Dr. Annapurna Devi Pandey
Faculty of Cultural Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Dr. Pandey holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, and was a Post- doctoral fellow in Social Anthropology at Cambridge. Her research interests are women’s activism and leadership in the context of State and Multi-National Corporations, their economic and political empowerment in rural and tribal India; and women’s identity making in the Odia Diaspora in California. She is the author of numerous essays on Indian Women’s activism, agency, entrepreneurship and empowerment in India and Indian diaspora. Currently she is a senior Fulbright U.S. Scholar working in Odisha, India. Her research project focuses on the impact of skill training on everyday life of rural and tribal women in Odisha. She is an accomplished filmmaker (Homeland in the Heart; The Myth of Buddha’s Birthplace (with Prof. James Freeman) and Road to Zuni. She was President of the Orissa Society of the Americas (2011- 2013), the oldest socio-cultural organization of diasporic Odias in North America.
Dr. Brahmanand Mohanty
Brahmanand Mohanty is associated with the School of Environment, Resources and Development of the Asian Institute of Technology (Bangkok) since 1986 as a faculty member. Since 1991, he has also been serving the French Environment and Energy Management Agency (ADEME) as its regional advisor for Asia. He has undertaken professional missions for bilateral and multilateral development agencies during the last three decades in some 25 countries, especially in Asia but also in the Middle East, Africa and the Mediterranean region.
He graduated from the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education (Pondicherry, India) in 1979 and obtained his doctorate in energy from the Institut National Polytechnique (Toulouse, France) in 1985.
Dr. Saswat Narayan Biswas, Professor, IRMA
Dr. Biswas is a professor at the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA). He has over 35 years of experience in research, teaching, executive training, consulting, including industry experience. He has been a consultant to several organizations. He has conducted large number of executive development programmes in India and abroad. He has been a visiting faculty in several universities withing India and abroad. He has authored over 50 research papers, published in refereed journals, book chapters, working papers/monographs, and presented in several conferences and seminars in India and abroad. He was the founding chief editor of International Journal of Rural Management (Sage Publications). He has deep passion in strengthening community-based institutions for development.
He graduated from the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education (Pondicherry, India) in 1979 and obtained his doctorate in energy from the Institut National Polytechnique (Toulouse, France) in 1985.
Dr. N. C. Narayanan, Professor, IIT, Mumbai
Prof. Narayanan heads the Ashank Desai Centre for Policy Studies of IIT, Mumbai, that offers Masters and PhD programmes in public policy. He was part of Technology and Development program at CTARA and the interdisciplinary program on climate studies at IIT Bombay. He is an Adjunct Professor at the National Institute for Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bangalore. He was a Fulbright Visiting Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley and Visiting Faculty at the Universities of Lausanne, Switzerland; and Monash, Australia. He has served as member of government committees including working groups of the National Planning Commission and Kerala State Planning Board.
His education includes M Phil in Applied Economics from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (CDS) and PhD in Development Studies (ISS, Erasmus University, The Netherlands). He has been faculty at the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA), Senior Fellow and Executive Director of the South Asia Consortium for Water Resources Studies (Saci WATERs) Hyderabad.
