Abbas A Malakar
Abbas A Malakar is a student of Art History pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan. He has a keen interest in theories of visual perception, representation and aesthetics. For this, throughout the past two years, he has been invested in understanding the dynamics between art and audiences around Kolkata. He also works with public art and postcard making.
Abhilash Ningappa
Dancer, choreographer and teacher Abhilash Ningappa is the founder and the artistic director of Play Practice Artists' Residency in Bangalore, India. A post graduate from SEAD (Salzburg) and a post masters studies fellow of APASS(Belgium) Abhilash is acknowledged internationally for his pedagogic work in embodying critical situation. His residency in Bangalore has been doing exciting work in research-development and training in the field of contemporary dance and movement since its inception.
Aditya Arya
Aditya Arya is an eminent commercial and travel photographer. Over the past few years, he has been completely immersed in the subject and practice of photographic conservation. He has honed his skills and knowledge on preservation, restoration and archiving. He has played a pivotal role in the establishment of the India Photo Archive Foundation and the Neel Dongre Awards/Grants for Excellence in Photography. At present, he divides his time between his photography archive and Museo Camera—the largest not-for-profit photography museum in South-East Asia.
Adrian Notz
Adrian Notz is curator at the ETH AI Center, King of Elgaland-Vargaland, NSK Diplomat and Chevalier de la Tombe de Bakunin. From 2020–2022 he was curator at the Tichy Ocean Foundation and from 2012-2019 artistic director of Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich. Notz has also been appointed curator of the fifth edition of the Art Encounters Biennial, held in Timișoara, Romania, May 19–July 16, 2023.
Amrit Gangar
Amrit Gangar is a Mumbai-based author, film theoretician, historian and curator. He has authored and co-authored several publications in English and Gujarati, and has also lectured at several colleges and institutions in India and abroad. To his curatorial credit, are several retrospective programs for the Mumbai International Film Festival for Documentary, Short & Animation Films (MIFF), as also festivals and gallery shows in Europe and elsewhere.
Andras Szanto
Dr. András Szántó is the founder of the New York-based cultural strategy advisory firm András Szántó LLC. Dr. András Szántó advises museums, cultural institutions, and leading brands on cultural strategy. An author and editor, his writings have appeared in the New York Times, Artforum, the Art Newspaper, Artnet News and many other publications. He has overseen the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University and the Global Museum Leaders Colloquium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Dr. Szántó, who lives in Brooklyn, has been conducting conversations with art-world leaders since the early 1990s, including as a frequent moderator of the Art Basel Conversations series.
Anna Lynn Tom
Anna Lynn Tom is a research scholar of comparative literature at The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. Prior to this, she was an Assistant Professor of English at St. Joseph’s College of Commerce, Bangalore. As a researcher, she is interested in the entanglements of gender within postmodern Indian art practices. She has published critical writing on visual art in ASAP Connect, Catharsis Magazine, The Chakkar and Museum of Art and Photography (MAP) Blog. Hobbies include reading fiction and consuming art and cinema. She practices experimental forms of writing and occasionally, photography.
Aparna Roy Baliga
Dr Aparna Roy Baliga is an art historian, translator and curator who is interested in areas of Gender and Sexuality, Indian Aesthetics, Contemporary art practices and design histories. She is presently a faculty member of the Department of Art History and Aesthetics, The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. She has also authored the book ‘Transcending the Glass Case: The women Artists of early 20th.c Bengal and the Gendered Indigenous modernism’.
Aranya Bhowmik
Aranya Bhowmik is a Doctoral Candidate at the Indian Institute of Technology (Kanpur). An alma mater of Visva Bharati, Bhowmik is also an independent art writer and his articles have been published in various journals and magazines like Searching Lines, Insignia and Art East.
Aritra Basu
Aritra Basu is an Assistant Professor at the Department of English, Centre for Distance and Online Education, Rabindra Bharati University. He completed his MPhil from the Department of English, University of Delhi. He has published in journals of Jadavpur University, The University of Calcutta, The University of North Bengal, and Scottish Church College along with publications in journals like Muse India and Asian Quarterly. He has presented papers at conferences organised by the University of Birmingham, Johns Hopkins University, University of Nevada, Lancaster University and several others. He is also a creative writer and a slam poet, and he enjoys public speaking.
Arkaprava Bose
Dr Arkaprava Bose is an art historian, writer and archivist currently working at Emami Art as a researcher. He completed his PhD in Art History from Visva Bharati, Santiniketan.
Arkapravo Chaudhury
Arkapravo Chaudhury is a filmmaker, screenwriter and musician. Completing his graduation with honors in Physics from Asutosh College under University of Calcutta, he went on to follow his passion for cinema and music. His short films have been shown in international film festivals including the Madrid Art Film Festival. He earned several screenwriting accolades including multiple nominations at the Jaipur International Film Festival, New Delhi Film Festival, IFF New York and the prestigious Austin Film Festival. He is also a Western Classical trained violinist who currently plays guitars and piano, concentrating on Jazz, Blues, Latin, Bossa and Fusion music. Besides, he occasionally photographs paintings and sculptures; reviews film, music, and writes about football.
