Many minds and hands came forward to help create india & me. Although you don’t see all those involved on this page, many people dedicated hours of their time to brainstorm ideas, provide resources, review material or help with any of the myriad tasks that take place behind the scenes. We owe them an eternal debt of gratitude.
swati
I am an independent researcher-activist. My research broadly focuses on human rights and social justice movements, decolonisation and intersectionality. My PhD in socio-economics from Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Geneva focused on the political mobilisation of India’s caste-affected, caste-oppressed communities, their movement history, and how this movement has shaped lower-caste women activists into agents of change. I studied how Dalit women activists influence policy processes by negotiating and navigating andro-centric, upper-caste bureaucratic spaces of power. I have also studied Hungarian Roma women’s movement and how the European decade for Roma inclusion plan’ policy did not reflect the issues of Roma women. Currently, I am researching Dalit women’s digital activism and middle-class Dalit women’s mobility in the Indian neoliberal market; I collaborate with Dalit, indigenous and marginalised groups and organisations in India on mapping and archiving of indigenous forms of knowledge and decolonisation. india & me for me has been a space for continuous critical questioning and learning.
laila
I am a Lecturer in Education and International Development at the UCL Institute of Education. I work on the intersections of identity and education in conflict-affected settings. I have researched in India, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and the UK. I also co-direct Best Foot Music, an intercultural music and arts organisation. It connects refugee and marginalised musicians with extensive music networks and communities in the UK. I have also co-founded the Theatre of the Privileged decolonial movement in education and international development.
ketan
Physics teacher. Researcher in science education. Look at philosophy of science, scientific models, and new materialisms. Occupied with a lot of learning and unlearning of own privileges. In search of a kneaded rant.
aparna
I am a historian of South Asia. I have previously taught at Georgetown University, Washington DC and University of Delhi and was educated at JNU, University of Cambridge, and St. Stephen’s College. I have authored a diverse set of monographs, journal articles and book chapters in volumes on environmental history, labour history, history of Indian nationalism and revolutionism, the history of the Indian Ocean and its islands and psychoanalytical history.
usha
I am a Hyderabad based writer, editor and academic with research and teaching interests spanning media studies, feminist scholarship, critical science and technology studies, and writing pedagogy. I dabble in podcasting and writes for the popular media on issues related to education, health and gender.
apurva
I am apurva olwe, from Mumbai and I am finishing my masters in Modern Indian Studies at the University of Goettingen, in central Germany. I am interested in topics of research on gender, caste and labour in India. The india & me cafe provided me with a collaborative learning and unlearning space to reflect and feel home in a community of practitioners dedicated to the use of pedagogical medium to address social inequalities in India.
ruhail
I am a cultural anthropologist and my research examines the questions of sovereignty, Indigeneity, and Islamic revival movements. Specifically, focusing on how the Islamic discourses have problematized India’s secularism, and Military occupation in Kashmir. I have previously worked with Coventry University as research assistant, and junior research fellow with Jamia Millia Islamia New Delhi. Currently, I am a research fellow with Princeton, and Columbia University on the Project “Muslims in India”. To give a sense of thinking on these and other topics, some of the writers who have captivated my imagination in recent years are Edward Said, Walter Benjamin, Sylvia Wynter, Charles Taylor, Michael Foucault, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. I am broadly interested in the sociology of emotions, anthropology of power, anthropology of Islam and the political life of spaces and objects.
maya
A new opening has arisen in South Asian studies for contemporary engagement with archives and digital tools that has opened new paths to re-envisioning the ways we practise cultural studies. I am associated with the emerging field of “digital humanities” as a means to bringing new questions in imagining cultural issues to the fore in India, especially in terms of public history, engagement and digital media. From an inter-disciplinary perspective, I welcome the chance to think more specifically about these issues as they relate to public history.
India & me 