The Third Eye is developed by a team of educators, documentary filmmakers, storytellers.
Dipta Bhog
Head of Research, Innovation and Partnerships
Dipta Bhog has worked on gender and education for close to three decades, and has co-founded Nirantar, a Centre for Gender and Education in Delhi. She has worked as a journalist and a women’s rights activist, and has extensive experience of working on women’s literacy, adult and girls education at the level of program design, implementation, policy and impact.
As part of Nirantar, Dipta coordinated a five-state study titled Textbook Regimes that analysed school textbooks from a feminist lens and has worked on writing textbooks for both national and state governments. She was instrumental in initiating Khabar Lahariya, which started as a newspaper in 2002, and has been involved in training the team of rural women journalists. More recently, her research work focused on women leaders from rural areas and small towns who run non-governmental organizations. She redesigned and presently conducts CREA’s Institute on Feminist leadership and Movement Building in South Asia and East Africa. Her research on young girls and their collectives resulted in Birdbox, an audio-video installation in the shape of a re-engineered bioscope in collaboration with artist Baaraan Ijlal, where you can bear witness to conversations of young girls from Bhopal, Lucknow and Karvi, on desire, love, shame and freedom.
At The Third Eye, Dipta leads its Hindi publishing, partnerships and outreach, and has conceptualised The Caseworker’s Dictionary of Violence, and helps give direction and depth to the TTE editions.
Shabani Hassanwalia
Editor and Producer
Shabani is a writer and filmmaker, making non-fiction image, sound and text in various media since the year 2000. Her work engages with changing socio-political realities, volatile subcultures and intimate personal histories in an India-in-transition. A graduate in English Literature, Delhi University and post graduate from Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia, her feature documentaries include Being Bhaijaan (2014), Gali (2017) and Out of Thin Air (2009). She is an INLAKS Fellow, and worked at The Sundance Institute, Los Angeles and the Documentary Filmmakers Group, London, as part of the fellowship. She was a core editorial team member of Delhi’s First City magazine for over a decade. She has worked extensively with adolescent girls and women in rural India on social disruption through digital storytelling.
Shabani has led TTE’s editorial work across media, and works closely with the team to build a feminist view and way of doing things.
Ruchika Negi
Lead, The Learning Lab
Ruchika is a documentary filmmaker and educator, and has been teaching non-fiction cinema at various universities and informal spaces since 2015. At TTE, she leads the Learning Lab, an arts based pedagogical platform that foregrounds experiential learning and co-creation processes, in partnership with grassroots organisations, cultural workers, research and policy think tanks. As part of The Learning Lab, she has mentored the award winning Raat: Nightime in Small Town India, a contemplation on time, labour, desire, mobility and image making and Khushi’s Roshni, shortlisted for Toto Awards for Short Film amongst many other productions. In the Lab, she has also co-directed and co-edited Hamare Beech Mein, a conversation around differential caste positions and the process of making a film on caste.
She has been awarded artistic residencies at Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw; PAV Centre for Contemporary Art, Turin and Khoj Studios, Delhi. She is also the recipient of Charles Wallace Short Term Grant in 2016, and Research and Documentation grant from the India Foundation for the Arts. Her works have been exhibited at various festivals and art platforms, the most current being the Kochi Muziris Biennale, 2022-23.
Suman Parmar
Senior Content Editor, Hindi
Suman is a writer, editor, and translator who has been engaged in publishing, radio, and print and web media houses for more than a decade. Trained as a journalist, she started her career with Radio 92.7 Big FM and worked with esteemed media houses like Dainik Bhaskar and BBC. She has translated as well as edited a number of bestselling books, including Devdutt Pattanaik’s Meri Geeta and Meghna Gulzar’s Woh Jo Hai.
With 7 years of experience in Hindi publishing, Suman heads the Hindi editorial team and manages translations, commissioning, writing, and editing along with outreach programs for The Third Eye Hindi. Culture, gender and education are her prime areas of interest.
