THEME
A Whole New World: Play and Learning

Saturday, April 8, 2017

Moderator: Dr. Rajani Konantambigi

Dr. Rajani Konantambigi is a Professor at the Centre for Human Ecology, School of Human Ecology, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India. Her areas of teaching, research and outreach have been broadly in child development and socialization and research methodology. Major areas of research have been role of fathers in creating learning environments for children, ethnographic methods in researching child care settings in India, socialization of emotions, emotion regulation, child care and socialization in varied settings, play in children, Child Friendly Spaces, Mumbai, India: A collaborative project, with the Children's Environment Research Group, New York, and TISS, issues in teaching-learning, learning disability, school based counselling and guidance, mental health issues surrounding children and meaning making of mental illness by caregivers of persons with mental illness. 

She has served as a member of board of studies in Human Development/Home Science, at the Universities of SNDT, Mumbai and MS University, Vadodara and as a consultant to primary and early childhood education for some trusts/organisations. She is an office bearer, President and Secretary of International Play Association, India and Association for Early Childhood Education and Development (AECED) respectively. She also has a US Govt.'s Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship (completed from Georgia State University, Atlanta, 2001-02) and the Rockefeller’s Team Residency Fellowship to edit a book (at the Bellagio Study Center, Italy) in 2000.

Lewitt Somarajan
Founder & CEO, Life-Lab

Lewitt is a social enterprise that is making science education fun & engaging for children in government schools. Life-Lab promotes Activity & Inquiry based learning by building the capacities of teachers. In 4 Years, Life-Lab has worked with more than 200 schools across 9 states, impacting close to 80,000 children. Lewitt is a Teach For India fellow, Acumen Fellow & Ashoka Fellow.

Prasanth Nori

Co-Founder, Dramebaaz

Prasanth is a Teach for India Fellow, is the Co Founder of Dramebaaz. Dramebaaz is an initiative to build creativity and confidence in children through the use of Drama. It also seeks to empower these students to be agents of social change. Dramebaaz works with children with our unique 4-stage process that covers writing skills, reading and analysis, skill-specific activities, effective rehearsals and a showcase to present their learnings.

Abhijit Sinha

Founder, Project DEFY

Abhijit is a young social innovator, and the founder of Project DEFY. He has designed many social innovations in India and Africa, including Bodacart – a $500 Ambulance for Africa, a waterless urinal, an accident detection app etc. He believes that high quality education should be accessible to all, and that each person should be capable enough to customise it, to their needs and interests. And all that needs to be broken is the fear of making choices. Hence, he created a first low-cost self-learning model where the learners create and run their schools and develop skills that interest them.

Ratnesh Mathur

Founder, Aarohi open learning community

Ratnesh Mathur works with children. 18 years into this and he is still learning about children. He likes learning with children. He does not like teaching. Ratnesh's chief role is to agitate, to confuse, to challenge. For this reason children and parents consider him to be a mentor, but they call him tormentor. He has worked with all ages of children - from two years to teenagers. He has also worked intensely with parents and teachers. Ratnesh propagates democratic, learner driven environments. He is a part of Aarohi​ open learning community. Aarohi​ ​is a community of self directed learners -​ Children who decide what they want to learn, how they want to learn, when they want to learn and use self assessment. They do not follow any philosophy, they follow the child​. Aarohi offer​s​ an open learning environment at ​ its campus in a village near Hosur.

Sarat Kumar Jena

Assistant Professor Language, Cultural & Media Studies, Institute of Advanced Research

Sarat Kumar Jena is an Assistant Professor of Language, Culture and Media Studies at Institute of Advanced Research, Gandhinagar (Gujarat). He is a senior researcher of comparative literature at Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar. 

He has about nine years of research experience in Indian literature in areas ‘Authenticity and ‘Misrepresentation’ in ‘Tribal Narratives’. An alumnus of Euro Science Open Forum 2016, Manchester (UK) and a recipient of Alfred Krupp Short Term Fellowship 2014 for National Narratives at Greifswald University, Greifswald (Germany) he has about sixty three national and international conference / seminar / keynote address, oral presentations and twelve selected book chapters and peer reviewed research articles in international journals. He makes documentary films and has produced for stage, AIR and DD. He is the founding chair of the International Association of Comparative Literature, Society and Culture (IACLSC).