Arundhati Ghosh
Arundhati Ghosh is the Executive Director of the India Foundation for the Arts (IFA). She is a recipient of the fellowship under Chevening Clore Leadership Awards in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2015-2016 and the Chevening Gurukul Scholarship for Leadership and Excellence at the London School of Economics, London in 2005. She is also a Fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar. She sits on the advisory panel for The Museum of Art and Photography (MAP), Bangalore and is a Board Member of Sangama, Bangalore. She speaks and writes for leading Indian and international cultural networks including International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies (IFACCA), The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC), Kultura Nova Foundation, among others. She also has a degree in classical dance and is a poet in Bangla.
Asok Kumar Das
Dr Asok Kumar Das was the Director, Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum, Jaipur. The thrust areas of his research and publication are Mughal and Rajasthani art and culture, Museology and history on which he has published more than sixty books, portfolios, research papers, popular articles and book reviews in leading Indian and foreign art journals. His monograph on the great Mughal natural history painter, Ustad Mansur was published in 2012.
Aveek Sen
Aveek Sen is a curator and writer on art, literature, music and society. He was a senior assistant editor (editorial pages) of The Telegraph, Calcutta, where he wrote extensively on photography. He was a Rhodes Scholar at University College, Oxford, where he studied English literature, before going on to teach English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. He is the winner of the 2009 International Center for Photography Infinity Award for Writing on Photography.
Avery Banerjee
Avery Banerjee (she/her) works as an Assistant Editor at Kolkata Centre for Creativity. A postgraduate in English Literature from Jadavpur University with NET-LS, she has a Diploma in Integrated Marketing Communication from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata (her alma mater) and Certificate in Editing and Publishing also from JU. Avery has penned a book of poems, ‘Musings of a Candied Soul’, published by Ukiyoto in 2021. She is interested in travelling, culinary and visual arts, debate, and public speaking. She has also been invited as a speaker at webinars and advocates for women's empowerment, gender equality and mental health.
Bharti Lalwani
Bharti Lalwani trained as an artist at Central St. Martin's College of Art and Design in London and later at The Sotheby's Institute of Art in Singapore. While she has produced writing on international art, much of her criticism is focused on contemporary art of Southeast Asia. She established Litrahb Perfumery in 2018 to explore a new language of fragrance and flavour as extended mediums of her critique. In 2021, she launched the project 'Bagh-e Hind: Scent Translations of Mughal and Rajput garden-paintings'.
Boro Baski
Boro Baski works for the community-based organisation Ghosaldanga Adibasi Seva Sangha in West Bengal. The NGO is supported by the German NGO Freundeskreis Ghosaldanga und Bishnubati. He was the first person from his village to go to college as well as the first to earn a Ph.D. (in social work) at Visva-Bharati. He has authored Santali translations of Rabindranath Tagore’s Vidyasagar-Charit and Raktakarabi (Red Oleanders), published by the Asiatic Society & Sahitya Akademi in 2020.
Chandril Chattopadhyay
Chandril Chattopadhyay completed his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in English Literature from St. Xavier's College, Kolkata and Jadavpur University and his degree in Law from the University of Burdwan. He is an aspiring Art and IP Lawyer and an interdisciplinary scholar working on the intersections of Law and Literature, Legal theory, Media Law and Legal Journalism. He has presented his research in major conferences around the world and writes for major National dailies on topics from Law to Public Policy.
Chhatrapati Dutta
Prof. Chhatrapati Dutta is the Principal of Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata. He studied art at Visva Bharati in Santiniketan, and his practice explores the issues of post-colonial India, such as the rising consumerist culture of a developing nation through the lens of the city of Kolkata.
Debasish Deb
Debasish Deb is a cartoon and comic illustrator. He has been a contributor to daily newspapers like 'The Telegraph', 'Anandabazar Patrika', and periodicals like 'Desh', and 'Anandamela'. As a children's illustrator, he mostly works with publications such as N.B.T, Vikas or Orient Blackswan. He also wrote a book titled 'Rang Tulir Satyajit' in 2015, describing Ray's illustrative practices and accomplishments.
Debayan Chakraborty
Debayan Chakraborty is an IT professional currently working as an IT administrator at Kolkata Centre for Creativity.
Dikshit Sinha
Dikshit Sinha trained as a Social Anthropologist, spent his early years as a research worker at the Asiatic Society and Anthropological Survey of India, Calcutta. He then moved to the department of Social Work, Sriniketan, Visva Bharati. He has published extensively, both in Bengali and in English, on tribes and various aspects of rural reconstruction wok, social, and culture life of the slum, village social life, and impact of panchayat on society and economy of West Bengal etc. His books include Tribal women (ed), Hill Kharias of Purulia, and Rabindranather Palli Punargathan Prayash (Rabindranath's rural reconstruction).
