Interviews
|  Sunil
Abraham (Director - Policy) is a Bangalore based social entrepreneur and
Free Software advocate. He founded Mahiti in 1998, which aims to reduce the cost
and complexity of Information and Communication Technology for the Voluntary
Sector by using Free Software. Today, Mahiti employs more than 50 engineers and
Sunil continues to serve on the board. He was elected an Ashoka fellow in 1999
to 'explore the democratic potential of the Internet'. He was granted a Sarai
FLOSS fellowship in 2003. Sunil is also a sub-board member of Open Society
Institute's Information Programme. Between June 2004 and June 2007, Sunil also
managed the International Open Source Network a project of United Nations
Development Programme's Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme serving
42 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Between September 2007 and June 2008,
he managed ENRAP an electronic network of International Fund for Agricultural
Development projects in the Asia-Pacific facilitated and co-funded by
International Development Research Centre, Canada.
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| |
 Zainab
Bawa works as an independent researcher on issues of urbanism, governance
and impact of technology on political practices and institutions. She is
collaborating with Servelots to assess how communities can participate in
creating and using information and communication technologies. Zainab is also a
Research Fellow with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bangalore.
Here, she is analyzing why and how the Internet has become a crucial space for
enforcing transparency in politics. In the past, Zainab has collaborated with
Sarai-CSDS (New Delhi) to study emerging issues in urbanism in India, with Praja
Foundation (Mumbai) on developing a handbook for citizens on urban governance in
Mumbai and with CASUMM (Bangalore) to study the impact of urban reforms and
restructuring on poverty. Zainab is pursuing her Ph.D. from the Centre for the
Study of Culture and Society (CSCS) in Bangalore. Here, she is working on how
the creation of property and the spate of land acquisitions in Indian cities is
impacting political and economic practices and social networks that existed
around land and locality. In the past, Zainab has traveled extensively and has
worked collaboratively with researchers in Kashmir and in Bangladesh on issues
of space, conflict, violence and their impact on society.
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|  Dinesh
is computer scientist from Bangalore. He collaborated with Paul Klint at the
Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science in Amsterdam for several years. When
he returned to India he started SERVEOTS, a web service provider for Small to
Medium Enterprises.
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|  Satinder
Gill is based with the Centre for Music and Science, University of
Cambridge. She received her PhD on 'Dialogue and Tacit Knowledge for Knowledge
Transfer' in Experimental Psychology, 1995, with the University of Cambridge,
UK. She has been a Research Scientist with NTT's Communication Science
Laboratories (CSL) and ATR (Kyoto) in Japan (1997-1999), held a Joint position
with CKIR, Finland and CSLI (Centre for the Study of Language and Information)
Stanford University (2000-2003), and was a Senior Research Fellow at Middlesex
University, London, UK (2004-2009). Her work has investigated the processes of
transformation in tacit knowing in communication. Following the PhD at Cambridge
(1995) on the dynamics and structures of dialogue that shape tacit knowing, she
extended this analysis in a study of aesthetic production in landscape
architectural practices. The research was further developed in Japan, where she
developed the theory of Body Moves, a pragmatics theory of rhythmic body prosody
as collective acts across persons. Subsequent research at Stanford tested the
theory in a series of experiments that suggested that collective acts have a
different quality of timing patterns to the background of speech and gesture
from which they emerge. Her work with musicians explores the relations between
rhythmic synchrony, inter-subjectivity and communication, as performance.
Satinder is also Associate Editor of the International Journal, AI & Society:
Knowledge, Culture and Communication (Springer), and Editor of the book,
'Cognition, Communication, and Interaction: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on
Interactive Technology', published in 2007 (Springer).
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interview
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|
 Abhishek
Hazra is a visual artist based in Bangalore. His work explores the
intersections between technology and culture through the narrative device of a
'visual fable'. He is interested in the social history of scientific practices,
and his current, ongoing project attempts to explore the history of science
research in colonial India. Abhishek works with animated shorts and digital
slideshows that often integrate textual fragments drawn from fictional
scenarios. He is also interested in the way in which the languages of science
journalism and information visualisation participate in the complex dynamics of
'knowledge dissemination' and 'translation'. Recent shows include First Left,
Second Right, a 3 person show at Thomas Erben Gallery, New York with Yamini
Nayar and Kiran Subbaiah; Horn Please. Narratives in Contemporary Indian Art
(curated by Bernhard Fibicher and Suman Gopinath), Kunstmuseum Bern and Ghosts
in the Machine and other Fables: an exhibition of video, sound and interactive
works at Apeejay Media Gallery, New Delhi (curated by Pooja Sood).
