STAFF

STAFF

The Researchers include employees and contractors.
Vijay Prashad

Vijay Prashad

Director

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. He is the author of forty books, including Washington Bullets, Red Star Over the Third World, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, and The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power (2022), written with Noam Chomsky Vijay is the executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, the chief correspondent for Globetrotter, the chief editor of LeftWord Books (New Delhi), and a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has also appeared in the films Shadow World (2016) and Two Meetings (2017).

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Renata Porto Bugni

Renata Porto Bugni

Deputy Director

Renata Porto Bugni is a public policy analyst, an activist, and a teacher. She received a bachelor’s degree in international relations from São Paulo State University (UNESP) and a master’s degree from the University of São Paulo (USP). Renata spent seven years working to develop public policies that address social justice, notably in the areas of citizenship, social justice, and fighting violence against women. She coordinates the feminisms working group of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and is based in São Paulo.

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Celina della Croce

Celina della Croce

Director

Celina is an organiser and militant who works with the institute’s publications, English-language editing, and translations. Before joining Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, she worked in the labour movement with the Service Employees International Union and the Fight for 15 as an organiser, union representative, and shop steward and was an editor and photographer for Humans of St. Louis. She has been an active participant in the fight for social, economic, and racial justice in the streets from Missouri to Massachusetts.

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E. Ahmet Tonak

E. Ahmet Tonak

Economist

E. Ahmet Tonak is the author and editor of several books including Measuring the Wealth of Nations: The Political Economy of National Accounts (with Anwar Shaikh), Turkey in Transition: New Perspectives (edited with Irvin Schick) and Marxism and Classes (edited with Sungur Savran and Kurtar Tanyılmaz). Trained as a mechanical engineer at Istanbul Technical University, he earned a Ph.D. in economics from the New School for Social Research. Tonak taught for many years at Istanbul Bilgi University, Middle East Technical University, Bard College at Simon’s Rock, and is currently a visiting professor at UMASS Amherst. He wrote for several Turkish dailies and contributes to sendika.org, an alternative news portal in Turkey.

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Tings Chak

Tings Chak

Director

Tings Chak is an artist, writer, and organiser whose work contributes to popular struggles across the Global South. Her current research focuses on the art of national liberation struggles. She received her Master of Architecture from the University of Toronto and is the author and illustrator of Undocumented: The Architecture of Migrant Detention (2017). She leads the Art Department of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

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Ingrid Costa N. R. Guimarães

Ingrid Costa N. R. Guimarães

Designer

Ingrid Costa N.R. Guimarães is an artist and graduate of Communication and Multimedia Studies from the Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP). She interned at the PUC-SP and worked at Anhembi Morumbi University (UAM), where she specialized in the production of educational videos and animations. She is currently a designer with Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and is based in São Paulo, Brazil.

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Daniela Ruggeri

Daniela Ruggeri

Designer

Born in Buenos Aires, Daniela is a teacher of visual arts, an illustrator, a designer, and a creator of fanzines. Her visual production is developed around comics, graphic design, and illustration, collaborating – especially in the latter – with worker cooperatives and  empresas recuperadas (companies that have been reclaimed by and are run by workers). She works with self-managed book and fanzine-producing collectives as an editor and author and participates in the organisation of meetings and exhibitions of independent Argentine comic strips. She is part of the Art Department of the Tricontinental Institute of Social Research and responsible for art and design for the Buenos Aires Office.

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P. Sainath

P. Sainath

Senior Fellow

P. Sainath is India’s most important reporter. He has spent the past three decades covering rural India, work that resulted in the creation of the People’s Archive of Rural India. Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen calls Sainath ‘one of the world’s great experts on famine and hunger’. In 2000, Sainath was the first reporter to win Amnesty International’s Global Award for Human Rights Journalism and that same year he won the UN Food & Agricultural Organisation’s Boerma Prize. Sainath is the 2007 winner of the Ramon Magsaysay Award (Asia’s most prestigious prize) and the 2014 winner of the World Media Summit Global Award. Sainath’s book – Everybody Loves a Good Drought (1996) – has been reprinted in a 20th anniversary edition as a Penguin Classic. He has written the foreword for John Reed’s Ten Days that Shook the World (LeftWord, 2018).

