Gita Viswanath has a PhD in Literature and Film Studies from The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. She was awarded the Teacher Fellowship from University Grants Commission, New Delhi in the year 2000. Her study, The ‘Nation’ in War: A Study of Military Literature and Hindi War Cinema, was published by Cambridge Scholars, UK in 2014.She is the recipient of a Fellowship from the Social Science Research Centre, New York in the year 2006. She has taught in the departments of English at Tolani College of Arts and Science, Adipur, Kutch from 1995 to 2002 and Maharaja Sayajirao University from 2003 to 2006. She has presented papers on film and literature in conferences and seminars in India and abroad. She has also published papers on cinema in journals and edited volumes, two novels, a children’s book, short stories and poems. She is the co-founder of an online film club called Talking Films Online that organizes weekly discussions on films and month-long film festivals.

Parul Dave Mukherji is Dean of School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Earlier, she taught at the Department of Art History and Aesthetics, Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University, Baroda.   She had done her D.Phil in Indology from Oxford University, Oxford, 1991, MFA in Art History, Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda, 1985 and BA (Fine) in History of Art, Kalabhavana, Viswabharati University, Santiniketan, 1983.

Pramod Pandey is Professor at the Centre for Linguistics, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has been engaged in teaching and research for the past 37 years and has taught Linguistics and English in different parts of India and in the Republic of Yemen. He was awarded several international fellowships including the 1987 Linguistic Institute Fellowship at Stanford University, U. S. A.; the Nuffield Foundation Fellowship at the University of York, England; the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency Fellowship, U.S.A.; Guest Scientist, Department of Linguistics, Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany. He has been invited as Visiting Professor at various institutions including CNRS, Paris, France; and the University of Frankfurt, Germany. His professional activities include membership of professional bodies and Advisory Committees of the Ministry of Human Resource Development. He is the Subject Coordinator for the UGC INFLIBNET E-PG Pathshala programme in Linguistics and has published articles in international journals such as Lingua, Journal of Linguistics and Studies in Language. His research interests include Speech, Writing Systems, and Communication. His recent publication is a 2014 two-volume book entitled, Sounds and Their Patterns in Indic Languages (CUP India).

Professor Prakash C. Sarangi, a member of the Forum’s Board of Trust has recently taken over the position of Vice-Chancellor of Ravenshaw University, Cuttack, Odisha. Prior to this assignment, he was a Professor of Political Science, the University of Hyderabad and a Senior Academic Consultant at the Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi. He was also the Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Director of International Affairs at the University of Hyderabad during 2009-10. He taught at Utkal University, Bhubaneswar and was an Academic Fellow at the American Studies Research Centre, Hyderabad before joining the University of Hyderabad in 1987. He holds an M.A from Delhi University and a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester, NY, USA. His academic interests revolve around democratic theory and practice. His current research is on India’s political economy and its impact on democratic politics and institutions. His most recent publication is: Essays on India’s Poltical Economy (New Delhi: Knowledge World, 2014)

Dilip Kumar Das is currently Professor in the Department of Cultural Studies at The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad.

Currently, Professor of India Studies at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, Kailash C Baral is the former Pro Vice-Chancellor of EFLU and former Director of the Shillong Campus of the EFL University. Having a teaching career over thirty-eight years Prof. Baral has authored, edited and co-edited 10 books and has 42 publications in National, International Journals, and anthologies. His work Theory after Derrida has been scheduled for a South Asian edition by Routledge after having been available as an e-book. He is a member of National Committees of Sahitya Akademi, UGC SAP and Visitor’s nominee in Universities.

E.V.Ramakrishnan is a bilingual writer who has published poetry and literary criticism, in Malayalam and English. He also translates between these two languages. He has published three volumes of poetry in English: Being Elsewhere in Myself (1980), A Python in a Snake Park (1994), and Terms of Seeing: New and Selected Poems (2006). Among his critical books in English are Indigenous Imaginaries: Literature, Region, Modernity (Forthcoming in 2017), Locating Indian Literature: Texts, Traditions and Translations (2011) and Making It New: Modernism in Malayalam, Marathi and Hindi Poetry (1995). He has also edited for Sahitya Akademi Indian Short Story 1900-2000 (2001), We Speak in Changing Languages: An Anthology of Women’s Poetry in English (2006) and Trees of Kochi and Other Poems by K.G.Sankara Pillai (2016).  He has published seven critical books in Malayalam, including Anubhavangale Aarkkanu Peti? (2013), Malayala Novelinte Deshakalangal (2017) and Aksharavum Aadhunikatayum (1994) for which he was awarded Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award. He is presently Professor Emeritus at Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar, Gujarat.

Born in 1975, Mumbai, Ajay Sarvaiya has been involved in creative writing (fiction and poetry) in Gujarati for more than two decades now. His short-story collection Fact and Fiction ane Biji Vaartaao (2010) consists of experimental fiction in the tradition of Borges, Calvino, and Vila-Matas. His fictions and poems are translated into English, Hindi, Marathi, Maithili, and Malayalam. His collection of critical essays Borges ane Hun: Gujarati Olakh ni Shodh (2008) breaks boundaries between fiction and criticism and provides fresh frameworks and approaches to the understanding of Language, Culture, and Art. He studied at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai and The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara. Ajay is Assistant Professor at the Department of Linguistics at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda.

Lajwanti Chatani is Professor in Political Theory and Head of the Department of Political Science at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. She is the Director of the Institute of Policy Research and International Studies at the Maharaja Sayajirao University and Convener of the Forum on Contemporary Theory. She is joint editor of the Journal of Contemporary Thought and Consulting Editor for the Journal of Public Affairs and Change. She has edited a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary Thought on “Revisiting the Political”, and has several publications to her credit. She is also Member of the Advisory Board of the Women’s Studies Research Center of the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda as well as a Trustee of the Sindhu Vidya Mandal, Vadodara. She is a Core Faculty at the M S Merian International Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences, New Delhi. She has also contributed to curriculum development and course materials pertaining to political theory at the Indira Gandhi National Open University and the National Council of Educational Research and Training, New Delhi.

Prafulla C. Kar, currently the Director of Forum on Contemporary Theory, was formerly the Head of the Department of English, M. S. University of Baroda. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Utah, USA in 1973. A former Deputy Director and Academic Associate at the American Studies Research Center, Hyderabad, he was the recipient of both pre-doctoral and postdoctoral Fulbright Fellowships to study in the United States. He was also a Fellow of the School of Criticism and Theory, Dartmouth College in 1986. Professor Kar is the editor of the Journal of Contemporary Thought and has published several books and papers on American literature, literary theory, Indian English literature and cultural studies.

Professor Kar is the recipient of the 2012 Nicolas Guillen Award for Philosophical Literature of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. The Award was presented to him on July 20, 2012, during the international meeting of the Caribbean Philosophical Association in the St. Augustine campus of the University of West Indies, Trinidad for his “extraordinary contribution to the study of the humanities in India and the impact of his work across the globe.” The Committee also noted his role “in the growing cultivation of dialogue across the Global South and the institutions he has developed such as the Centre for Contemporary Theory, the Journal of Contemporary Thought, and the annual conferences that have in recent times brought in the voices of the Caribbean.”  Past prize winners of the Award include Wilson Harris, Rambai Espinent, Edwidge Danticat, Junot Diaz, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.