Wednesday
26
March 2025
5:00 PM IST
Location
Room 019, School of Engineering and Applied Science
Central Campus
Share
India Story: Intersection of Politics, Gender and Social Justice
The Nalanda
Neha Dixit
Independent Journalist and Author
Speaker
Maya Ratnam
Assistant Professor
Social Sciences division
School of Arts and Sciences
Moderator
Speaker
Neha Dixit
Ms Neha Dixit is an independent journalist and author based in New Delhi with over 18 years of experience covering politics, gender, and social justice. Specializing in investigative, narrative and long-form journalism, she has reported for esteemed publications such as Al Jazeera, The Washington Post, Caravan, The Wire, and others. Her contributions to journalism have been recognized with numerous national and international awards, including the International Press Freedom Award (2019) from the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Woman Journalist (2017), and the Lorenzo Natali Prize for Journalism from the European Commission (2011). In addition to her journalistic work, Ms. Neha has contributed to several non-fiction anthologies including the UNESCO Casebook of Investigative Journalism (2011) and Race and Racisms: A Critical Approach (Oxford University Press). Her first full-length non-fiction book The Many Lives of Syeda X published by Juggernaut, presents a deeply researched account of India's socio-economic realities through the experiences of a working-class, migrant Muslim woman navigating over 50 jobs in three decades without receiving a minimum wage. The book offers a powerful lens into the lives of millions often overlooked in mainstream narratives.
Moderator
Maya Ratnam
Professor Maya Ratnam is an Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences division of the School of Arts and Sciences at Ahmedabad University. Trained as a social anthropologist, her research focuses on the environmental history and anthropology of India with a particular emphasis on indigenous and resource-dependent communities. She holds a graduate degree from Delhi University and earned her PhD in Anthropology from Johns Hopkins University in 2017. Her doctoral research was supported by prestigious grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and the American Institute of Indian Studies. Professor Ratnam specialises in ethnographic and field-based research methods, bringing her understanding of the lived experience of communities to bear on wider conversations about environmental justice, state power and development.