Enora Lalet
Enora Lalet is a food visual artist who lives and works in Bordeaux, France. Travelling is a crucial part of her art. Her parents had fallen in love with Indonesia and she followed them there as a young child. She has been to India, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, New York, Berlin, London and so on which is evident in the mixture of cultures and subjects in her displayed pieces of work. After a master degree in Arts and a degree in Anthropology, she exhibited her culinary portraits in Bordeaux (2010), introducing her series 'Cooking Faces'. Food being her favourite material, she has taken part in the making of cookery books for social associations in favour of children and also in gastronomy festivals in France. Currently, she works with Art houses (in New Delhi, 2015 and Java, 2014) where traditional skills, the body and gastronomy intertwine in her artworks.
Ganesh Devy
Ganesh Devy is a literary scholar and cultural activist. In 1996 he left his academic position at the M.S. University of Baroda to take up the conservation of threatened languages in India. In 2014 he was awarded Padmashree by the Government of India. At present he is the Chairman of the People’s Linguistic Survey of India, a nation-wide study of over 780 languages, being published by Orient Blackswan in a series of 50 volumes.
Giorgio Agamben
Giorgio Agamben is an Italian philosopher best known for his work investigating the concepts of the state of exception,form-of-life (borrowed from Ludwig Wittgenstein) and homo sacer. The concept of biopolitics (carried forth from the work of Michel Foucault) informs many of his writings.
Gopalan Mullik
Gopalan Mullik, former faculty member of Mass Communication and Videography at St. Xavier's College, Kolkata, pursued an M.A. in Film and Video from American University, Washington DC. He received his doctoral degree in Film Research from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. His most recent publication, Explorations in Cinema through Classical Indian Theories: New Interpretations of Meaning, Aesthetics, and Art, explores cinema and film theory through classical Indian theories.
Goutam Halder
Goutam Halder, the doyen of Bengali theatre, began his journey as an actor – director in 1986. He has so far appeared in over 100 different roles on stage as an actor and has directed more than 40 plays. His notable theatre productions/performances include 'Meghnad Badh Kabya' and 'Borda Borda'. Goutam Halder is also revered as a mentor and tutor of dramatics. His formulation of a unique style of acting has been influencing the Bengali stage even today. He has also contributed as lecturer and demonstrator at Georgia University in Athens, Georgia, USA; Edinburgh Festival Theatre, Scotland, UK, and International Dance & Theatre Festival, Goteborg, Sweden – 2002.
Iman Chakraborty
Iman Chakraborty is an Indian (Bengali, to be specific) singer and actress. Chakraborty won the National Film Award for Best Female Playback Singer in 2017 for her Bengali song "Tumi Jaake Bhalobasho" from Praktan. She is one of the few singers to have won a national award for her debut film song in India. She practises Rabindra Sangeet and her renditions of the same are sought after by many. The genres of her music include Bengali film songs, folk music of Bengal and Rabindra Sangeet.
Ina Puri
Ina Puri is a writer, biographer, art curator and collector. She is the author of several books, including 'Faces of Indian Art and Journey with a Hundred Strings'. She produced 'Meeting Manjit', a film on Bawa, which won the National Award. She currently occupies the position of Editor at Art Varta and has also published a pictorial memoir on Pt. Shiv Kumar Sharma entitled, 'The Man and His Music'. Her latest book is 'Raghu Rai’s Kolkata', the distinguished photographer’s fascinating narrative of the city and its people. Ina’s three-decade-long engagement with the arts embraces everything from tribal art and folk theatre to contemporary performing arts, visual arts and literature.
Indrapramit Roy
Prof. Indrapramit Roy is a faculty member of the Department of Painting, Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU), Baroda. He has been teaching painting at his alma mater since 1995 and presently is an Associate Professor and the Dean of Students. He was also awarded the Inlaks Scholarship to study MA Painting at the Royal College of Art, London, which also included a term each at Cite des Arts, Paris and Hochschule der Kunst, Berlin on Erasmus exchange grant.
Kathakali Jana
Kathakali Jana is the administrative and events head at the ITC Sangeet Research Academy. Besides her day job, she also works as a freelance feature writer and dance reviewer for several print and online publications and has contributed to The Telegraph in Kolkata (as a regular reviewer of dance and music), Deccan Herald in Bangalore and Sunday MidDay in Mumbai (newspapers), The TOI-Crest, The Week and Tehelka among others.
Kenan Malik
Kenan Malik is an Indian-born British writer, lecturer, and broadcaster. He has presented 'Analysis', on BBC Radio 4, and 'Nightwaves', BBC Radio 3’s arts and ideas programme and was, for many years, a panelist on 'The Moral Maze', also on Radio 4. Malik has written and presented a number of radio and TV documentaries including 'Disunited Kingdom', 'Are Muslims Hated?', 'Islam, Mullahs and the Media', 'Skullduggery and 'Man, Beast and Politics'. He is a columnist for the Observer, and an occasional columnist for the New York Times and Göteborgs-Posten.
Keerat Garcha
Keerat Garcha is a heritage and art conservator with an inclination towards collection care management in museums and art institutions. She is currently working at Kolkata Institute of Art Conservation, a unit of Anamika Kala Sangam Trust, supported by Tata Trusts Art Conservation Initiative.
