A. Abraham

Dr A. Abraham completed his MBBS from Trivandrum Medical College and his MD in Dermatology from All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi. His passion for Neuro Linguistic Programming(NLP) led him to give up his medical career in the United Kingdom and concentrate full time on spreading the awareness of NLP. He is now the Chief Mentor at Mind Maters, a centre for research and development of behaviour technology. He has conducted several trainings, lectures and seminars on NLP both within and outside the country.

Amruth B R

Amruth is a researcher turned entrepreneur who works at the intersection of behaviour research, technology and education. He has designed over 100 products and games through his first startup –Vita Beans. His second startup, Guru-G is helping over a million school teachers teach better by discovering new teaching ideas. His inventions have won several awards internationally including a NASA award. He loves making music, writing fiction, backpacking and has been an invited speaker in over a dozen countries.

Arti Prashar

Arti Prashar has been Spare Tyre's Artistic Director/CEO since 2006. She is a Winston Churchill Fellow 2013 researching spirituality, dementia and ageing, a Fellow of the RSA, and a Fellow at the Centre of Contemporary Theatre at Birkbeck University. Under Arti’s leadership and vision, Spare Tyre has developed its inclusive creative practice championing diverse voices. She has a strong commitment to collaborative participatory art, nurturing the creative impulse that leads to personal and political fulfillment.

Arundhathi Subramaniam

Arundhathi Subramaniam is an award-winning poet and writer on spirituality and culture. Winner of the inaugural Khushwant Singh Memorial Prize for Poetry in January 2015, the Raza Award for Poetry and the International Piero Bigongiari Prize, she is the author of four works of poetry, two works of prose and an editor of several anthologies on poetry and spirituality. Widely translated and anthologised, her most recent book of poems, When God is a Traveller (2014) was shortlisted for the prestigious T.S. Eliot Prize. As prose writer, she is the author of The Book of Buddha and the bestselling biography of a contemporary mystic, Sadhguru: More Than a Life.

B.R.P. Bhaskar

BRP Bhaskar is an award-winning senior journalist and human rights activist from Kerala . Bhaskar served as editor in several leading national papers like The Hindu, Deccan Herald, the Statesman etc., in India. He was the Editorial Advisor of Asianet news channel, and the Director of Andhra Pradesh Times. He is also a columnist in the Gulf Today newspaper published from Sharjah.

Bryan Lewis Saunders

Bryan Lewis Saunders is a performance artiste, videographer, performance poet, and self-portrait painter based in Tennessee, USA. He attended art school at East Tennessee State University and is best known for creating daily self-portraits, from different life experiences and experiments, since 1995. He is also known for popularising a new genre of stand-up performance, which he calls stand-up tragedy.

Dalia Wahdan

Dalia Wahdan is an independent researcher. She is former associate professor of anthropology at the Foundation for Liberal and Management Education (FLAME University) at Pune, India. She specialises in urban studies and public policies and has a growing list of peer-reviewed academic publications including the book Planning Egypt’s New Settlements: The Politics of Spatial Inequities by Oxford University Press. Her extra-academic engagements include institutional capacity building for public agencies and non-governmental organisations in Egypt and the Gulf States. She was advisor to H.E. the Minister of Economy and Planning, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2016-17 for the development of the national program of social protection and for designing the national youth agenda. She held several research grants from international organisations and currently working on environmental justice in unsafe areas in Cairo under a two-year grant from the Arab Council for the Social Sciences.

Devdutt Pattanaik

Devdutt Pattanaik has written extensively on the relevance of mythology in modern time over past 20 years. Some of his books include Jaya, Sita, Business Sutra, My Gita, Girl who Chose and Boys who Fought. Formally trained in medicine, Pattanaik worked in the pharma industry for 15 years. Currently,he consults corporations on leadership and governance as well as television channels on mythological serials. His TV shows include Business Sutra on CNBC-TV18 and Devlok on Epic TV.

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.

Jerry White

Jerry White is Professor of Practice at University of Virginia, teaching a course on Religion, Violence and Strategy –How to Stop Killing in the Name of God. He is the founding CEO of Global Impact Strategies, a technology firm helping leaders simulate wiser decisions faster. White shares in the 1997 Nobel Prize for Peace awarded to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, and is also known for co-leading high-impact international campaigns, three of which led to major treaties: the Landmine Ban Treaty, the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; and the Cluster Munitions Ban Treaty. White served three years under President Obama as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State to launch the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations. As a Senior Ashoka Fellow, White has mentored hundreds of social entrepreneurs from over sixty countries. He describes how trauma victims can become survivor-leaders in his book Getting Up When Life Knocks You Down.White graduated with honors from Brown University, has an MBA from the University of Michigan, and Honorary Degrees from Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Caledonia University.

K Satchidanandan

A noted Indian poet and critic writing in Malayalam and English, K Satchidanandan is a pioneer of modern poetry in Malayalam, a bilingual literary critic, playwright, editor, columnist and translator, he is the former Editor of Indian Literature journal and the former Secretary of Sahitya Akademi. He is also a public intellectual of repute upholding secular anti-caste views, supporting causes like environment, human rights and free software and is a well known speaker on issues concerning contemporary Indian literature. He is the festival director of Kerala Literature Festival.