Sadia Saeed
Technical Lead, Assistant Producer
Sadia is a post-graduate in Library and Information Science and joined Nirantar in 2002 as a librarian. Gradually, she started handling all Nirantar publications from design assistance to writing to translations to proofreading. Deeply interested in new and emerging technologies, Sadia shows the team what self-directed learning can do, and is always found between new plugins, software and fonts.
Sadia is also the producer of Bolti Kahaniyan, TTE’s gender stories podcast designed for field facilitators. She leads the Hindi social media production and handles all back end publishing at the TTE. Sadia is probably any food delivery app’s favourite customer.
Madhuri Adwani
Podcast Producer and Associate Editor (The Learning Lab)
Madhuri Adwani produces, records and edits narratives and sound pieces on Nirantar Radio. Some of her major audio productions include shows like Ekal in the City, Mera Chashma Mere Rules, and Mann ke Mukhaute amongst others. She co-produced the audio narratives for Dictionary of Violence called Caseworker’s Diary. She has translated stories from other languages into Hindi for audio fiction production like Vaidehi’s story Gulabi Talkies and Nisha Susan’s story Trinity. She mentors and facilitates workshops as part of The Learning Lab where her core enquiry is ‘how do we write and tell our narratives’.
She is currently working on her book on single women which is based on the audio series Ekal In The City that won the Laadli Media Award in 2023. Her other works include Tapri Tales and Kahaniyon Ka Adda – a collection of audio stories. She moves across towns, kasbahs and rural areas with a listening ear and a recorder.
When not recording and writing, she is making coffee at The Third Eye.
Shivam Rastogi
Producer, Image Editor
Shivam is a video and image maker based in NCR with a particular love for indie and non-fiction. He studied journalism and mass communication at MCRC, Jamia Milia Islamia, and is a visiting faculty for photography there.
At The Third Eye, he works as art commissioner / curator / mentor along with developing videos, films and photo essays. He has produced and been a part of the team behind award-winning films such as Sex (Work) & the City (2021), Raat: Night Time in Small Town India (2022), Made in Belda (2022), and Age of Learning (2023). He has also led and developed TTE video series such as Filmy Shehar, Teacher Talks, BlackBox and Meet the Caseworkers.
When he is not shooting, you will find him on photo walks, sitting behind an iMac editing, nerding on podcasts, food videos and video essays, and procrastinating on meditation.
Astha Bamba
Assistant Editor and Communications Strategist
Astha holds an English Literature degree from Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi. She joined TTE in early 2021, and along with the team, has built TTE’s ethos, rigour and public engagement. She assists in all editorial and communication and mentorship processes, and has co-led The Caseworker’s Dictionary of Violence.
Formerly, Astha has also worked at the Centre for Studies in Gender and Sexuality (CSGS), Ashoka University, Sangat – A Feminist Network and Feminism In India. As a student, she was an organiser in movement spaces, and has engaged with questions of sexual harassment, public education, archaic hostel curfew rules and surveillance. She is deeply committed to generating feminist knowledge from the field and loves being on the ground.
Juhi Jotwani
Editorial Coordinator, Writer, and Assistant Podcast Producer
Juhi is a writer and a researcher who writes long form pieces, provides editorial support, and produces podcast episodes and audio pieces for The Third Eye’s podcast channel Nirantar Radio. Her training is in Literary and Cultural Studies, and she has studied urbanisation as a fellow at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bangalore. In the past, she has reported on civic issues for Citizen Matters, Bangalore. Three of her research projects on the theme of media and cultural studies have been published in the form of book chapters.
She is deeply interested in feminist literature and cultural studies. In her free time, you will find her watching films or playing board games.
Gurleen Grewal
Video editor/Assistant Producer
Gurleen is a filmmaker and editor, interested in examining the various structures and narratives found in the everyday. She has a Bachelor’s degree in design and a PG Diploma in Creative Documentary Filmmaking from Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts and Communication, where she made her first film Somewhere Near and Far, which won the Best Short Documentary award at IDSFFK, Kerala. She is a part of the The Third Eye’s Learning Lab as video editor and mentor, and has co-edited the film Humare Beech Mein (In Between Us) which is borne out of the lab’s pedagogical processes. She also contributes to the online editorial processes at TTE and has been a part of the video production team of the Dictionary of Violence and its film, Kya Hai Yeh Samjhauta. Gurleen is currently working on her second film under the G3: genDeralities and work Fellowship by the ReFrame Institute of Art and Expression.
