Nayanika Mookherjee

Nayanika Mookherjee is a Professor in the Anthropology department in Durham University. In June 2014 she was invited to the international summit End Sexual Violence in Conflict and in October 2014 she was awarded the Mahatma Gandhi Pravasi Samman (for overseas Indians) award at the House of Lords for her social anthropological work on gendered violence during wars. She has published extensively on anthropology of violence, ethics and aesthetics. Her book: The Spectral Wound: Sexual Violence, Public Memories and the Bangladesh War (2015, Duke University Press, Foreword by Prof. Veena Das; 2016 Delhi: Zubaan) was among the top two books shortlisted for the BBC’s Thinking Allowed and Best Ethnography Award. She has also been invited as an expert on panel discussions related to sexual violence during wars on Al Jazeera. Other publications include co-editing (with Christopher Pinney, 2011) the JRAI (Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute) Special Issue: ‘The Aesthetics of Nation’; the JHS (Journal of Historical Sociology) 2013 Special Issue: ‘The Self in South Asia’; the 2015 Journal of Material Culture Special Issue (Aesthetics, Politics, Conflict). Funded by the Leverhulme Foundation (2009-2011) and a one-month scholarly residency fellowship in the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio, she is completing her book: ‘Arts of Reconciliation’ (contracted with the Cultural Memory in the Present Series, Stanford University Press). As a British Academy mid-career fellow (2013-2014) she has been carrying out new research on transnational adoption.

She was a member of the executive committee and the ethics officer of the Association of Social Anthropologists of Britain and the Commonwealth (ASA) and updated the ASA ethics code in 2011. She has been a member of the ESRC and AHRC Peer Review Colleges. She is currently a member of the ESRC Grant Assessment Panel and Ethics committee of the World Council of Anthropological Associations. Nayanika joined Durham University in 2011. Before that she was in the Sociology department in Lancaster University. She did her BA (Hons) in Presidency College, Calcutta, India; her MA in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India; and PhD in Social Anthropology (Felix scholar) from School of Oriental and African Studies – SOAS, University of London.

Noktaarts

Noktaarts is a publisher based in Dhaka, Bangladesh specialising in publishing various books of visual art.

Najmunnahar Keya

Najmunnahar Keya is a freelance artist based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. She completed her MFA from the Tokyo University of Arts and the Faculty of Fine Art in the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. In her work she draws on her past memory as well as contemporary times. She is curious about human behaviour and society. Besides drawing and painting she has also been experimenting with different materials and mediums such as video, 2d, animation, print making etc. She exhibited her work in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, France and other countries. Najmul participated in an artist- in-residency programme in Nepal and South Korea. Najmul also received a fellowship from the Aminul Islam Trust in 2006 and 2007. She won the Grand Award in Young Painter’s Exhibition in 2010 organised by Berger Paints Bangladesh Limited. She is working with the Britto Arts Trust since 2008 which is the first non-profit artist run organisation in Bangladesh. She has received numerous awards: Japanese Government scholarship (2012), Charles Wallace Professional Visit Fellowship in UK and Honourable Mention Award in the 18th Asian Art Biennale (both in 2018).

Research Initiatives Bangladesh

Research Initiatives Bangladesh (RIB’s) approach has been to involve participatory processes from the very design and conception of the research proposal, through the implementation phase to its final presentation, validation and follow up by the researchers and/or community being researched. Its Executive Director is Dr. Meghna Guhathakurta. Hinged on Participatory Action Research (or gonogobeshona as it has come to be called in Bangla), it has been promoting processes of collective self-enquiry, self-determination and capacity building, and is able to reach out to many marginalized communities.