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Li Bo

Li Bo

Senior Fellow

Li Bo is the executive director of Shanghai Chunqiu Institute for Development and Strategic Studies and assistant dean at China Institute of Fudan University, one of the top national think tanks. Dr. Li obtained a PhD degree in economics from Kiel University in Germany. From 1994 to 2015, he served in a variety of senior executive roles in several prestigious domestic and foreign strategy consulting firms and public listed companies. Before joining Chunqiu Institute, Dr. Li served as the Academic Representative of Guancha Syndicate in Beijing. His research interests include the history of socialism, socialism in China, the digital economy, and development economics and geopolitics around China and the Global South.

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Aijaz Ahmad (1941–2022)

Aijaz Ahmad (1941–2022)

Senior Fellow

Aijaz Ahmad is a leading Marxist philosopher and cultural theorist. He is the author of In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literature (1992), Lineages of the Present: Ideological and Political Genealogies of Contemporary South Asia (2001), and Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Imperialism of Our Time (2004). He has been a Professorial Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, the Rajiv Gandhi Chair at Jawaharlal Nehru University, the Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Chair at Jamia Millia University, and is currently the Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California (Irvine).

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Ghassane Koumiya

Ghassane Koumiya

Researcher

Ghassane Koumiya is a Professor of Translation at the Institute of Leadership and Journalism in Rabat (Morocco). He is a political anthropologist who has worked on grassroots, political and popular movements from the Maghreb region. Ghassane has been active in the trade union movement and human rights movement in Morocco. He is currently completing his PhD in Cultural Anthropology at Ljubljana University (Slovenia).

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Pilar Troya Fernández

Pilar Troya Fernández

Senior Fellow

Pilar is a militant and researcher. She is an Ecuadorian feminist anthropologist and has a master’s degree in women and gender studies. Her main areas of interest are social public policies, especially concerning gender equality and the feminist movement. Her activism began in college as part of the student movement and she was involved in the Women’s Assembly in Quito. She worked as a researcher with the System of Social Indicators (SIISE) and the Latin America Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO), where she also taught classes on public policies and social indicators. She then served as an advisor to the Ministry of National Planning, and as an advisor and Deputy Minister to the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology of Ecuador.

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Manolo de los Santos

Manolo de los Santos

Researcher

Manolo is an organiser and educator. He owes his political education to people’s movements from the Caribbean to New York City. He was the founding director of the People’s Forum, a movement incubator for working-class communities to build unity across historic lines of division at home and abroad.

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Nitheesh Narayanan

Nitheesh Narayanan

Researcher

Nitheesh has been an activist with the Students' Federation of India (SFI) since 2003 and is currently working as a member of its central secretariat. He is a PhD scholar at the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy of Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi, India), where he studies the connections between caste and class as well as the political mobilisation of the early communist movement in North Malabar. He is currently the editor of Student Struggle, SFI’s journal. Nitheesh received his MA in Politics with a specialisation in International Studies and his MPhil on the agrarian movement and caste question from the same university. Nitheesh writes about social and political issues in a number of periodicals and portals in English and Malayalam.

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Mikaela Nhondo Erskog

Mikaela Nhondo Erskog

Researcher

Mika is an educator and researcher. She has an MA in history from the University Currently known as Rhodes (UCKAR) and is a graduate of the Unit for Humanities at Rhodes University fellowship program. She works closely with educational programming in the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA). In the last few years, she has been dedicated to work that builds the international networks of social movements, trade unions, and people’s organisations on the African continent, with a particular focus on education and solidarity work.

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Luciana Balbuena

Luciana Balbuena

Director of Communications

Luciana is a high school teacher and militant in Argentina. She has participated in various political movements since 2009 organizing with students and education workers. She has a bachelor’s degree in communication studies, which she also teaches. Through her studies and teaching, she has developed her knowledge of youth and their connection to information and new technology.