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| |
 P.
Vigneswara Ilavarasan is presently Assistant Professor in the Department of
Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Delhi. He obtained his PhD (Sociology)
from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur. He held a two-year
Post-doctoral Fellowship in IT at the International Institute of Information
Technology, Bangalore, before joining IIT Delhi. He has also taught at the
Central University, Pondicherry, for a year. His research interests are the
Sociology of Work and Industry; and Science, Technology & Society, with a focus
on the Indian Information Technology industry. In the last few years Dr.
Ilavarasan did extensive research on the culture of the IT industry, India's
booming sector since the mid 1990's.
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|
 Rein
Jansma briefly studied biology and architecture at the TU Delft but decided
that 'making things' was what he had to do. In 1982 he published the remarkable
pop-up book 'Stairs' with Joost Elffers production, which has been reprinted
several times since: "This unique interactive book surpasses all language
barriers, enriching the traditional pop-up book format with fresh, timeless
imagery. Its emphasis on visual detail and its absence of text makes it a source
of simple pleasure and serenity" . In the eighties Jansma mostly worked as
artist and designer and was involved in building theatre decors in Amsterdam and
Paris as well. Around 1990, together with Moshe Zwarts, Rein Jansma founded
Zwarts & Jansma architects. The company is located in Amsterdam and operates
mostly in the field of public buildings and mobility throughout the Netherlands.
They build soccer stadiums, railway stations, bridges, tunnels and other
mobility infrastructure. In 1992 Zwarts & Jansma created the Dutch Pavilion on
the world expo in Seville. Currently Zwarts & Jansma also work for the Road &
Transport Authority (RTA) in Dubai (expected to be finished in 2010) and are
doing the renovation and enlargement of the Central Railway Station in Tbilisi
in Georgia. Today Jansma is leading the office together with Reinald Top and Rob
Torsing.
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interview
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|  Priya
Kaul is a practicing therapist in Bangalore, India. Born and raised in
Mumbai, India, she moved to the United States of America where she spent nine
years. Since the last four years, Priya now resides in Bangalore, India with
her husband and two daughters. She has spent much of professional life dealing
with people across multiple settings. She started her career in Mumbai working
with children and adolescents in a school. Ms. Kaul then moved to the United
States of America where she worked in the school system with adolescents. Priya
was able to use her enthusiasm for working in fast paced mental health
environment in at Baylor-Richardson Medical Center, Texas. Here she was able to
work with crisis stabilization in mental health and chemical dependency. Priya
has worked community-based organizations in Texas like C.I.T.Y. House that
funded programs for working with children and families in North Dallas. She
worked with Families United Program, which helped assess family environments for
the best interest of children that were experiencing loss through divorce in the
Dallas Court system. After relocating to Bangalore, Priya works as a consultant
with CWSolution Pvt. Ltd., a firm that facilitates workshops on leadership
development and professional skills. A part of the CWSolution team since 2006,
Priya, brings over ten years of experience to her role in business development
and as a facilitator. Her areas of expertise include communication,
cross-cultural awareness, coaching. Priya continues to develop new and inventive
ways to apply her experience of working in health and personal growth and
development in both India and the USA in her role at CWSolution, helping to make
the programs meaningful and effective. Priya also enjoys maintaining an interest
in the field of psychology and offers her services as a counselor with 1to1help,
an EAP (Employee Assistance Program) company based in Bangalore, India. Priya
holds Master's degrees in Clinical Psychology and Social Work. She has completed
a nine-month course in Transactional Analysis. Her professional memberships
include Bombay Psychological Association (BPA) and National Association of
Social Workers (USA). Priya is also certified to administer and debrief the
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which she likes using to give her workshops
psychological depth.
