Home Institution India: Tata Institute of Social Sciences

Geetha Mariswamy

Geetha Mariswamy is a PhD Candidate at the Centre of Excellence in Teacher Education, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. With more than a decade of experience spanning education, gender and labor in teaching, program implementation, research and grassroots education initiatives, her work focuses on equity, access and educational transformation in India.

Geetha began her journey in education as a Teaching Fellow with Teach for India, where she taught children from underserved communities and helped build community-led learning spaces. During her work at RV Educational Consortium, she led a four-year participatory action research project on whole-school improvement. She worked closely with schools, teachers, communities, and education departments to strengthen inclusive learning practices, teacher development, and school processes. Her previous publications and conference presentations engage with language teaching learning practices, teacher beliefs, and governance in education.

Geetha is also the co-founder of Haadibadi Community library in Bengaluru that creates access to reading and creative learning opportunities for children and youth from marginalized communities. She was recognized as an Emerging International Voice for the Library Movement by the Goethe-Institut and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions.

Geetha’s doctoral research lies at the intersection of policy, regulation, privatization and teacher workforce dynamics. It examines how regulatory frameworks attempt to balance the public-good nature of education with growing privatization and particularly in teacher education. During the fellowship, she is investigating the historical and political underpinnings of policy reforms, institutional responses and evolving governance landscape of teacher education in India.

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