KG Subramanyan
Recognised as one of the pioneers of Indian Modern Art, KG Subramanyan, fondly known as ‘Mani da’, was instrumental in creating a post-independence identity for India through his art. Influenced strongly by Indian folk and traditional art forms, but also by western ideas like Cubism, Subramanyan's works won him international acclaim due to their universal appeal. His contributions to Indian art and culture and to society in general through a career spanning over six decades, won him India’s highest civilian awards, including the Padma Shri in 1975, Padma Bhushan in 2006 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2012, with his name going down in the annals of history as one of India’s finest artists.
Anselm Kiefer
Anselm Kiefer is a renowned German painter and sculptor. His thought-provoking works incorporate a range of materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac. The poems of Paul Celan have played a role in developing Kiefer's themes of German history and the horrors of the Holocaust, as have the spiritual concepts of Kabbalah. Kiefer's works are characterised by an unflinching willingness to confront his culture's dark past,and unrealised potential in works that are often done on a large, confrontational scale. In his works, one can find signatures and names of people of historical importance, legendary figures or historical places. All of these may be interpreted as encoded sigils through which Kiefer seeks to process the past; this has resulted in his work being linked with the movements like New Symbolism and Neo–Expressionism. Kiefer has lived and worked in France since 1992.
Krishanu Nath
Krishanu Nath is presently working as an Assistant Professor at the Government College of Art & Craft, Kolkata. He has completed his M. Phil in Visual Studies from the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Currently, he is pursuing his Ph.D. from the Department of History of Art, Kala Bhavana, Visva-Bharati. Both as an art practitioner and researcher, his interest revolves around LGBTQIA+ politics and its representation in the visual domain. Besides participating in several exhibitions and workshops, he has also presented papers at international and institutional conferences and webinars.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist, who has been widely recognized as one of the most compelling Indigenous voices of her generation. Her work breaks open the intersections between politics, story and song—bringing audiences into a rich and layered world of sound, light, and sovereign creativity.She holds a PhD from the University of Manitoba, and teaches at the Dechinta Centre for Research & Learning in Denendeh.
Lina Vincent
Lina Vincent is an art historian and curator with two decades experience with research, design, curation and public art programming. She is committed to socially engaged arts practice that reflects in multidisciplinary projects she has developed and participated in. She recently initiated an arts consultancy under her own name and is expanding it with a team of creative practitioners. She was the Chief Program Designer, Visual Art & Design for Sublime's ArtEd Bangalore (2017-19). Some of her independent projects include MEMORABILIA, Gallery Sumukha Bangalore (2014); 'under my skin...under your skin' Baptist Coelho (2013); ‘Between the Lines: Identity, Place and Power - Selections from the Waswo X Waswo Collection of Indian Printmaking’ NGMA Bangalore + Mumbai (2012-13).
Mallika Sarabhai
Mallika Sarabhai is one of India’s most distinguished choreographers and dancers. She holds a Ph.D. in organizational behavior and has been the Honorary Director of Darpana Academy of Performing Arts for the last 40 years. In a career spanning over four decades, she has created and performed classical and contemporary works and produced over 3000 hours of television work on issues pertaining to the environment, women, communal harmony, and violence.
Mariyam Begum
Mariyam Begum is a postgraduate student of Art History at Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan. As part of her Masters’ dissertation, she is studying contemporary art in South Asia. She is passionate about nature and much of her work aligns with reading visual art through an ecological and cultural lens.
Martin Kämpchen
Since 1980, Kämpchen lives in Santiniketan in West Bengal where the poet Rabindranath Tagore had spent half of his life. He travels extensively in India and visits Europe about three times a year. His field of activity is the cultural dialogue between India and Germany especially in the area of literature and religion. Kämpchen translates the poet Tagore and the Hindu saint Ramakrishna from Bengali to German, compiles anthologies, writes essays and short stories; he has also published a novel. He regularly writes for the cultural section of the renowned daily “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” about India. In Germany, Martin Kämpchen gives lectures, readings and seminars. In India, he actively guides the development of two tribal villages.
Monica Juneja
Monica Juneja is a Professor of Global Art History at the University of Heidelberg. Her research and publications focus on transculturation and visual representation, disciplinary practices of art history in South Asia, gender and political iconography, history of visuality in early modern South Asia and architectural histories and heritage. She is the author of the recently published Disaster as Image: Iconographies and Media Strategies across Asia and Europe; EurAsian Matters: China, Europe and the Transcultural Object. Monica Juneja edits the Series Visual and Media Histories(Routledge), is on the editorial board of Visual History of Islamic Cultures (De Gruyter), Ding, Materialitat, Geschichte (Bohlau), Asthetische Praxis (Brill), History of Humanities (University of Chicago Press), and is co-editor of the Journal of Transcultural Studies.