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|  Bryony
Lavery (born 1947) is a British dramatist, known for her successful and
award-winning 1998 play Frozen. In addition to her work in theatre, she has also
written for television and radio. She has written books including the biography
Tallulah Bankhead and The Woman Writer's Handbook, and taught playwriting at
Birmingham University. Having begun her career as an actress, she decided that
she was fed up with playing poor parts in plays, such as the left arm of a sofa,
and decided to write plays with better parts for women. Early in her career she
founded a theatre company called Les Oeufs Malades with actor Gerard Bell, she
also founded Female Trouble, More Female Trouble and served as artistic director
of Gay Sweatshop. Her plays have a feminist undertone in them and she has even
written plays (like More Light which has only one male speaking role) with
almost entirely female casts. She has written more than twenty plays since 1976.
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interview
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|  Gavin
MacFadyen is investigative journalist and Visiting Professor at City
University London and the Director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism,
an international training charity. MacFaydyen has been a Senior
producer-director of many World in Action, Channel 4 Dispatches, BBC's Fine Cut,
24 Hours, Panorama, The Money Programme, Multi Cultural Birmingham, PBS
Frontline programmes from 1970 to the present.
These investigations were researched, directed and produced in Britain, Ecuador,
Guyana, South Africa, Mexico, Hong Kong, Thailand, the USSR, the US, Sweden,
India and Turkey. Subjects ranged from nuclear proliferation, child labour, the
torture of political prisoners in Turkey and Bolivia, UK industrial accidents,
UK neo-Nazi violence, Chinese criminal societies, the history of the CIA, Guyana
election fraud, Watergate, maritime safety, sanctions-busting and the Iraq arms
trade, as well as Frank Sinatra & The Mafia, the Diamond Empire, and Regional
Cuisines of India. Undercover filming abroad was conducted in Hong Kong, Macau,
Thailand, New York, Washington, Turkey, Greece, Nicaragua, Portugal, and the
Netherlands. He was also Technical Advisor on 'The Insider' (released 2000), dir
Michael Mann and starring Al Pacino; also Gumbase - Opium Traffic in the Golden
Triangle, Marine Piracy in Thailand, Vietnam Combat Photography, 48 Hours for
Nick Nolte and Walter Hill, The Mexican DFS Murders for John Frankenheimer, LA
Stolen Car Traffic, for Lance Hill, Paramount. The Torture and Killing of
Unarmed Nicaraguan Civilians by the Contra (New Statesman and the LA Weekly);
and Latino with Haskell Wexler. MacFadyen was also a mentor at the Fact/Fiction
Workshops run by Performing Arts Labs and a consultant to the Alliance-Atlantis
investigative series, 'Coverups'.
He is also Director of the International Journalism Summer Schools, UK 2003,
2004, 2006 and of the The New York conference of Financial and Business
Investigative Journalism, 2005 at Columbia University Graduate School of
Journalism.. MacFadyen is Co-Designer, South African Power Reporting Workshops
2005-7, Wits University, Johannesburg, and recipient, EU MEDIA programme grant,
Social History website project, 1998; and a Senior Research Fellow, Glasgow
University, 2002-03 and Caledonian University (Glasgow) 2000.
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interview
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|  Geetha
Narayanan has been at the forefront of the developing digital industry in
Bangalore, India's renowned ICT centre for several decades now. Being the
founder and director of the Srishti School of Art Design and Technology, she has
been developing and implementing programs that blend design thinking, problem,
project or place based learning with new digital technologies. Srishti is a
college of Art Design and Technology that provides both undergraduate and
graduate programs in various fields of industrial and communication design,
experimental media arts, gaming, animation and visual effects. Students of
Srishti collaborate with a large variety of partners during their education:
with art and design contexts in India and around the globe, with international
companies like Nokia and also with people in urban and rural localities to
improve social conditions of life. Narayanan is concerned to develop business
models that sustain a creative community of students and faculty through the
conceptualization, development and implementation of various forms of
educational entrepreneurship. Geetha Narayanan is formally trained in
mathematics and international education. Currently she is finishing her
dissertation "Complexity and System Thinking, Memetics, New Technologies,
Learning and Social Change" at Sheffield Hallam University.