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Luiz Felipe Albuquerque

Luiz Felipe Albuquerque

Editor

Luiz Felipe Albuquerque is a journalist who is responsible for communications in Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research’s Brazil office. He worked in the communications sector of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) for five years, contributing to the movement’s public relations and press outreach. He was also an editor of the MST’s website and the Jornal Sem Terra (‘Landless Journal’). He worked for the journal Brasil de Fato for four years as an associate editor, also assisting in the coordination and political guidance for the Center of Popular Media (CPMídias).

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Richard Pithouse

Richard Pithouse

Coordinator

Richard Pithouse is an Associate Professor at the Wits Institute for Social & Economic Research (WiSER), the editor of New Frame and a newspaper columnist. He has been a regular contributor to the press for 25 years, and for a time was a contributing editor at The Con. He has held various academic positions, teaching philosophy and politics, and writing about political theory, popular movements and cities. He has a particular scholarly interest in Frantz Fanon

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Efemia Chela

Efemia Chela

Editor

Efemia Chela is an editor and has worked in publishing for a decade. She is an MA candidate at Wits University where her research sits at the intersection of queer studies and African studies, looking at lesbian, bisexual, and queer communities in Zambia. She manages publishing at Inkani Books.

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Jie Xiong

Jie Xiong

Researcher

Jie Xiong is a Chinese technologist, translator, and editor. He has participated in the digitisation process of multiple leading enterprises in China. He has written and translated more than ten books, most of them related to information technology and digitisation. His latest translation is of Cybernetic Revolutionaries, a book about the Chilean technological Project Cybersyn during Salvador Allende’s administration. He has an MBA degree from the University of Liverpool and is a senior researcher at the Sichuan Institute for High Quality Development.

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Srujana Bodapati

Srujana Bodapati

Coordinator

Srujana has mainly worked in the area agrarian relations in India. She has participated in village studies in different parts of India. From time to time she writes on Indian banking sector issues in NewsClick. She was active in student politics in Delhi and still takes active interest in left politics and struggles.

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Satarupa Chakraborty

Satarupa Chakraborty

Researcher

Satarupa Chakraborty is an activist and is currently pursuing a PhD in Philosophy at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, India. She has been actively associated with the student movement in India since 2013. She was elected as the General Secretary of JNU Students' Union (JNUSU) in 2016. In 2015, she held the position of Convener from JNUSU at the School of Social Sciences. The key movements in which she has been active part are #OccupyUGC and #StandWithJNU. She received her M.A. from the University of Hyderabad and her M.Phil from JNU in Philosophy of Language. She was also awarded Junior Research Fellowship by Indian Council of Philosophical Research (ICPR).

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Pindiga Ambedkar

Pindiga Ambedkar

Researcher

Pindiga Ambedkar received his MPhil from the Centre for the Study of Social Systems at Jawaharlal Nehru University, where he focused his studies on issues faced by the oppressed classes (specifically, the lower castes or Dalits) in science and technology institutes in India. As a student, P. Ambedkar was an active member of Students' Federation of India (SFI) and was elected as the Vice-President of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Students' Union (2007-08) while pursuing his Master’s. In addition to his research, P. Ambedkar is engaged with Dalit Shoshan Mukti Manch ("the Platform for Liberation of the Oppressed" in English), which fights against caste discrimination. Prior to joining the Tricontinental, he worked as a correspondent with NewsClick, a web-based journal headquartered in New Delhi.

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Subin Dennis

Subin Dennis

Researcher

Subin Dennis is an economist and activist based in New Delhi. Hailing from Kerala, he holds M.A. and MPhil. degrees in economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He was active with the student movement and served as the Delhi State Vice-President of the Students' Federation of India (SFI). Subin's writings in English and Malayalam on issues related to economy and politics appear in various periodicals and websites. He worked with the online news portal NewsClick as a writer before joining Tricontinental.

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Atul Chandra

Atul Chandra

Researcher

Atul is a postgraduate from the University of Delhi (DU). He has been a student and youth activist since 2007. While pursuing his bachelor’s degree, he was elected as the central councilor of DU student union (2009-10). Prior to joining the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, Atul worked as a field investigator for the Right to Food Campaign, specifically working on the themes of human bondage, land alienation, and hunger death among Sahariya tribes in Rajasthan. Between 2013-2017, he coordinated and organised various activities and research work as a researcher and project assistant in collaboration with the South Asian University and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (South Asia).