Nalini S Malaviya
Nalini S Malaviya is a Bangalore-based art consultant, curator and writer. She has been writing for the media since 2003 and has been an art columnist for leading newspapers. She has contributed to the Financial Times, Times of India, Bangalore Mirror, Deccan Herald, several art magazines and artist books, among other publications. Nalini is the Founder/Publisher of Art Scene India, www.artsceneindia.com - a significant resource site and a digital archive, with extensive documentation of the Indian art scene over the last 15 years. Some of her curatorial projects include Enchanted Breath, Convergence—an online exhibition as part of an art and media collective, Bend, Parallax of Visual Memories, Reimagining: (Un)Reality and Space, Irreverent Gene and Polynomials of Relevance with leading contemporary artists from across the country.
Nanak Ganguly
Nanak Ganguly is an independent curator and critic based in Kolkata. He has written extensively for The Statesman, Asian Age, Business and Political Observer, Deccan Chronicle, and others. He was appointed the Commissioner of VIIIth Pan Asia- Pacific Art Biennale by Lalit Kala Akademi in 1997. He has curated shows in New York, Tokyo, Singapore, New Delhi, London, Kolkata, Hyderabad (CCMB) and Mumbai.
Nicolas Roth
Nicolas Roth is a Researcher, Writer and Horticulturist. He is a research scholar with a PhD in South Asian Studies from Harvard University. The focus of his academic work lies at the intersection of literature, intellectual history and material culture in early modern South Asia, with a special focus on the history of gardens and horticulture and their representation in text and image. He lives in Boston.
Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh
Dr Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh received her BA in Philosophy and Religion from Wellesley College, MA from the University of Pennsylvania, and PhD from Temple University. Dr. Nikky is the Crawford Professor and the Chair of the Department of Religion at Colby College in Maine, USA. She has published extensively in the field of Sikh Studies. Some of her books include 'Poems from the Guru Granth Sahib', 'The First Sikh: Life and Legacy of Guru Nanak', 'Sikhism: An Introduction, Birth of the Khalsa: A Feminist Re-memory of Sikh Identity', 'Feminine Principle in the Sikh Vision of the Transcendent', 'Physics and Metaphysics of the Guru Granth Sahib'. She has lectured widely, and her views have also been aired on television and radio in America, Canada, England, Ireland, Australia, India, and Bangladesh. She has received many awards for her scholarly works. In 2022, the city of Fresno in California proclaimed 26 March as ‘Dr. Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh’ Day.
Nupur Saraswat
Nupur Saraswat is an international stage artist and a writer. She is the creator of the art form Theatrical Poetry. Through her work she explores the unbounded personal liberties as the ultimate beckoning of any social movement. She creates, directs, and performs shows that have been hailed as "urgent and engaging". She is currently touring with her show 'Live.Love.Loaf. An investigation into who gets to loiter' across Asia.
Paula Sengupta
Dr Paula Sengupta is an artist, academician, curator, researcher and writer who works using diverse mediums and techniques including found objects, hand embroidery, chintz, muslin, woodblock, nakshi kantha and applique. Paula’s repertoire as an artist includes broadsheets, artist’s books, objects, installation-performance work, and community art projects.
Pavithra Chari
Pavithra is Hindustani classical vocalist, Music educator, Researcher, Playback singer, and Expressive arts-based therapist. Since 2014, she has been a disciple of Smt. Shubha Mudgal for khayal. She was awarded the Kolkata Centre for Creativity Arts Fellowship 2020 (music) for her academic paper ‘Understanding song-text: A study of khayal compositions in Hindustani music’ (published here). She is one half of the contemporary - classical duo 'Shadow and Light' (with arranger/ keyboardist Anindo Bose) as the vocalist, composer and lyricist. They were on the cover of Rollingstone India as ‘the new faces of fusion’ in 2018. A U.S Dept of State Alumna, she is a performing/recording artist and has worked with eminent composers like Yuvan Shankar Raja and A.R Rahman. Apart from music, she is a trained Bharatnatyam dancer, and a UNESCO-certified creative movement/expressive arts therapist.
Philippe Jaccottet
Philippe Jaccottet (30 June 1925 – 24 February 2021) was a Swiss Francophone poet and translator. He was one of Europe’s most prominent and prolific twentieth-century poets, who won several awards for his poetry and prose, including the Petrarch Prize, the Prix Goncourt and the Schiller Prize. Celebrated for his numerous translations of works by Homer, Mandelstam, Goethe, Hölderlin, Rilke, Musil and Ungaretti, among others, his collected works have been published in the prestigious Pléiade series by Gallimard.
Pinaki De
Pinaki De is an award-winning graphic illustrator-designer who regularly works for renowned publishers like Penguin Random House, Harper Collins, Oxford University Press, Sahitya Academy, Rupa among several others. Also an Associate Professor of Raja Peary Mohan College, Uttarpara, De has designed almost 500 book covers to date. His layout design on Satyajit Ray's archival manuscripts has drawn accolades from all across the globe. He is the winner of Publishing Next prize for the best book cover design in India twice in 2017 and 2019.
