Participants
ANSHUMAN ALAMURU
Anshuman is a recent graduate with a degree in Mass Media and Journalism from the University of Sikkim Manipal in India, including a specialization in film direction. He has made films and documentaries to create awareness on a wide range of topics from discrimination against women to the effects of economic fluctuation on the low income sector. Soon after graduation, he started his professional career as the creative head of an advertising agency and later moved to Mumbai to shoot short films for the United Nations Population Fund. He was a volunteer during the 2013 flood crisis in Uttarakhand. He continues to pursue his passion for film making/journalism and music with the intent of creating social awareness and highlighting social responsibilities.
NIHARIKA AWASTHI
Niharika is a Development Communication professional who just graduated with a Master’s in Development Communication from AJKMCRC, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. She is an avid reader and a passionate writer. Gender, class, caste and conflict are her issues of interest. She has interned with the Hindustan Times and worked as a trainee in the Department of Information and Public Relations in the Government of Uttar Pradesh. She is currently working as a Development Trainee with PRAXIS, and she writes for Korrade.com, an interest based website.
OĞUL GIRGIN
Oğul is a senior at Tufts from Istanbul, Turkey, majoring in Human Factors Engineering and minoring in Art History. He worked with Justine Hardy and Healing Kashmir as part of the Oslo Scholars program in the summer of 2016, doing research on the effects of conflict on Kashmiri youth and methods of coping with the trauma of occupation. Oğul has studied visual narrative before, both academically and personally. He has taken the PNDP course under Samuel James, and provided a final piece on Native American folklore. He has also pursued personal projects on protests in Turkey. With this workshop, Oğul hoped to develop a better understanding of practices of storytelling and politics of portrayal, and become a more seasoned storyteller.
SOPHIA GROGAN
Sophia is a rising junior at Tufts University from Somerville, MA. She is majoring in International Literary and Visual Studies with a focus on Latin America and Spanish. Her time is split between managing a food cooperative, exploring the implications of gentrification in her hometown, and practicing music. She hopes to direct her academic studies towards human rights, specifically immigrant rights in the United States, through the lens of documentary, the humanities and the arts.
HNIN DARLE LIN (CHRIS)
Born in Myanmar and raised in Singapore, Hnin Darle Lin (Chris) is currently pursuing a B.A. in International Relations, with a minor in Media & Communication Studies at Tufts. At Tufts, Chris has had the chance to learn and hone the craft of storytelling through creating photo-essays (exhibited through the Program for Narrative and Documentary Practice in October 2015), a documentary (titled “A Good Woman”, submitted to Yangon Human Rights Film Festival), a children’s book (titled “Gruffle and Something Very Shiny”, unpublished), performance (self-written monologue in “Not Your Mother’s Stories” at Tufts University), and an anthology (titled “Spare Change News” about homeless newspaper vendors in Boston through the Program for Narrative and Documentary Practice). Chris strongly believes in the power of stories.
ANNIE LYE
Annie Lye is a senior at Tufts University, majoring in International Literary and Visual Arts. Raised in the "concrete jungle" known as Hong Kong, she embraces the oxymoronic existences in life. Last spring, she returned to Italy on a study exchange at the University of Bologna in pursuit of her affinity with the artistic and literary culture. Her passion for photo-documentary was realized after participating in the Institute for Global Leadership’s Program for Narrative and Documentary Practice (Sept 2015), and she co-curated the program's Wonderland exhibition and website (http://www.thewonderlandproject.com/).
ANKITA MANNA
Ankita is a post-graduate student majoring in English Literature at Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi, who has a passion for writing, traveling and photography. Born and brought up in Calcutta, she has always been inclined to learn about human experiences and their incredible journeys from the fringes to the center. She has worked as a young reporter for The Telegraph in Schools from 2006-2011. She has also interned with the Indian Writers Forum in Delhi. Currently working as a Film Production Trainee in Kolkata, she looks forward to each day as a new opportunity to push herself beyond the borders. Having previous experience working as a journalist, she aspires to gain from the insights into the lives of the people in the interiors of her country who are deprived of something as basic as medicine. At the end of the workshop, she hopes to emerge as a more sensitive individual, aware of her own country’s needs, and contribute to a greater cause in her own way.
CHERYL MUKHERJI
Cheryl Mukherji is an Applied Psychology undergraduate at the University of Delhi. She is a freelance photographer based out of New Delhi and currently working with Our Better World, Singapore International Foundation. She has previously worked with The Hindu and Caravan Magazine, among others. She wants to pursue photojournalism and further work on educational, cultural and women issues in India.
SMRITI PARHI
Smriti is currently working at Arpan, an NGO that works to fight against child sexual abuse, as the Coordinator for Content Development: Healing. Her role involves inter-team interaction and development of modules around counseling and first level interaction. She has been leading a research study on the implementation of the Personal Safety Education Programme of the Organisation. She graduated from the University of Delhi with a degree in psychology and from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai with a Master’s degree in Social Work, specializing in mental health.
