Home Institution India: Tata Institute of Social Sciences

Aseem Prakash

Dr. Aseem Prakash is the Deputy Director and Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy and Governance, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Hyderabad. He is also the Coordinator of the International Relations Office (IRO), as well as the Coordinator of the Doctoral Student Office (DSO) at TISS, Hyderabad. Dr. Prakash has more than 20 years of experience in research and teaching, which includes time at the University of Oxford on the Fell Fund Fellowship. He designed the course curriculum of the Master of Arts in Public Policy and Governance at TISS, Hyderabad. His research interests are regulation and institutions, sociology of markets, interface between the state and markets, social discrimination, and human development.

Home Institution: Established in 1936, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences receives funding from the Indian Ministry of Education. TISS has a unique approach to teaching, research, and practice (including community outreach) that supports the application of theory to address real life issues. With four campuses in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Guwahati and Tuljapur, TISS offers three undergraduate, 50 masters, and 18 PhD programs in a range of interdisciplinary areas of applied social sciences. The institute also offers 30 bachelor’s degrees in vocational studies. TISS has more than 50 active collaborations with some of the best universities and institutions across the globe that support research, student, and faculty exchange. After completing their program, students secure jobs with government, civil society, international agencies and corporates.

Asha Bajpai

Asha Bajpai began her career at the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, where she was one of the founding faculty members. She went on to get her MPhil and PhD in law and has been involved for over three decades in teaching, research, and training on social laws, child rights, gender laws, public health laws, clinical education, law and social work, and legislative reforms. She had also trained law enforcement and judicial officers. As a professor of law, and the founding dean of the School of Law at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, she designed unique LLM courses on access to justice for preparing community lawyers. Prof. Bajpai was the director of field action projects such as the Access to Justice Clinic, and Chunauti – for rehabilitation of children in institutions.

Prof. Bajpai has been invited as amicus curiae and expert advisor by the Mumbai and Delhi High Courts in Public Interest Litigation cases. She has also been invited as a legal expert by UNESCO and by UNODC. She was a Fulbright lecturer at the Washington College of Law, Washington, D.C., and guest lecturer at the University of Warwick, UK, and the University of Westminster, UK. She has several publications, and her book Child Rights in India: Law, Policy and Practice by Oxford University Press is now in its third edition. Her other publications include From Exploitation to Empowerment, and Adoption Law and Justice to the Child.

In her three months as Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at Missouri Western State University, St Joseph, MO, Prof. Bajpai will be teaching a course on comparative child rights law, and clinical street law at the Center for Women and Children.

Tanya Mary Koshy

Tanya Mary Koshy is Senior Program Manager at the Office for International Affairs, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. At TISS, she oversees all operational, administrative, and program management aspects of the international office. She develops, facilitates, and organizes exchange and teaching programs, including dual and joint degrees, research projects, international admissions, field exposure, and cultural immersion activities for students and researchers, workshops, and high-level conferences. She has a bachelor’s degree in commerce from the University of Pune and a master’s degree in international security from Sciences Po, Paris. Before joining TISS, she worked in the fields of anti-trafficking, conservation, sustainable development, and country of origin research.

Lalitha Kamath

Prof Lalitha Kamath is Professor and Chairperson of the Centre for Urban Policy and Governance, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. She has a Ph.D. in Urban Planning and Policy Development from Rutgers University.

Prof Kamath’s research interests include urban governance, planning, infrastructure, urban informality, and critical pedagogies. She writes on dominant forms of urban transformations in the Global South – both the structural violence of spatial transformation and processes of slow violence to urban environments. Her writing also demonstrates the agency of marginalized groups in challenging dominant urbanisms through ethnography, film and multimedia formats (see https://www.inhabitedsea.org/the-sea-and-the-city and https://makebreak.tiss.edu/)

Based on her ongoing work on climate planning in Mumbai, in her Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence fellowship, Prof Kamath is doing two comparisons with estuarine cities in the U.S. and South Asia. First, to illuminate how expert-led planning interventions have marginalized littoral communities/environments and also how these communities demonstrate ‘ordinary’ expertise in climate changed cities. Second, to deepen cross-fertilization between Northern and Southern theoretical perspectives that challenge dominant planning expertise by building from the situated expertise of marginalized communities. This will help catalyze more just climate planning across both South and North