Purab Riddhi Chaudhuri
Purab Riddhi Chaudhuri is an ethnomusicologist, musician and an independent documentary film-maker from India. He is also a multi-instrumentalist. Purab Riddhi grew up in and around Northeast India and is a polyglot. He currently lives with his wife Jasodhara and two cats in Hridaypur, located in the North 24 Parganas district in West Bengal. His first MA in Comparative Literature in 2017 was followed by another in Ethnomusicology in 2019 from the Irish World Academy under University of Limerick in Ireland. He is currently beginning his Doctoral degree under the Department of Music in University College Cork in Ireland. His area of interest is branched out on to a myriad of disciplines, including but not limited to language groups, music and dance in transition, indigenous songs and lullabies, songs of protest, and the infinite arrays of performing practices around India and the world.
Ratnabali Chatterjee
Prof. Ratnabali Chatterjee was Professor of History, Department of Islamic History and Culture, Calcutta University, and author of 'From the Karkhana to the Studio: Changing social roles of patron and artist in Bengal'.
Reena Dewan
Reena Dewan is the Director of Kolkata Centre for Creativity (KCC), President of ICOM India & Board member of ICOM INTERCOM. She is also the President of West Bengal Arts Council, WICCI & an Art practitioner. She was instrumental in launching the first ‘Accessibility Program’ in Eastern India, which forms a bridge between people with special abilities and the arts.
Rishav Paul
Rishav Paul is a research scholar whose area of expertise is post-Independence Indian drama. Rishav has honed his craft of theatre criticism by participating in the Articulate Mentorship Programme organized by the Kolkata Centre for Creativity, under the tutelage of Dr Ananda Lal. After obtaining an M.A. in English from Jadavpur University, he is now pursuing a PhD in English from Savitribai Phule Pune University. He likes to read books on almost any topic under the sun, but unwinds by watching football and making a wide variety of dishes with eggs.
Rituparna Roy
Dr. Rituparna Roy is an academic and creative writer based in Kolkata. She is the initiator of the Kolkata Partition Museum Project (KPMP) and managing trustee of the KPM Trust, which aims to establish a Partition museum in Kolkata. She has authored Gariahat Junction, published by Kitaab International (Singapore), and holds credit for authorship of South Asian Partition Fiction in English: From Khushwant Singh to Amitav Ghosh (AUP, 2010). She is the co-editor of the ICAS Volume Writing India Anew: Indian English Fiction 2000-2010 (AUP, 2010).
Samindranath Majumdar
Prof. Samindranath Majumdar is a faculty member of the Department of Painting, The Indian College of Arts & Draftsmanship, Kolkata. He received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Visual Arts from Rabindra Bharati University. His works dwell around semi-abstract visual language.
Sampurna Chakraborty
Sampurna Chakraborty is an art historian, researcher and writer, working on Institutional History, Art Pedagogy, Archival Methodologies, Spectator Participant Methodology, and Participatory Curatorial Cultures. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. research from the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences and is based in Kolkata.
Sanchayan Ghosh
Prof. Sanchayan Ghosh is a faculty member of the Department of Painting, Visva Bharati, Santiniketan. He received his MFA (1997) and BFA (1995) from Kala Bhavan, Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan. He has been associated with different pedagogy projects with NSD, FICA and Five Million Incidents of Max Mueller Bhavan, Kolkata.
Sangram Mukhopadhyay
Sangram Mukhopadhyay is an aspiring dancer who has reconciled with his lack of conformity (genre-wise) by exploring movement in different spaces. A movement enthusiast with a love for performance, he is currently involved as a creator and associate artist with multiple collectives based in Kolkata and elsewhere. He derives his source of movement from a 70s club-style, namely Waacking/Whacking, and is curious to understand how to contemporize the movement.
Sanjoy Mukhopadhyay
Sanjoy Mukhopadhyay is an eminent Professor of Film Studies at Jadavpur University. He is mainly known for his writings on cultural modernity in India. He is also a known Ritwik Ghatak scholar and author, as well as a commentator on social issues. Prof. Mukhopadhyay has several publications including books.
Sayantan Bishnu
As a student of English Literature at Jadavpur University, Sayantan Bishnu was fascinated by two things: the incorporation of narrative theory into popular music, and espionage thrillers. He worked briefly as a content editor, for a sports blog, before shifting his attention to writing. His love for Indian classical music and the rock band Radiohead, is interconnected with his love for sports fiction, travelogues, and of course, author John Le Carré. Sayantan’s sporadic writings on music can be found in his blog titled 'Pencil in a Loop'.
Shakti Chattopadhyay
Shakti Chattopadhyay (1933–95) was a critically acclaimed and popular Bengali writer and poet whose books of poetry include 'Hey Prem', 'Hey Naishabdo', 'Jwalanta Rumal' and 'Jete Pari, Kinto Keno Jabo?' which won the prestigious Sahitya Akedemi Award. He also published 10 novels, several collections of travel writing, a collection of essays and Bengali translations of volumes by Omar Khayyam, Khalil Gibran, Mirza Ghalib, Heinrich Heine, Federico García Lorca and Pablo Nerua, among others.
