A Brief Note on Participants
S Anandhi:
Associate Professor, Madras Institute of Development Studies
Long standing research interests in Gender, Caste and Identity Politics. Her publications includeLand to the Dalits: Panchami Land Struggle in Tamilnadu(Indian Social Institute, 2000) and Contending Identities: Dalits and Secular Politics in Madras Slums(Indian Social Institute, 1995) and she is currently co-editing a volume on Dalit women with Karin Kapadia.
GajendranAyyathurai:
Independent Scholar
Recently completed his thesis from Columbia University entitled: The Foundations of Anti-caste Consciousness:PanditIyotheeThass, Tamil Buddhism, and the Marginalized in South India.He is currently working on publications from this.
Geert de Neve:
Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of Sussex.
He is an anthropologist of labour and has a specific interest in social andeconomic transformation in south India. He has carried out research on textileand garment industries in Tamil Nadu since 1995. He is author of The everydaypolitics of labour: Working in India’s informal economy (Social Science Press, 2005) and innumerable articles on caste, labour and identity in South India.
Hugo Gorringe:
Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of Edinburgh
Main research interests revolve around political sociology, protest, Dalit politics and caste.
He is author of Untouchable Citizens (Sage, 2005) and articles on caste, violence and politics.
D. Karthikeyan:
PhD Candidate, University of Edinburgh
Karthikeyan is looking at caste, place and space in the performance of Guru Pujas in Tamil Nadu. He has authored essays for Deep Focus, EPW and was, until mid-2013, a special correspondent for The Hindu.
David Mosse:
Professor of Social Anthropology, SOAS
David’s research combines interests inanthropology of development and activism, environmental history and natural resources management, in the anthropology of Christianity, South Asian society and popular religion and the interplay between caste and development. He is author of The Saint in the Banyan tree: Christianity and Caste Society in India (University of California Press, 2012), Cultivating Development: An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice (Pluto Press, 2005), The Rule of Water. Statecraft, Ecology and Collective Action in South India (OUP, 2003) and multiple edited collections and articles.
C. Nicholas:
Activist and Convenor-Founder of the Integrated Rural Development Society and the Dalit Land Rights Federation
Nicholas has been active in this field for over thirty years and has been to the fore in struggles to retrieve panchami land, raise consciousness amongst Dalits in Tamil Nadu and to forge networks amongst anti-caste and related activists at a national and international level.
NityaRao:
Professor of Gender and Development, University of East Anglia
Nitya’s research focuses on gender equality and women’s empowerment, within broader issues of resource rights, social equity and rural development. She is author of “Good women do not inherit Land": Politics of Land and Gender in India(Social Science Press, 2008), and an edited volume on migration, education and mobility as well as countless articles.
Ravikumar:
Former VCK MLA, co-founder of Navayana, General Secretary of ViduthalaiChiruthaigalKatchi (Liberation Panther Party, VCK): Unfortunately he is unable to join us in person.
Ravikumar is one of the leading activist theoreticians of the Dalit movement in Tamil Nadu and penned numerous books and texts on culture, caste and politics. Some of his writings have been translated into English in Venomous Touch (Samya 2009).
RupaViswanath:
Professor of Indian Religions at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies at the University of Göttingen
Her research and writing address the practices of secular regimes, histories of slavery in colonial South Asia, the political economy of caste, and the historical dynamics of religious authorities and institutions. Her manuscript Religion, Economy, Caste: Missionaries, “Pariahs” and the Historical Foundations of Indian Secularism, 1890-1925, is under review at Columbia University Press and she is author of articles on conversion, missionaries and their relation to caste, Ambedkar and JHA Tremenheere.Andrew Wyatt:
Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Bristol.
His researchinterests lie in the areas of caste politics, political parties, and economic nationalism. Muchof his fieldwork has been carried out in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. His publicationsinclude Party System Change in South India (2009) and Contemporary India(2010) (the latter co-authored with Katharine Adeney) as well as numerous articles on politics, caste and populism..