Karan Singh Magic

Karan Singh is a psychological illusionist and mentalist who has performed several shows across the country. Some of his solo shows include ‘Venexis’ (Dec 2013), ‘Dybukk 13’ (Dec 2014), ‘One Night Stand’ (July 2015), ‘Illusionati’ (July 2016), and ‘Merchant Of Menace’ (Dec 2016). He is certified in Neuro Linguistic Programming and fuses it with behavioural psychology, misdirection and hypnosis to create his unique brand of modern magic.

Kirsty Latoya

Kirsty Latoya is a 26-year-old, artist from South London who specialises in digital illustration. She concentrates on important issues such as mental health through her art.She taught herself digital art in December 2014 by experimenting with drawing apps and programs.She has recently written her first art book called Reflections of Me, published by OWN IT!

Kumar Shahani

Kumar Shahani is a noted Indian filmmaker who was largely responsible for the development of the ‘New Indian Cinema’. He was a pioneer of the ‘Indian New Wave’ that created an avant-garde cinema whose ideology was vastly different from the aesthetics of mainstream cinema prevalent till the seventies. His major films include Maya Darpan (1972), Tarang (1984), Khayal Gatha (1989) and Kasba (1991). He has also worked on a range of highly acclaimed short films.

Malavika Rajnarayan

Malavika Rajnarayan holds a BFA in painting awarded to her by the Karnataka Chitra kala Parishath, and has completed her post-graduation in painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S.University of Baroda. Her works have been exhibited in the 2007 Sosabeol International Art Expo in South Korea, ‘Summer Salon’ and the 1st Anniversary exhibition of Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, ‘Card-O-logy’ at Hacienda gallery, ‘Sites of Engagement’ and ‘Overtones’ at Anant Art Gallery in New Delhi, to name a few. She had her first solo exhibition at Anant Art Gallery in 2008.Malavika has also conducted workshops for children and has participated in several art camps.

Nilanjan Bhowmick

Nilanjan Bhowmick teaches Philosophy at University of Delhi, Faculty of Arts. Nilanjan taught at St. Stephen's college before joining Faculty of Arts. He is interested in Philosophy of Language, Modality, and aspects of mind as revealed by the study of language. He is also interested in the nature of explanation.

Nupur Dhakephalkar

Trained at The National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences, Nupur Dhakephalkar has completed a double bachelors, masters, and M.Phil. in Clinical Psychology. She runs a private practice offering various psychological counselling and psychotherapy services. She is a visiting faculty at the Department of Psychology at the Savitri Bai Phule Pune University. Nupur is a Registered Clinical Psychologist with the Rehabilitation Council of India, a professional life member of the Indian Association of Clinical Psychologists and the Joint Secretary of it'sMaharashtra branch.Her website is www.nupurdhakephalkar.com.

Rina Chandran

Rina Chandran is a Correspondent covering property rights in Asia for the Thomson Reuters Foundation.Prior to that, Rina was a business journalist for more than a dozen years in India, Singapore and New York, with Reuters News, Bloomberg and the Financial Times. Rina has an MFA in Writing from the Johns Hopkins University and an MA in Business & Economics Reporting from New York University.

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.

Ruth Mukwana

Ruth Mukwana is a fiction writer from Uganda. She is currently working for the United Nations on humanitarian affairs in New York and is an Associate Editor of Kweli Journal. She’s a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars (MFA) and holds a Bachelors degree in Law from Makerere University. Her short stories have appeared in Solstice Magazine, Black Warriors Review and Consequence Magazine.

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.

Team Interactions

Thomas J. McFarlane

Thomas J. McFarlane is a scholar of non dual philosophy, physics, and mathematics. He is the author of Einstein and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings and is a teacher at the Center for Sacred Sciences, a spiritual organisation drawing from the teachings of the non dual traditions of the world. He graduated in physics with distinction from Stanford University and also has graduate degrees in mathematics and in philosophy and religion. His research focuses on the foundational roots of science and its compatibility with non dual reality. He lives in Oregon, USA.

Tissy Mariam Thomas

Tissy Mariam Thomas, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Kerala, Thiruvanathapuram was awarded PhD in conceptual schemes of abnormal behaviour in various medical practices by University of Calicut. She was co-investigator of a major research project on psycho-social dimensions of indigenous healing systems in Karnataka funded by UGC. She has authored a book titled Iranginadappu (2008) and edited two books titled Pennira(2011) and Penvazhi(2014) published by DC Books, Kottayam, Kerala. Tissy has done her monograph on the gender identity and status of hijras in gharanas at Bangalore. She has completed a consultation research project on the development of psycho-social profiles for reintegrating young girls at shelter homes in Kerala and coordinated training program for community counselling educators of Kudumbashree, Kerala. Her research interests range from gender studies to social and cultural psychology and mental health.

Young-Hae Change Heavy Industries

Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries is a Seoul-based Web art group consisting of Young-hae Chang and Marc Voge. The group formed in 1999. Young-Hae Chang, is a Korean artist and translator with a Ph.D in aesthetics from Universite de Paris I. Marc Voge is an American poet who lives in Seoul.