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interview
| |  Jogi Panghaal is concerned with the
shift from product to service design, with a special focus on how craftsmanship
and traditional artisan communities can be an inspiration for the design of
services in current modern societies. Panghaal works with artisans to use their
traditional skills to find new markets for their old/new products as well as
that he works with industry to enhance concepts of design. For many years
Panghaal was a contributor to Doors of Perception, a conference and network in
which design, industry and social science collaborate to develop new ideas for
service design. Panghaal graduated in Product Design from the National Institute
of Design (NID) in Ahmedabad, India in 1977. He co-founded Lifetools in New
Delhi to provide product design and communication services to communities, both
rural and urban that needed design help. Mr. Panghaal has been a visiting
teacher at National Institute of Design in India, ID, at Les Ateliers Paris, at
the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi and at the Gerrit Rietveld
Academy in Amsterdam. Read the interview
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|  Vibodh
Parthasarathi maintains a multidisciplinary interest in communication
theory, media policy and comparative media practice. He is one of the series
editors of the Sage series on 'Communication Processes', of- which the first
volume, 'Media and Mediation' was published in 2005, and the second, 'Domination
and Defiance' is in press. Earlier, he was the international coordinator of an
intercultural publishing project on 'Communication and Citizenship', involving
scholars and publishers from Brazil, France and India, and co-edited the
resulting anthology 'L'idiot du Village Mondial'; Editions Luc Pire,
Brussels/Paris, 2004. Over the last 15 years, Vibodh Parthasarathi has
maintained a multidisciplinary interest in media theory, communication &
development policy, and comparative media practice. Trained in Development
Studies at the Institute of Social Studies (The Hague), Mass Communication,
Jamia Millia Islamia (New Delhi) and an undergraduate degree in History from St.
Stephens College, Delhi University. His research has been variously supported by
Prince Claus Fund, Charles Wallace India Trust, India Foundation for the Arts,
Netherlands Fellowship Programme, and the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-
operation. Before joining Centre for Culture, Media and Governance at Jamia
Millia Islamia in Delhi, he was Visiting Professor at the Centre for Jawaharlal
Nehru Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia (2006-07), Associate at the Centre for
Co-operative Research in Social Sciences (2000-02) and Assistant Professor at
the Manipal Institute of Communication (1997-99). He has been Founding
International Member, Intercultural Library for the Future (Paris, 2002),
Member, Arts Education Advisory Committee, India Foundation for the Arts
(Bangalore, 1998-99), Associate, South Asian Poverty Network Association
(Colombo, 1997-2001), Member, Academic Council, Institute of Social Studies (The
Hague, 1993-94), and Delegate to the Preparatory Committee meetings for the
Earth Summit (Geneva, 1991). Parthasarathi's current research explores the
trans-national history of the music industry, both during its formative years
(1900-1914) and in present times (1995-2005), the latter being pursued at the
Centre for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies (Jamia Millia Islamia University) as a
Visiting Professor. He studies the music industry in the context of the Indian
communication industry under globalisation, comparative media policy, and
environmental movements & communication practices. His association with the
media industry in India and abroad has varied from being a consultant,
television producer and documentary director.
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|
 Thomas
Quillinan is a Security Researcher at the D-CIS Research Lab in Delft, in
the Netherlands. He received a Ph.D., in the area of Security for Distributed
Systems, and a M.Sc. in Computer Science from University College Cork in
Ireland. He previously held the position of Postdoctoral Researcher as part of
the IIDS group in the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, working in the areas of
Distributed Systems and Crisis Management. He originally trained in the
University of Limerick in Ireland, where he received an undergraduate degree in
Computer Engineering. His research interests include the security of systems. He
is a member of the ACM and is an avid Sailor.
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interview
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|
 Dr.
Aditya Dev Sood is the Founder and CEO of the Center for Knowledge
Societies, where he directs design and innovation projects involving
peer-to-peer networks, interactive services and interface design, as well as
product design, including usability, form, color, material and finish. CKS is a
full-service user-centered innovation consulting firm that works end-to-end,
from understanding consumers to developing product prototypes to enhancing their
usability and appeal for end-users. CKS has worked with the world's leading
corporations in different sectors, including telecommunications, interactive
services, aviation, automobiles, security, and home and workspace decor. With
CKS, he has authored the CKS Guide to ICTs for Development (2402), curated the
exhibition Used in India (2405), written the Mobile Development Report (2407)
and directed research for the Emerging Economy Report (2408), the lattermost
being a comprehensive survey of technology, visual and material culture and
societal change spanning seven countries around the world. He is currently
directing on a major international research project on the future of data
services in emerging markets. Dr. Sood frequently speaks and writes on
technology, design and society in academic, industry and public forums. With
foundational training in Architecture and Critical Theory from the University of
Michigan, he is a former Fulbright Scholar with doctorates in Socio-Cultural
Anthropology and Sanskrit Philology from the University of Chicago.