NIYA SHAHDAD
Niya Shahdad is an aspiring writer and journalist, with interests rooted in the arts and politics. She was born in Bombay, is of Kashmiri origin, and has lived in the United Arab Emirates for almost a decade. Having graduated in May 2016 from Tufts University with double majors in English and Art History, Niya has been closely involved with the university’s Institute for Global Leadership. As a freshman, she was selected to its Oslo Scholars Program and interned for one of the Oslo Freedom Forum’s speakers, author and psychologist Justine Hardy, and her organization Healing Kashmir, which facilitates support and resilience for those living in the conflict zone through mental health services and education. Niya has also been a part of the Institute’s Program for Narrative and Documentary Practice, where she first explored nonfiction, multimedia storytelling and solidified her interested in pursuing long form journalism under the guidance of renowned photojournalist Gary Knight. Last summer, she worked for The Indian Express in Mumbai, covering the art beat for the newspaper’s culture desk. A short-lived detour from human rights and writing has involved a stint at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London, where she trained in the makings and dealings of the art world and art market. In addition to a liberal arts education at Tufts, Niya’s experience in fields beyond journalism - mental health, human rights, and the art world - have all contributed, in some way to a multi-dimensional and socio-cultural perspective of the world that now informs and inspires the stories she wishes to explore as a journalist.
ABINAV SHARMA
Abhinav Sharma is an aspiring photographer and filmmaker, currently based in Mumbai, India. He completed his Bachelor’s in Communication from Doon University in 2014. He recently completed his internship with BIND, a multimedia collective based in India. He will be working for them full-time after the workshop, while he will be mentored by two of its members. In the course of his internship, Abhinav worked on several photo and video projects. For AccessAbility, a series of portraits of disabled people commissioned by the Consulate General of Sweden, he assisted photographer Sunil Thakkar. For Without Walls, an exhibition which looked at the situation of homeless people in the city of Mumbai, he edited a series of short films. Abhinav is also involved with an archiving project initiated by BIND in the context of the WW exhibition: through the digitisation and curation of personal photographs of street-dwelling families, the collective aims at preserving these memories but also to produce alternate narratives. Earlier in 2015, Abhinav had worked on a photo essay that documents the lives of Injecting Drug Users of New Delhi.
POOJA SIVARAMAN
Pooja Sivaraman is an aspiring storyteller who grew up in New Delhi, India. She recently graduated from Tufts University with majors in English and Economics. In the past, she has worked with documentary film and podcast mediums to tell stories about the South Asian diaspora in the United States, but hopes to expand the range of stories she will tell in the future. She is a passionate reader, traveler, and writer, and the three are often dependent on one another.
Workshop Staff
SAMUEL JAMES
Sam has taught at the Program for Narrative and Documentary Practice at Tufts University since 2011. His photography has been recognized with the International Center of Photography Infinity Award, the Overseas Press Club Olivier Rebbot Award, a Getty Images Grant for Editorial Photography and a special commendation from the Frontline Club of London, among other distinctions. He is a frequent contributing artist for Harper’s Magazine, and his work has been widely published by The New York Times, TIME, The Sunday Times of London, GEO, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal and Human Rights Watch. He has led the Program for Narrative and Documentary Practice’s workshops in St. Petersburg, Russia; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Nairobi, Kenya.
MATTHEW EDMUNDSON
Matt is co-founder of Violet Health, a social enterprise start-up operating in Bangalore, India since 2012. Violet Health’s mission is to positively disrupt global health challenges and nutrition deficiencies through innovative health products created for and with consumers. Their first product, created with nutritionists, doctors, and pregnant women in India, is a solution for iron deficiency anemia: a culturally appropriate fortified food meant to replace iron tablets. Formerly, Matt served as Operations Officer for RefugePoint, a start-up NGO focused on refugee health and protection across East, Central, and Southern Africa, in close collaboration with the UN Refugee Agency and the US State Department.
ALISHA SETT
Alisha is a writer based in Bombay, India. She writes regularly on art and photography for The Hindu, a leading national newspaper. Her stories have also been published in magazines like Himal, LA.Lit and the Indian Quarterly. In 2016, she joined the Mumbai Art Room as Associate Curator, the only non-profit contemporary art space in the city. In 2015, she collaborated with Calin Kruse, an award-winning photobook publisher and designer, to teach a workshop at the Obscura Festival in Malaysia. In 2014, she co-founded the Kashmir Photo Collective, a digital archive of photographs from the Valley. It aims not only to preserve personal and studio collections but to create visual narratives that challenge the mainstream representations of Kashmir that focus solely on war and tourism. In 2015, the work of the collective was featured by Getty Images, Polka Magazine (France), VICE (USA) and UnBox Festival (India). In 2013, she was awarded an Edmond J. Safra Network Fellowship from Harvard University for her work in Kashmir.
with
CHHAYA PACHAULI
Chhaya Pachauli is a young, health activist associated with Prayas (a civil society organization based in Rajasthan) with vast interest in activities that are directed towards different aspects of the right to health. She graduated from Delhi University with as a History major and completed a Master’s focused on Rural Development. She has more than ten years of wide experience of working closely with the community on diverse public health issues in India and specifically in the state of Rajasthan, specializing in community capacity building, health policy advocacy, health systems strengthening, reproductive and child health rights and access to medicines. She has been one of the leading members in the “right to free treatment” campaign of Rajasthan and has been actively advocating for increasing government accountability towards people’s right to free medicines and free diagnostics across the country. She has been coordinating activities of Jan Swasthya Abhiyan in Rajasthan which is the state chapter of global People’s Health Movement, a network of networks, health activists, civil society organizations and academic institutions striving for Right to Health.