Shambhobi Ghosh
Shambhobi Ghosh is a business writer at PwC India Acceleration Center, Kolkata. Having trained in English Literature and Ecology & Environment Studies, Shambhobi's literary interests span science fiction, ecopoetry, historical fiction, literary fiction, and other diverse forms and genres. Her stories, poems, and literary translations have appeared in magazines and anthologies in India and the UK. In 2016, she was awarded the Sera Bangali Kalker Sera Ajke award for literature by the ABP Media Group. Her latest work of translation is a short story collection by Jean Lorrain, titled Krishna Ether (from the volume Nightmares of an Ether Drinker, translated from French by Brian Stableford), published by Spout Books.
Shramana Saha
Shramana Saha, former editorial intern at KCC, currently works as Junior Editor at Karadi Tales, Chennai. With a master’s in English Literature from Jadavpur University, a certificate from The Seagull School of Publishing, and an Editorial Internship at KCC under her belt, she hopes to find herself deeply involved in the world of publishing someday. As for her hobbies, Shramana hopes to continue rowing well into her twilight years, playing some instrument or the other along the way.
Siddharth Sivakumar
Siddharth Sivakumar is an entrepreneur and art writer, who regularly writes on visual art and culture for print and online publications. Siddharth also heads the Visual Arts and Publishing departments at KCC.
R. Siva Kumar
Prof. R. Siva Kumar is an art historian and curator. He has authored over 15 books on modern Indian art and curated numerous exhibitions including Santiniketan: The Making of a Contextual Modernism, the retrospectives K. G. Subramanyan and Benodebehari, and The Last Harvest: Paintings of Rabindranath. He is a professor of Art History at Visva Bharati, Santiniketan. In 2018, he was awarded 'Lifetime Achievement Award for Art History and Art Criticism' by the Government of West Bengal.
Soibam Haripriya
Soibam Haripriya is a poet and researcher. Her work has appeared in several anthologies including Centrepiece: New Writing and Art from Northeast India (2017), published by Zubaan, 40 Under 40: An Anthology of Post-Globalisation Poetry (2016) and A Map Called Home (2018). She has also been published in Muse India (May-June 2019), Poetry at Sangam (July 2019) and the Sahitya Akademi journal, Indian Literature. She is presently a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Conflict and Development Studies, Ghent University, Belgium.
Soujit Das
Prof. Soujit Das is a faculty member of the History of Art Department, Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata. His doctoral thesis explored ideas of Occidentalism in Mughal miniature paintings (1580 - 1658), majorly focusing on different aspects of political Islamism and ethno-centrism.
Soumik Nandy Majumdar
Prof. Soumik Nandy Majumdar is a faculty member of the Department of History of Art, Visva Bharati, Santiniketan in the Department, Kala Bhavana (The Institute of Fine Arts & Crafts). Prof. Majumdar has taught as a Visiting Faculty at IIT- Kanpur, in the discipline of Fine Arts, under the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. He completed his BFA and MFA in History of Art from Santiniketan and M.S.University, Baroda respectively.
Souvik Mukherjee
Dr Souvik Mukherjee is an Assistant Professor in Cultural Studies at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta, India. Souvik’s research looks at the narrative and the literary through the emerging discourse of videogames as a storytelling media and also a broad spectrum of topics in Game Studies ranging from postcolonialism and videogames to the videogame industry in South Asia. Currently, he is researching how certain ancient Indian board games contribute to the understanding of gameplay. Souvik is the author of three monographs, Videogames and Storytelling: Reading Games and Playing Books (Palgrave Macmillan 2015), Videogames and Postcolonialism: Empire Plays Back (Springer UK 2017) and Videogames in the Indian Subcontinent (Bloomsbury India 2022), as well as many articles and book chapters in national and international publications. Souvik has been named a ‘DiGRA Distinguished Scholar’ in 2019 and a Higher Education Video Game Alliance fellow in 2022. He is also an affiliated senior research fellow at the Centre of Excellence, Game Studies at the University of Tampere.
Sreevalsan Thiyyadi
Sreevalsan Thiyyadi is a performing-arts enthusiast and journalist based in Kerala. For over a quarter-century he's been covering national and international cultural events for various media houses in Delhi and Chennai. He writes and contributes to newspapers and websites in both English and Malayalam. Sreevalsan is also an aspiring author who has penned the biography of a Chenda percussionist (2013) and is working towards more such publications.
Srijani Ghoshal
Srijani Ghoshal is a dancer, media professional and aspiring art writer currently pursuing a degree in public relations from St.Xavier's College, Kolkata.
Sriza Ray
Sriza Ray (he/her) is a postgraduate in English Literature from Presidency University, and currently works as an Assistant Editor at Kolkata Centre for Creativity. She harbours an interest in all things related to art, literature, history and research. Above all, Sriza is passionate about mountains, museums, and maintaining a list of names for his future pets.
