School of Social Sciences

Archana Mehendale is a social worker by training and has earned her PhD (Social Sciences) from the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, India.  She has over twenty-five years of experience working in academia as well as non-governmental organisations, primarily in India and briefly in the US. Her research interests are education law and policy, inclusive education, and child rights. She was a Member of the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) Committee set up by the Government of India to frame the Right to Education bill in 2005. Archana has earlier worked with the Centre for Child and the Law, National Law School of India University, Bengaluru and Centre of Excellence in Teacher Education, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. She divides her time between US and India.

Dr. Sivakumar Sivasubramaniam is currently Extraordinary Professor and past Head of Language Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of the Western Cape, Republic of South Africa (RSA). He is a rated Researcher of the National Research Foundation (NRF) in RSA and serves as a Panellist on the NRF’s Education Specialist Rating Committee. He is also an Executive Committee Member of English Scholars Beyond Borders (ESBB), a voluntary organization that is committed to promoting locally relevant practices and pedagogies aimed at democratizing and dehegemonizing the teaching of English and researching into it across cultures and continents. He has been a foreign language/ second language educator for over forty years now and has taught English in India, Ethiopia, Thailand, Bahrain, Armenia, and U.A.E prior to relocating to the Western Cape. He has presented papers, conducted workshops and delivered plenaries at prestigious conference forums abroad. His research interests include response-centred reading/ writing pedagogies, content-based pedagogies focused on the learners’ agency, voice and intersubjectivities, constructivism in English as an International Language (EIL), second language advocacy for social justice, narrative knowing in education and text-based approaches to academic and social literacy practices

Dr. Venkatesan Chakrapani, MD, PhD, is Chairperson of the Centre for Sexuality and Health Research and Policy (C-SHaRP) in Chennai, and a DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance CRC Grantee at The Humsafar Trust in Mumbai. He completed his MD from Madras Medical College and his PhD from the School of Public Health at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER). Dr. Chakrapani brings over two decades of experience in policy-oriented health research – focusing on describing, explaining, and addressing health inequities among sexual and gender minority communities. He has published 80+ peer-reviewed research articles (https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9998-9135), six book chapters and 70+ policy/technical reports. As the Chair of the Technical Resource Group (TRG) on HIV prevention/care among trans people under the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) and as a member of NACO’s TRG on HIV prevention/care among men who have sex with men, he contributes to improving policies and programmes. He has also served as a member of the “Expert Committee on the issues relating to Transgender Persons” for the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. He has received prestigious fellowships such as the DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance Senior Fellowship and the NIH Fogarty Fellowship from Yale University.