Ayaz Ahmad

Dr. Ayaz Ahmad is Associate Professor at the United World School of Law, Karnavati University, Gandhinagar. He began his academic career at National Law University Odisha, Cuttack and moved to Glocal University, Saharanpur to establish Glocal Law School as the founding faculty. Dr. Ahmad completed his B.A.LL.B degree from the Faculty of Law, Aligarh Muslim University and his LL.M from the Faculty of Law, University of Delhi in 2011. He received his Ph.D. in 2018 under the supervision of Dr. Yogesh Pratap Singh at Glocal University, Saharanpur.

Dr. Ahmad qualified UGC NET and Junior Research Fellowship exams in his first attempt. He was selected by the International Academy for Leadership (IAF) to participate in an international workshop on liberalism in Gummersbach, Germany. He was also selected to participate in an International Summer School: “Pluralism, Development and Social Change” in Bloemfontein, South Africa. Dr. Ahmad teaches constitutional law, jurisprudence, environmental law, and interpretation of statutes. His research interests include constitutional theory and practice, higher education, and social justice. He also seeks to understand the interplay of social, cultural, and political practices in the domain of law and justice administration. He has published several research papers, book chapters, and opinion pieces.

Dr. Ahmad’s Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research fellowship project focuses on the constitutive functions of minority rights based on religion by deconstructing the judicial discourse around it. He draws from the socio-political developments in America, which led to the judicial annulment of ‘separate but equal doctrine’ in order to secure democratic educational space.

Gowramma Ittara Poovaiah

Dr. Gowramma Poovaiah Ittira is a Professor at the Regional Institute of Education, Bhubaneswar, NCERT. She teaches right from the grass root level of Bachelors of Integrated Teacher Education Programme and extends her guidance to her doctoral candidates, thus covering a wide range of students from sectoral socio-lingual communities of varied age groups. She reaches up to approximately 900 to 1000 student teachers per year and mentors about a quarter of these students in their internships while they teach in varied, diverse locations among the four states in the eastern region of India. Her current role helps in facilitating and informing research, including culturally relevant practices from varied parts of India and disseminating the results to reach schools all around India.

Dr. Ittira’s Fulbright-Nehru project aims to examine how and in what ways early literacy is affected by socio cultural practices. This project will document sociocultural practices adopted in early childhood and study their influence on literacy readiness. Furthermore, it will help inform literacy initiatives in local language and English, in India, highlighting what practices in early childhood education are beneficial. The project initiated from her home institute, Regional Institute of Education (RIE) Bhubaneswar, where she was exposed to the diverse languages of eastern India and its cultural diversity. She found similarities in practices in these practices with Kodava, her homeland. Thus, the research will directly contribute to early literacy development while incorporating the rich sociocultural practices. It will have a wide application in multilingual communities around India to foster literacy and early language acquisition while celebrating the vast cultural and linguistic diversity. Her current role will facilitate research in culturally relevant curriculum construction and practices along with possible forms of alternative education from varied parts of India and disseminating the results to reach schools all around India.

Rayson Kayalvarathu Alex

Dr. Rayson K. Alex is Associate Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani, K. K. Birla Goa Campus, Goa. His academic work lies in the area of ecocriticism, or broadly environmental humanities (EH) with a specific focus on indigenous nature-cultures and eco-cinema.

Dr. Alex was awarded his Ph.D. in 2011 for his dissertation in ecocriticism from the University of Madras. He is one of the editors of Essays in Ecocriticism (Sarup & Sons, Delhi, 2007), Culture and Media: Ecocritical Explorations (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), Ecodocumentaries: Critical Essays (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), and Ecocultural Ethics: Critical Essays (Lexington Books, 2017). He has translated works from Malayalam: Ecocriticism in Malayalam (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2022) and E for Elephant: Elephant Tales and More (Green Books, 2022). He is a recipient of the ASLE Translation and Media Subvention Grants and is the Founder and co-Director of the tiNai Ecofilm Festival.

Dr. Alex’s Fulbright-Nehru research in the US is a continuation of his research work in India that focuses on identifying ecological pedagogies in the humanities which will strengthen and systematize formal and informal teaching in the environmental humanities. These pedagogies will be structurally consolidated, evaluated and disseminated in a manner that is beneficial to the scholars and teachers, particularly in India. He also proposes to teach a course titled “Indian Films, Environmental Justice, and the Subaltern” at the Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies, Western Washington University.