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interview
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|  Sander
van Splunter
is a researcher at the Intelligent Interactive Distributed Systems (IIDS) (http://www.iids.org) at VU University Amsterdam,
and at D-CIS lab in Delft. He has a background in Artificial Intelligence. His
central research topic is autonomous adaptation of complex systems, examined
from varying perspectives, which include software agents, web services, design,
semantic web, and crisis management. The challenge is to allow local distributed
adaptations in sytems-of-systems, while maintaining a sense of the impact at the
global level. Can adaptations be performed locally, and what needs to be
escalated to a higher level, with more overview?
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|
 Carol
Upadhya is interested in theoretical and historical anthropology; economic
development and social change in India; globalisation; entrepreneurship; middle
class. She has widely published and also made three ethnographic films 'Coding
Culture: Bangalore's Software Industry' in collaboration with Gautam Sonti
(NIAS-IDPAD project 2006). With A R Vasavi she edited the revealing study '"In
an Outpost of the Global Economy: Work and Workers in India's Information
Technology Industry" (New Delhi: Routledge, 2008). In 1988 Upadhya obtained a
Ph.D. in social-cultural anthropology from Yale University. She was Research
Fellow, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore, 2002-2003, Reader
in Sociology, Department of Post-Graduate Studies and Research, S.N.D.T. Women's
University, Mumbai, 1997-2001 and Editorial Consultant for Economic and
Political Weekly, Mumbai, 1994 - 1996. With Mario Rutten she edited the volume
"Small Business Entrepreneurs in Asia and Europe: Towards a Comparative
Perspective" (New Delhi: Sage Publications 1997). Carol Upadhya grew up in the
Unites States of America and lived most of her adult live in India, where she
married and raised her family.
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interview
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|  Prof.
Dr. I.C. (Inge) van der Vlies is professor of Constitutional Law and Art and
Law at the University of Amsterdam. She has served as part-time judge to the
higher court in Amsterdam. Her present research focuses on the relationship of
art and laws. Within this ambit issues like cultural diversity, cultural
identity, freedom of expression and the character of ownership of cultural good
are important. She has widely published on a variety of perspectives on
legislation, including international developmental perspectives. She is member
of the Board of the European Association for Legislation and editor of the Dutch
Judicial Journal. Professor van der Vlies also specialized in Art and Law. She
is vice-chair of the Dutch commission on the Restitution of Artworks from World
War II, is board member of the national broadcaster VPRO and is advisor to the
board of the Stichting Democratie en Media, which is owner of some of the
largest newspapers in the Netherlands. Van der Vlies is a highly respected
counsellor and mediator in political and legislative issues. She chairs a
variety of special commissions for local and national government agencies in the
Netherlands. Van der Vlies also worked as a counsellor for the promotion of the
rule in various countries like Indonesia, Ethiopia and former eastern European
countries.
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| |
 Martijn
Warnier graduated with a Masters of Science in Cognitive Artificial
Intelligence from Utrecht University, the Netherlands, in the beginning of 2002.
He did his PhD in the Security of Systems group at the Radboud University in
Nijmegen. His research focused on Language based Security and the mathematical
formalization of properties such as non-interference, confidentiality and
integrity. For the last three years he has worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher
in the Intelligent Interactive Distributed Systems group at the VU University
Amsterdam. Since September 2009 he is appointed the position of assistant
professor at the TU Delft. His current research interests, besides security,
include the interdisciplinary research field of Computer Science and (Computer)
Law, and Self-organizing and Autonomic systems. In his free time Martijn Warnier
loves acting in the theatre.
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interview
| |  Rebekah Wilson obtained a degree in
Composition at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand in 1996. Working
as an independent composer, electronic musician, installation artist and
filmmaker Rebekah Wilson has performed and lectured in many venues and
festivals. Earlier this century she held the position of Artistic Co-Director at
STEIM (Studio for Electronic and Instrumental Music), where she curated and
participated in international festivals, workshops and education programs for
live electronic and instrumental music, installations and film. Since 2004 she
is the co-founder and director of technology for an international software
development company, Source-Elements, delivering high-fidelity real-time audio
delivery over IP. She is currently living between Barcelona and New Zealand and
has taken up surfing.
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