Kulsum Nisha
Admin and Field Facilitator
Along with being a field facilitator for The Third Eye’s Learning Lab, Kulsum manages admin and operations at The Third Eye. She also works as a part of the Social Media team and derives a lot of pleasure in ideating and making reels. After completing her post-graduation in Botany in her hometown Banda, Uttar Pradesh, she shifted to Delhi and this shift was the plot of The Third Eye’s popular documentary City Girls. This film is based on the experiences of two girls who shifted from the small town of Banda to the big city of Delhi to fulfill their dreams. Kulsum gets a kick out of visiting new places, going for new adventures, and obviously getting her pictures clicked while she is at it.
@Nirantar
Archana Dwivedi
Director, Nirantar Trust
Archana has more than 18 years of work experience in the areas of gender and education. In Nirantar, along with steering the organisational projects, her major involvement has been in researching and writing on issues of women’s empowerment and young people’s education and empowerment from a feminist perspective. Her engagement on these issues has further been strengthened by the work at the field level with women and girls belonging to marginalised communities. She believes in making research accessible to grass roots organisations and, thus, transcreates these into training and learning material for facilitators, field-based activists, and organisations.
Nirantar Board
Renuka Mishra
Renuka has a Master’s degree in social work from Delhi University. After working as a psychiatric social worker in England she taught at Rajasthan University in the Department of Adult Education. In 1976 she started a bi-lingual journal on development issues called How / Kaise. During the publication of How she networked extensively with NGOs across the country. Jag Sakhi, a 12-part serial on Women and Empowerment was produced by Renuka in collaboration with CENDIT for UNICEF. She worked with Action India for over 10 years organizing agricultural labourers and stone quarry workers in Mehrauli, Delhi. She has been closely associated with the Mahila Samakhya programme from its inception as a trainer, resource person and evaluator. She is a founder member of Nirantar and has been closely associated with the development of Broadsheets for neo literate women, promoting innovations in Continuing Education and in writing of health curriculum for rural educators and learners. At present, she is engaged with deepening her understanding of Vedic texts and strengthening engagement of Sanskrit scholars working on these.
Sarojini Nadimpally
Sarojini has been working on public health and women’s health issues in India for the last three decades. She is one of the founders of Sama Resource Group for Women and Health that works at the intersection of public health, human rights and marginalization. She is the national co-convenor of Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, and coordinator of Gender Justice Circle of People’s Health Movement Global. She has led several studies, fact-findings and advocacy initiatives over the past two decades on health systems, medical and reproductive technologies, conflict and public health, access to medicines & ethics in clinical research, and most recently, on COVID 19 and its impact on the marginalised. Currently, she is part of the Expert Committee set up by National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to assess the impact of C0VID-I9 pandemic on human rights and its future response.
Malini Ghose
Malini is one of the founder members of Nirantar. She has worked in the field of education and women’s rights for nearly 30 years in various capacities – as a grassroots practitioner, trainer, material and curriculum developer, researcher, and activist. She has helped design and implement various innovative education programmes for women, and reviewed and provided technical inputs to government and NGO interventions on Right to Education and in gender and education. She was a member of the National Resource Group (NRG) for the Mahila Samakhya programme and was part of NCERT’s textbook Writing Committee for Political and Social Life and Political Science Textbooks from 2005-2008. Her articles have been published in the Economic and Political Weekly, The International Review of Education and Gender and Development Journal. She is presently completing her PhD at the University of Goettingen, Germany.
THE INTERN ROLL Of HONOUR
The Third Eye Internship Programme offers a ringside view to developing art, writing and pedagogy with a feminist lens. We have a minimum three-month commitment criteria, and welcome folx at any stage of life and education.
Our Champion Interns:
Srija U, Aarya Pathak, Namrata Mishra, Nangsel Sherpa, Achal Dodia, Chaitali Pant, Anisha, Almina Khatoon.