practice within her larger investigation of socio-cultural issues via oral history and ethnography, the narration of daily life, and the formation of subjectivity. Mrityunjay is an artist with a specific interest in public domain and popular print culture and has a background in media and information technology initiatives - for almost a decade he was part of the Sarai Media Lab, a programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.

Salima Hashmi

Salima Hashmi is a painter, art educationist, writer and curator. She was educated at the National College of Arts (NCA), Lahore, the Bath Academy of Art, U.K., and the Rhode Island School of Design, USA. She taught for 30 years at NCA, Pakistan's premier art institution, and retired as its Principal. She has exhibited her own work, travelled and lectured extensively all over the world, and has curated about a dozen international art shows in the U.K., Europe, the USA, Australia, Japan and India. She is a recipient of The President's Award for Pride of Performance, Pakistan. She is the daughter of renowned Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz.

Shabnam Virmani

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.

Sudhanva Deshpande

Sudhanva Deshpande is a theatre director and actor, and author or Halla Bol: The Death and Life of Safdar Hashmi. He joined Jana Natya Manch in 1987, and has acted in over 4,000 performances of over 80 plays. He has co-directed two films on the theatre legend Habib Tanvir and his company Naya Theatre. He is the editor of Theatre of the Streets: The Jana Natya Manch Experience (Janam 2007), and co-editor of Our Stage: Pleasures and Perils of Theatre Practice in India (Tulika 2008). He has held teaching positions at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, and AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. Since 1998, he has been Managing Editor, LeftWord Books. He cycles around town.

Syeda Hameed

Syeda Hameed is the Chancellor of the Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad and has been a former member of India's Planning Commission. She is a known voice on gender justice, and is the Emeritus Chair of the Muslim Women's Forum. She has authored a number of books and translated works, and was also awarded the Padma Shri in 2007.

Tapan K Chakravarty

Tapan Chakravarty is currently Senior Professor of Interior Design at Pearl Academy. Teaching, consulting and practicing in Delhi/NCR for over three decades, his interests lie in History of Habitation, Vernacular Dwellings & Organic Settlements. He has been professionally involved with organisations on UNDP and INTACH on Architecture and Design projects. Tapan completed his Bachelor of Architecture & Masters in Urban Design from New Delhi, and PGC in Higher Education from UK

Team Interactions

Venkat Srinivasan

Venkat Srinivasan is a visiting researcher and archivist at the Archives, National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, India. The Archives at NCBS is a public collecting space for the history of contemporary biology in India. Prior to this, he was a research engineer at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University. He is an independent science writer, with work in The Atlantic and Scientific American online, Nautilus, Aeon, Wired, and the Caravan.