TATA INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES (MUMBAI) India, Mumbai

Surinder Jaswal, Deputy Director, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India.

Prof. Jaswal is also the Associate Editor of the Indian Journal of Social Work (IJSW) and Professor of Social Work at the Centre of Health and Mental Health, School of Social Work. She is a Social Work Educator and Public Health Researcher focusing on inequality and human development issues in health and mental health. She has researched extensively and has several publications in the area of public health and mental health with focus on health inequity, women’s health and disasters and social work education. She has initiated and anchored several field action projects on community health, women’s health and disasters. She is on the board and steering committees of several scientific and ethics committees of universities and organizations.

Surinder Jaswal has a doctorate in Public Health from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, London University.

More than two decades of my professional career include work in direct community mobilisation, participatory research and training and capacity building in government training institutions before joining TISS as a full time faculty member in 1999. My research and publications are mostly in the thematic areas of Communalism, Conflicts and Peace Processes, Minority Rights, Social Innovation and People Centred Development and Social Enterprises. I have been engaged in many international collaborative researches and academic engagements with universities from USA, UK, Sweden, Denmark, Turkey, Brazil and Belgium and have been visiting professor / fellow with University of Gavle, Sweden, Tampere University, Finland and Roskilde University Denmark. I along with colleagues from six universities in Europe, Americas and Africa have founded  a global alliance of progressive universities "Critical Edge Alliance" to promote critical and innovative approaches in Higher Education. I currenlty holding the position of member of board of trustees of Non-profit organisations Society for Awareness Harmony and Equal Rights (SAHER) and Mumbai Education, Research, Innovation and Training (MERIT) Trust. As the Regional President (South Asia) of the International Council on Social Welfare (ICSW) and a member of International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW), I am engaged in promoting Global Agenda for Social Work and Social Development. Being a member of European Research Network on Social Enterprises (EMES), Belgium, I function as the Member of the Scientific Committee of Biennial Conference of EMES.

Dr. Asha Banu Soletti is currently Professor at the Centre for Health and Mental Health and also the Dean, Student's Affairs. She led the Centre for Health and Mental Health as Chairperson from 2012 to 2018. She teaches Masters level courses for the thematic areas-Social Work in Public Health and Social Work in Mental Health. Her areas of research include Children affected by HIV/AIDS, Aging and Elder abuse. Her field of practice and core interests include community health, community mental health and development, social gerontology and palliative care. She has extensive field engagement both in the urban and rural context through her field action projects and other community level interventions. She has actively responded and contributed to the disaster relief work operations of the Institute. Presently, she coordinates a field action project “Integrated Rural Health and Development Project” which is located in a tribal belt and caters to the health needs of the Konkana, Warli and Katkari tribes through a social determinants framework. In her leadership with the CHMH, she spearheaded the forging of academic partnership between TISS and The Banyan, Chennai. Also she  facilitated the foramalising of  the agreement between TISS and INHS-ASVINI to offer M.Phil Psychiatric Social Work Program.

She was awarded the Linnaeus-Palme Fellowship to visit and teach at the Gothenburg University (2012), Sweden. She also serves in Institutional Review Board (IRB) of many organisations. She is activey involved in training and capacity building, monitoring and evaluation in the Public Health domain. She has several peer reviewed publications to her credit.

Abdul SHABAN is Professor at School of Development Studies and Deputy Director [Pro-Vice Chancellor] (Tuljapur Campus), Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. He is author of Mumbai: Political Economy of Crime and Space (Orient Blackswan, 2010); editor of Lives of Muslims in India: Politics, Exclusion and Violence (Routledge, 2012London); Muslims in Urban India: Development and Exclusion (Concept Publishing, New Delhi, 2013), ‘Mega-Urbanization in the Global South: Fast cities and New Urban Utopias of the Postcolonial State’ (Routledge London, 2016). He has also edited books on spaces of religious minorities in India. Besides, he has published several papers on development and deprivation in India, and production of ethnic spaces in cities. He has authored several reports and research project for the State and Central Governments, for Corporate sectors and UN agencies.

He has been member of many Commissions and Committees, including Post-Sachar Evaluation Committee, Government of India; Mahmoodur Rahman Committee or Chief Minister’s High Powered Committee on Muslims, Government of Maharashtra; and Commission of Inquiry of Socio-Economic and Educational Status of Muslims in Telangana, Government of Telangana.

He has been visiting Professor in various Universities out the country. These include, London School of Economics; University of Paris, Diderot; Erasmus University, The Netherlands; Masaryk University, Czech Republic; Muenster University, Germany.

Ajay Kumar Singh is Professor (Education) at the Centre for Education, Innovation and Action Research (CEIAR), Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Before Joining TISS, He used to work with MHRD, Govt of India for curricular reform, teacher’s profession development as mandated in RTE Act 2009.  He also worked as faculty in Department of Education and College of Education, University of Delhi, and have been adjunct faculty at Ambedkar University Delhi. He was a member of national Task force on Curriculum and Pedagogy   constituted by MHRD, Govt of India and other experts’ committees constituted by Government of India, and selected states Government, includes Bihar, Odisha, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh.  

He has worked on several education project and ed-tech projects, includes Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (for universalization of education), Rastriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (for universalization of quality secondary education), Connected Learning Initiative (for technology enable teaching learning). His teaching and research interests include Teachers Education, Education Policy and History of Indian Education system   

Akhilesh K.S. Yadav is Assistant Professor in Centre for Library and Information Management Studies (CLIMS). Prior to this, he has also worked as Assistant Professor in Library and Information Science with Guru Ghasidas Central University, Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh, and as Research Associate in “e-Granth” project in Choudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agriculture University, Hisar, Haryana. He attended the Banaras Hindu University of Varanasi and where he obtained B.A. (Hons.) in A.I.H.C. & Archaeology in 2005, and MLIS in 2007. He has been awarded degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Library and Information Science subject in October, 2010 from the Mizoram University (A Central University), Aizawl, Mizoram. He has participated in several seminars and workshops, and published several research papers in research journals and conference proceedings. He is working as an editor of ‘International Journal of Information Research’. He teaches knowledge discovery and data management, information storage and retrieval, multilingual information systems and school library and information systems to the masters level students.

Amina has a doctoral degree from Iowa State University in Education. She initiated and led the initiative called Integrated approach to Technology in Education (ITE), at Tata Trusts. ITE offers a pedagogic framework for authentic and connected learning which is integrated with the curriculum. ITE currently caters to over 30 thousand students from socially marginalized pockets in India. She also leads the Teacher Professional Development cell of the Connected Learning Initiative at TISS, which is a joint project with MIT. Over the years, she has gathered first-hand experience from the rural middle and secondary schools. This has guided her research work in the area of integrating ICT for enabling constructivist approaches in teaching and learning, and models of continuous professional development for government school teachers. In addition, her experience of working with multiple platforms across government run schools, community learning centers, and madrasas, has culminated into a new research interest. This research interest is related to studying the impact of formal and informal platforms in bridging the learning and opportunity gaps for some of the most marginalized children in India.