A. Gandhimathi
A. Gandhimathi is the director of LAW Trust based in Tamil Nadu. She is a senior researcher with a wide experience on women issues. She is also the convener of the Coastal Action Network. She has been one of the initiators of the international tribunal on Blue Economy.
Aditi Chanchani
Aditi has been working on envisioning models of tourism that are pro people, equitable, just and culturally appropriate. She has worked on multiple dimensions, particularly impacts of tourism and the intersections between the communities, the tourist, the tourism industry, and the authorities. She has been working with the grassroot communities on different forms of tourism that are meaningful and respectful experiences, sustainable and in creating conditions for tourism that is locally based (based on local resources & location-specific knowledge). She is the former director of EQUATIONS, Bangalore.
Anil Tharayath Varghese
Anil is a development professional with more than one and a half decades of engagement with peoples’ organisations, civic initiatives, campaigns, policy and research initiatives in India. He was the coordinator of Delhi Forum. Prior to it, he has worked with Programme for Social Action and National Centre for Advocacy Studies. He serves as an advisor to the National Fishworkers Forum. He is the initiator of the Youth for the Coast.
Aswathy P
Aswathy P has a PhD from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, Chennai, her thesis being ‘Negotiating capital, state and patriarchy: a case study of women fish workers in Kerala’. She has authored several articles on women fishworkers.
Aswathy Senan
Aswathy is an independent researcher and translator. She has written various articles on contemporary social issues. She has obtained her PhD from University of Delhi. She has been closely associated with The Media Collective and The Research Collective based out of Delhi.
Debasis Shyamal
Debasis Shyamal is an activist who is part of the National Fishworkers Forum and Dakshinbanga Matsyajibi Forum. He has been organising small scale fishworkers and communities in West Bengal He has played an important role in the struggle of the coastal communities against the proposed nuclear power plant at Haripur in West Bengal. As a member of the National Fishworkers’ Forum (NFF)—an apex body of marginal fishers uniting many a local movement—he travelled along India’s coastline, witnessing and addressing the plight of fisher communities, from Gujarat to West Bengal..
Jesurethinam Christy
Jesurethinam is the Director of SNEHA, an NGO based in Tamil Nadu. She has been working with small-scale fisher workers and the coastal community at large. She is also a researcher on coastal issues and has a long experience in organising fishing communities and working for their development. She has been the initiator of organising the international tribunal on Blue Economy.
Jones Spartegus
Jones Thomas Spartegus is a doctoral research scholar working on fisheries and disasters. His research interests are in Fisheries Historical Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology and Global Power Politics. He comes from a fishing community from Tuticorin. He has been part of the research initiative on Blue Economy Tribunal.
Kalpana K
K. Kalpana is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, Chennai. Kalpana’s research interests include gender, poverty, women’s labor and microcredit.
M. Pushparayan
Pushparayan is a researcher, translator as well as an activist who has been extensively engaged with the issues of fishworkers in Tamil Nadu.
Manas Roshan
Manas Roshan is an independent researcher and consultant with International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF). Previously, he was a journalist with The Caravan magazine and NDTV in Delhi, India.
Marianne Manuel
Marianne Manuel is the Assistant Director at Dakshin Foundation. Her work with Dakshin entails improving coastal governance, supporting fishworker networks and studying the impacts of coastal laws and policies on traditional fishing communities. She works closely with fish worker unions and environmental organisations to carry out training and skill-sharing on coastal governance mechanisms.
Nalini Nayak
Nalini Nayak is an activist, feminist and trade unionist based in Kerala, India. She has been involved with coastal communities and their issues for over three decades and is a founder member of the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers, where she has taken the initiative to collectively evolve a feminist perspective in fisheries. She is the co-founder of the Self Employed Women’s Association, Kerala.
Nityanand Jayaraman
Nityanand Jayaraman is a writer and researcher based in Chennai. He investigates and reports on corporate abuses of environment and human rights, and is part of an anti-corporate collective called Vettiver Koottamaippu (Collective).
Olencio Simoes
Olencio Simoes is the General Secretary of the National Fishworkers Forum. He is actively associated with the Goenchea Raponkarancho Ekvott (GRE), Goa United Workmen Union(GUWU), All Goa Fishermen Union (AGFU), Goencheo Ekvott (GE).
Pradip Chatterjee
Pradip Chatterjee, is the convener of the National Platform for Small Scale Fish Workers. He has worked closely with small-scale fishworkers nationally and globally close to more than three decades.
S. Palayam
S. Palayam, fondly known as Palayam annan, has been a fishworker and hails from the community in Tamil Nadu. Anna’ is a casual but respectful endearment meaning ‘elder brother’ in Tamil. Palayam anna is an experienced marathukaarar (hook-and-line fisher) from the south Chennai fishing village of Urur Kuppam. He is engaged in chronicling a different way of engaging with the natural universe, communicated in the language of the fishers.
Saravanan Kasi
Saravanan is an activist who comes from a fishing community in Tamil Nadu and is active with the Coastal Resource Centre. He aims to create maps that capture not just the contours of fishing villages, but also their details, color and vitality in order to protect the communities traditional lands as the sea rises on one side and residential and industrial development encroaches on the others. The maps allow communities to address the issues with the state; they can resolve disputes and mount legal challenges against industries and government projects encroaching on their land and fishing grounds.
Savita Vijayakumar
Savita Vijaykumar is a political ecologist with a passion for the ocean and coasts. Her areas of interests are social justice and conservation in small scale fisheries; socio-ecological systems framework, legal pluralism and place-based learning pedagogies. She has completed her MPhil in Conservation Leadership from the University of Cambridge. Policy analysis towards building a culture of questioning in how communities interact with ‘place’ and the state forms the core of her practice.
Siddharth Chakravarthy
Siddharth Chakravarthy is a doctoral scholar at Queen Mary University of London with a keen interest in knowing how fish becomes seafood. His two decades long career spans work as a commercial mariner, a conservation activist and as an independent researcher supporting various fishworker collectives across India.
Sridhar Rao
Sridhar Rao is a graduate of Azim Premji University and works as a researcher with SNEHA on issues of coastal rights, livelihood and ecology. He also has been a part of the research initiative on Blue Economy Tribunal held in five countries.
Tanmay Wagh
Tanmay have been based out of the Andaman Islands since 2013, and in the process, have had an opportunity to be a part of various projects related to coral reefs, mangroves, seagrasses and dugongs, elasmobranch fisheries and leatherback turtles. His broad research interests lie in understanding the relationship between conservation, exploitation and sustainable use of marine resources, particularly in coral reef ecosystems. Presently, He is working as the Project Coordinator of the Marine Programme as part of the Long Term Ecological Observatories (LTEO) programme of the MoEFCC.
V. Vivekanandan
For Vivekanandan, the journey on the coast and the sea began in Trivandrum in the 80s. His voyage to champion the cause of small artisanal fishermen on the Indian coast has been continuing since then. With a rare blend of professional education and technological expertise that he acquires, he works dedicatedly for the well being of the fishing communities, helping them build self-reliant organisations. He is currently the Director of FishMARC taking up promotion, advocacy and sustainable resource management.
Vijayan MJ
Vijayan MJ is an independent researcher and writer associated with The Research Collective and the Center for Financial Accountability in New Delhi, India. He is also the secretary-general of the India chapter of the Pakistan India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy. He is a member of the Carnegie Civic Research Network.