Contributors

Dr. Nandini Ghosh is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Development Studies Kolkata. She has a Ph. D in Social Sciences from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in the broad area of Gender and Disability Studies. She is engaged in research on issues of marginalisation and development from a gender, disability and development perspective. She also teaches qualitative research and sociology for M Phil courses in IDSK and is a guest lecturer at the Department of Sociology, Jadavpur University in Kolkata. Her website.

Dr. Shilpaa Anand teaches in the Department of English at Maulana Azad National Urdu University in Hyderabad. Her research is in the area of disability history and disability and culture. She may be reached at shilpaa.anand@gmail.com.

Namitha Kumar received a PhD in disability and psychology from the National Institute of Advanced Studies in 2016. She is the Research director of a healthcare not-for-profit, Centre for Health Ecologies and Technology and Member of State Rare Disease Policy Drafting Committee. Works with state and its Health agencies to improve healthcare access and delivery for rare disease communities in Karnataka. Head of Advocacy and Patient Rights, Thalassemia Society Karnataka. Namitha has keen interest in the working of public policies in ensuring health equity and justice.

Yogesh Kumar Yadav is a doctoral student at the Centre for Historical Studies in  JNU and Assistant Professor at CAS, Department of History, Aligarh Muslim University. His M.Phil. dissertation was titled  ‘Educating the ‘Disabled’ in Twentieth Century India: Some Historical and Contemporary Issues’.

Sameer Chaturvedi has completed his post graduation in Sociology from Delhi School of Economics, New Delhi, and an M.Phil. dissertation in Sociology at the School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is presently a Ph.D. Research Scholar in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Kapil Kumar has recently submitted his PhD thesis in Department of Political Science, Delhi University. The title of his dissertation is “Enhancing the Dignity of Visually Disabled Citizens: The Role of Govt. And Non-Governmental Organisations in India”. Being disabled, he has a special interest in issues of disability. In future, he is interested in working on a project related to the lives of disabled persons in India.

Dr. Navneet Sethi is an Associate Professor at the Centre for English Studies, School of Languages, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She teaches U.S. Multi Ethnic literatures, Ethnomusicology and Disability Studies. She holds a Ph.D. from the department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT, Kanpur. Selected for the U.S. State department IVLP (International Visitors Leadership Program), Navneet has visited and lectured at colleges in the U.S. on American Studies. She is trained in Hindustani Classical Vocal Music and brings her interest in music to teach courses on music and literary studies. Her experience and interest in disability issues has led her to develop the first four credit course on ‘Representation of Disability in Art’ in Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Venkatesh Boddu, studied MA (Anthropology) at the University of Hyderabad. He completed M.Phil. and is doing his PhD in Medical Anthropology at the Department of Liberal Arts, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad. He has carried out ethnographic fieldwork on understanding local perceptions of disability resulting from endemic skeletal fluorosis for his M.Phil. thesis, which was submitted in 2014.

Ritika Gulyani is a PhD scholar at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She is currently working on deaf education, employment, and is interested in mapping out identity issues among D/deaf individuals. She has previously submitted her M.Phil. dissertation titled, “A Comparative Study of Disability Policy in India and China” at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Dr. Nishi Pulugurtha is Head and Associate Professor in the department of English, Brahmananda Keshab Chandra College, Kolkata, and has taught courses as Guest Faculty in the department of English, West Bengal State University and Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata. A UGC Junior Research and Senior Research Fellow in the Department of English, University of Calcutta, she earned her Ph.D on Coleridge’s poetry. She has been awarded an Associateship at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, India for a project on the fiction of the Indian diaspora in the United States. Dr. Pulugurtha has published in refereed international and national journals and has published a monograph on Derozio. She also writes on travel and Alzheimer’s disease.

Shubhangi Vaidya is a sociologist by training and presently works in the School of Interdisciplinary and Trans-Disciplinary Studies at the Indira Gandhi National Open University. She has published in the areas of disability, gender, and culture and is the author (with Anu Aneja) of Embodying Motherhood: Perspectives from Contemporary India (2016, Sage-Yoda Press) and Autism and the Family in Urban India: looking Back, Looking Forward (2016, Springer India).

Soniya A M is pursuing PhD from Centre for Women’s Studies, University of Hyderabad. Her broad area of research is disability, care, and gender.

Shruthi V. is a full time doctoral scholar at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai. Her areas of specialization are: disability, gender, and access to justice. She has attended many national and international conferences both in India and abroad. She is an active social worker.

Dr. M. Anjum Khan is an Assistant Professor of English in Avinashilingam University in Coimbatore. Her expertise lies in literary history, culture, and literary theories. She has presented and published papers and chapters in books. She has also authored a book on a less known community. She has five years of teaching and eight years of research experience. She supervises the research work of Masters and M.Phil. scholars.

Sudarshan R Kottai is a PhD candidate at the Department of Liberal Arts, IIT Hyderabad, Telangana, India. His PhD research focuses on mental health care policies and practices in the Indian context from critical perspectives. He is a licensed clinical psychologist who had a brief stint at the Department of Clinical Psychology, Lokopriya Gopinath Bordoloi Regional Institute of Mental Health, Tezpur, Assam as Clinical Psychologist before enrolling for PhD. His broad interests include psychotherapies with minority clients, mental health in the context of gender and sexualities, close relationships and its dysfunction, psychological emergencies and North-East India.

Shubha Ranganathan is Assistant Professor in the Department of Liberal Arts, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad. Her work is broadly located at the interface of culture, gender and psychology, particularly with reference to issues of women’s health and illness. Her research is interdisciplinary, drawing on the fields of medical anthropology, gender studies, and alternate paradigms within psychology such as critical psychology. She has been engaged in explorations of local practices of healing among marginalized groups, carrying out ethnographic studies of phenomena such as spirit possession, trance, and indigenous healing. In the area of mental health and psychosocial disabilities, her research is framed by critical perspectives, focuses on lived experiences and narratives of people presumed to be ‘abnormal’ or ‘different’.

Sujitha belongs to Kasaragod district in Kerala. She has just completed an M. A. in English and Comparative Literature at Central University of Kerala. Her research work, which was titled ‘Gender and Care: A Study on Women Carers of Endosulfan Victims’, considers the relationship between ‘gender’ and ‘care’ in terms of Endosulfan victims’ care process.

Manoj Joseph is associated with the School of Rural Development, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Tuljapur, Maharashtra. He teaches courses on Social Work at graduate and post-graduate levels. His research areas include disability, caregiving, and inclusive education. He can be reached at manoj@tiss.edu .

Srilatha Juvva is a social work educator with experience in research and capacity building in the sectors of training in mental health and disability. She has recently co-edited a book on Spirituality, Culture and Development: Implications for Social Work Practice (2016). She currently works with the Centre for Disability Studies and Action, School of Social Work, Tata Institute of Social Sciences as Professor.

Dr. Mitu De is an Assistant Professor in Botany. After the diagnosis of her son with ASD in 2009, she started learning about ASD by attending training programs at Autism Society West Bengal (ASWB). At present, she is a governing body member of ASWB and Head of Research & Academic Studies Unit of ASWB. She has been invited as a resource person for workshops and trainings in institutes for individuals with special needs.

Anoopa Anand is a writer, editor, and animal welfare worker based in Bangalore. She primarily works with the rehabilitation and rehoming of ailing and abandoned dogs and cats.

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