Sumathi Ramaswamy
Sumathi Ramaswamy is James B. Duke Professor of History and International Comparative Studies, and Chair of the Department of History, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA. She has published extensively on language politics, gender studies, spatial studies and the history of cartography, visual studies and the modern history of art, and more recently, digital humanities and the history of philanthropy. Her published works include The Goddess and the Nation: Mapping Mother India and Husain’s Raj: Visions of Empire and Nation; and edited volumes, Barefoot Across the Nation: Maqbool Fida Husain and the Idea of India, and Empires of Vision (co-edited). She is a co-founder of Tasveerghar: A Digital Network of South Asian Popular Visual Culture (www.tasveerghar.net). Her current work is a collaborative digital humanities project titled “No Parallel? The Fatherly Bodies of Gandhi and Mao.”
Sunanda K. Sanyal
Sunanda K. Sanyal is an art historian. He is interested in the politics of representation and identity and contemporary artists from former colonies in global discourses. Sanyal has chaired panels on contemporary artists of colour at various conferences, including the College Art Association, the African Studies Association, the Arts Council of the African Studies Association, and the American Council of South and Southeast Asian Art. He is currently working on a book about South Asian artists in the United States.
Swapna Liddle
Swapna Liddle is an author and a historian with a specialization in the history of Delhi. Swapna Liddle works to raise awareness about the architectural and cultural history of Delhi, and is the author of books, including 'Connaught Place and the Making of New Delhi' and 'Chandni Chowk: The Mughal City of New Delhi'.
Swati Ghosh
Swati Ghosh, a teacher, researcher and writer, is the author of numerous articles and an expert in translation and transcription. She completed her Master’s degree in English literature from Visva Bharati and also worked as Research Assistant at the Rabindra Bhavana Photo Archives. She has at least four published works of essays and translations in Bengali to her credit.
Tara Purnima Douglas
Tara Douglas is a trained animator and the Founding member of the Adivasi Arts Trust, an organization that promotes awareness of Indian tribal culture, and works with the tribes involving them in digital media projects to make their arts more widely accessible.
Titas Dutta
A postgraduate from London International School of Performing Arts, Titas Dutta has been a practicing theatre maker and performer for more than a decade, working for NSD Repertory Company, The Company Theatre, Shapeshift Collective and many more national and international theatre companies. With her interest in the business of art and entrepreneurship, Titas works as the Programmer of Performing Arts at KCC apart from her creative work with women's theatre collective Samuho, in Kolkata.
Udayan Vajpeyi
Udayan Vajpeyi is a Hindi poet, essayist, short fiction and script writer. He has published two volumes of poetry, a short story collection, a book of essays and other miscellaneous publications. In his work one finds a simultaneity of past and present; of patterns, rhythms and events swirling together in one vast continuum. Much of his writing is shot through with silence and a brooding sense of loss, making the corpus of his work all at once concrete and strangely illusory, tangible and dreamlike.
Urmimala Sarkar Munsi
Urmimala Sarkar Munsi, a faculty member at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU, is an anthropologist and a dancer-choreographer. Her current research interests include - dance, gender and embodied vulnerabilities; dance within cultural policies and discourses of nationalism; politics of performance documentation.
Vandana Alase Hazra
Vandana Alase Hazra is a senior Bharatanatyam dancer based in Kolkata. Presently, Guest Faculty at the Rabindra Bharati University, Dept. of Dance, she contributes to the fields of Dance, Music and Literature through performing, teaching, translating and critical thinking.
Vinay Lal
Vinay Lal is a cultural critic, writer, blogger, and Professor of History and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). His intellectual and research interests include South Asian history, comparative colonial histories, cinema, cultures of sexuality, and the thought of Mohandas Gandhi among others. His twenty-some authored and edited books include 'The History of History: Politics and Scholarship in Modern India' (Oxford, 2003); 'Of Cricket, Guinness and Gandhi' (Penguin, 2005); and 'The Fury of Covid-19: The Politics, Histories, and Unrequited Love of the Coronavirus' (Pan Macmillan India, 2020). He is a founding member of the Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics and the editor of its book series from Oxford, including 'India and the Unthinkable' (2016), and 'India and Civilizational Futures'.
Yashodhara Dalmia
Yashodhara Dalmia is an art historian and an independent curator based in New Delhi, India. She has written several essays, articles and reviews on contemporary Indian art. She is the author of Amrita Sher-Gil, The Making of Modern Indian Art and Buddha to Krishna. She has also co-authored Memory, Metaphor, Mutations. Dalmia has curated several art shows such as The Moderns which inaugurated the National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai and the centenary show Amrita Sher-Gil: The Passionate Quest at the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru in 2014.
Yves Bonnefoy
Yves Bonnefoy was born in Tours, France, in 1923. Poet, critic and professor emeritus of comparative poetics at Collège de France, Paris, he has received several major international awards for his work, including the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca (1995) and the Franz Kakfa Prize (2005).
Zuleikha Chaudhuri
Zuleikha Chaudhari is a theatre director and lighting designer based in New Delhi and Mumbai, India. She is also a Visiting Faculty at The Dramatic Art and Design Academy, New Delhi. She was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi, Yuva Puraskar in 2007 and Charles Wallace India Trust Award, 2001/2002.
