Dev Benegal

Dev Benegal is a film director and screenwriter of the award winning films, “English, August”, “Split Wide Open” and “Road, Movie” – feature films that have the politics and war for water as one of the themes running through them. “English, August” acknowledged as a landmark film in contemporary Indian cinema, won India’s highest film award (The National Award), was selected at MOMA’s New Directors New Films, and was the first Indian acquisition of 20th Century Fox. “Road, Movie”, an official selection at Atelier du Cannes, was the opening night film at the Berlin Film Festival (Generation Plus). It was distributed in the USA by Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Films. Benegal has produced over 60 short narrative films in his pioneering production program 24×7 Making Movies for anyone 24 years or younger. He teaches screenwriting and is a longtime advisor to the eQuinoxe Europe screenwriting workshop.

Anjali Monteiro

Anjali Monteiro is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, media researcher, author, and teacher. She retired as Professor and Dean from the School of Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai in July 2020. More about her work at www.monteiro-jayasankar.com.

Nandini Oomman

Nandini Oomman, PhD, BSc, is a Global Health Specialist. Previously, Nandini was the Director of The HIV/AIDS Monitor at The Center for Global Development (CGD), influencing the role of big donors to increase the effectiveness of aid dollars. Nandini has over 20 years of research, program and policy experience in global development. Earlier jobs at The World Bank (DC & Vietnam), the Rockefeller Foundation, and with NGOs in rural and urban India created a life long passion to improve health and education for all. Nandini is also the Founding Curator & CEO of The Women’s Storytelling Salon™, a storytelling platform that is dedicated to making women and girls visible in their leadership and participation in the workforce. Nandini has a B.Sc. in Biochemistry from McGill University, and a PhD from Johns Hopkins University. She has published widely in academic journals, is a blogger, and serves on Boards of several organisations. She was recently a fellow in the inaugural US cohort (2020-2021) of the WomenLift Health Program at Stanford University.

Anthony Acciavatti

Anthony Acciavatti is the inaugural Diana Balmori Assistant Professor at the Yale School of Architecture. He is the author of Ganges Water Machine: Designing New India’s Ancient River (2015), which was awarded the J. B. Jackson Book Prize by the Foundation for Landscape Studies in 2016. His forthcoming book, titled Republic of Villages, looks at the history of design and the sciences in South Asia from the 1890s-1970s. He is a founding partner of Somatic Collaborative, a research and design firm based in NYC, and is a founding director of Manifest Institute, which publishes Manifest: A Journal of the Americas.

Catherine Outram Desai

Catherine Outram Desai is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at CEPT University. Her research interests include 20th century Indian architecture and urban ecology. She has co-authored The Architecture of Hasmukh C. Patel and is completing a reading guide to twentieth century Indian buildings. She is a founding member of Ahmedabad Commons, an initiative which opens buildings for public visits and debates issues of conservation and access to the city. She is currently documenting Koteshwar Wilderness, a biodiverse and socially complex landscape in a rapidly developing context. The project uses detailed ecological data to reflect on contemporary urbanisation processes.