Premjish Achari is a curator and art critic based in New Delhi. He has started an in-depth curatorial platform called Future Collaborations aiming at theoretically and politically informed curation. He is the co-curator of the Bhubaneswar Art Trail in 2018. He currently heads the programme and the editorial for the exhibition ‘Lokame Tharavadu’ organised by the Kochi Biennale Foundation and teaches art history and theory at Shiv Nadar University. He is the winner of the Art Writers’ Award 2021 issued by Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, along with TAKE on Art. 

 

Debojyoti Das is an anthropologist and photographer who has specialised in the borderlands of eastern India and the Indian Ocean world. His published works include the book, The Politics of Swidden Farming: Environment and Development in Eastern India, 2018. His interdisciplinary work bridges ethnographic research with visual media and oral sources. The ‘Environmental Refugees’ project incorporates several photo exhibitions on fishers, forest dwellers and seafarers of the Bay of Bengal littoral areas. 

 

Parul Dave-Mukherji is a professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.   She is co-editor of 8 other books including  InFlux: Contemporary Art in Asia, 2013); Arts and Aesthetics in a Globalizing World, (co-edited with Raminder Kaur, Bloomsbury, 2014); Rethinking Aesthetics in a Comparative Frame IIAS, Shimla 2020. She has edited Ebrahim Alkazi: Directing Art—The Making of a Modern Indian Art World (2016); She has written on the impact of globalization on art theory: ‘Whither Art History in a Globalizing World’ The Art Bulletin 2014; and ‘Art History and Its Discontents in Global Times’ in Art History in the Wake of the Global Turn, eds. Jill H Cassid and Aruna D’Souza, Massachusetts: Clark Art Institute, 2014. Her most recent publication is Twentieth Century Indian Art (co-edited with Partha Mitter and Rakhee Balaram) published by Thames and Hudson.

 

Lata Desai is Chair of Subrang Arts – a leading South Asian Arts organisation in South London. She is the co-curator and project leader of the 'Roots and Changes – Gujarati Influences’ project. Inspired by the personal story of her family’s journey from India to Africa and Britain, she has been working in partnership with the public and voluntary sector targeting a wide range of high-quality heritage projects – ‘Indian String and Dance Exhibition’, ‘Sitar Festival’, ‘Vivekananda and Ancient Indian Civilisation’ to name a few. 

 

Sanjukta Ghosh is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society (UK and Ireland) and the Honorary Artistic Director of SOAS South Asia Institute; convenor of SSAI Sanglaap Art and Culture Series. She has authored ‘Understanding Refugee Experience as Heritage’, Keynote article in Faith Initiative: Embracing Diversity (2018); co-edited Memory, Identity and the Colonial Encounter in India (Routledge: India/London 2017) among other writings. She has produced more than forty archived programs related to cultural representations and media such as the diasporic community arts on Mushaira, and multilingual performance at the SOAS Festival of Ideas (2020). She curated the Cultural Connects Week in SOAS (2017); the wall input for the ERC-funded Brunei Gallery exhibition on road building in South Asia (2020) and is a heritage consultant to the Bikaner Theatre Art and Culture Festival (2021). She served as the coordinator of fourteen South Asian and European international non-governmental organisation interventions against caste-based discrimination.

 

Raminder Kaur is an interdisciplinary scholar with a specialism in anthropology, cultural studies and international development based at the University of Sussex. She is also a scriptwriter, filmmaker and artistic director. Among her publications, she has written five books and co-edited five others. These include the ASA volume, Arts and Aesthetics in a Globalizing World, edited with Parul Dave-Mukherji. She served on the Mayor's Commission for Asian and African Heritage (MCAAH), co-authored the MCAAH report, Delivering Shared Heritage, and was a member of the subsequent Heritage Diversity Task Force at the Greater London Authority. 

 

Chandan Mahal has worked in museums and archives for over twenty years, managing and developing education and community-led research programmes for diverse audiences. She has a background in interpretation, public programming and audience development. She has worked on many gallery projects and exhibitions that have provided opportunities for the contemporary collecting of oral history and visual culture relating to community histories. She was also a member of the landmark Mayor’s Commission for African and Asian Heritage. She is currently the National Learning and Partnership Manager at the British Library for the Unlocking our Sound Heritage project.

 

Navtej Purewal is an interdisciplinary social scientist with a background in Political Science, South Asia area studies and Development Studies based at SOAS, University of London in the Department of Development Studies. She has published a number of books and edited issues including: ‘Coloniality’ edited with J. Ung Loh (2021) in Feminist Review;  a co-authored book with V. Kalra (2019) Beyond Religion in India and Pakistan: Gender and Caste, Borders and Boundaries; an edited special journal issue in Third World Thematics also published as an edited book with  S. Dingli (2019) Gendering (In)security: Post/Neocolonial Security Logics and Feminist Interventions; and a co-edited special issue with K. Wilson and J. Ung Loh (2018) in Feminist Review, ‘Gender, Violence and the Neoliberal State in India’.