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Srabani Chakraborty

Srabani Chakraborty

Researcher

Srabani is an organiser and activist associated with the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA). Trained in history, she is currently pursuing her PhD at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). Before becoming associated with AIDWA, Srabani had been active in student politics (SFI) from the time she pursued her B.A. in history at Jadavpur University. She ran for the post of student representative for the Gender Sensitisation Committee Against Sexual Harassment (GSCASH, JNU) and was elected in 2017 in the midst of a struggle against the university administration, which was attempting to dismantle the committee and remove power from the student body.

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Harleen Kaur

Harleen Kaur

Researcher

Harleen edits texts produced by Tricontinental’s India office, translates materials from English to Hindi, and coordinates the dissemination of the institute’s publications in India. Her research interests include how neoliberalism impacts education policies as well as critical pedagogy, social constructivist human development, and contemporary cultural discourses around individuality. She is also a math teacher.

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André Cardoso

André Cardoso

Co-coordinator

André Cardoso is a Brazilian militant and economist. He worked as an economic adviser at the Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies (DIEESE) for seven years, working directly with the Metalworkers' Union of Brazil. In partnership with his colleagues at DIEESE, he published an analysis of the metallurgical sector in Brazil and the working world in the years 2003 to 2013 entitled "The Faces of the Metallurgical Industry in Brazil". He was a militant of the youth organization of the Levante Popular da Juventude (“Popular Youth Uprising”) and is currently an active member of the organization Movimento Brasil Popular.

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Cristiane Ganaka

Cristiane Ganaka

Researcher

Cristiane Ganaka is an economist and also holds a bachelor's degree in science and humanities from the Federal University of ABC (UFABC). She was a part of the student movement as an undergraduate and volunteered for the Economic Observatory of ABC. She worked with the Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies (DIEESE) for over five years, working directly with the National Confederation of Metalworkers, part of the Unified Workers' Central (CUT). She researched industry and, more specifically, the metallurgical sector from a perspective of gender, race, and youth, as well as the labor market and labor relations.

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Rebecca Gendler

Rebecca Gendler

Administrator

Rebecca Gendler is responsible for the administrative and financial aspects of the São Paulo office. She has a bachelor’s degree in Advertising and Publicity with a specialization in marketing from Mackenzie Presbyterian University. Before joining Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, Rebecca worked in the business sector, as well as with marketing agencies. She was also in charge of management for a business in the service sector for over seven years, where she was responsible for administrative, financial, and operational management. She is also an activist.

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Luiz Felipe Albuquerque

Luiz Felipe Albuquerque

Editor

Luiz Felipe Albuquerque is a journalist who is responsible for communications in Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research’s Brazil office. He worked in the communications sector of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) for five years, contributing to the movement’s public relations and press outreach. He was also an editor of the MST’s website and the Jornal Sem Terra (‘Landless Journal’). He worked for the journal Brasil de Fato for four years as an associate editor, also assisting in the coordination and political guidance for the Center of Popular Media (CPMídias).

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Miguel Enrique Stédile

Miguel Enrique Stédile

Co-coordinator

Miguel Enrique Stédile received his master’s degree and PhD in history from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. He is a member of the coordination of the Josué de Castro Institute of Education, a teaching institute for rural popular movements dedicated to training young teachers and managers of cooperatives. He is the author or co-author of nine books, including Nobody Regulates America on hybrid wars and geopolitical disputes in Latin America. He collaborates with several media outlets in Brazil, including Brasil de Fato and TV dos Trabalhadores (TVT).

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Nontobeko Hlela

Nontobeko Hlela

Researcher

Nontobeko Hlela began her political career as an academic teaching Politics in Durban, South Africa. She has worked as a senior diplomat and was based in Nairobi, Kenya for some years. She is also a researcher with experience across Africa. Her research focuses on the prospects for advancing the interests of Africa and the Global South on the international stage.

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Mwelela Cele

Mwelela Cele

Researcher

Mwelela Cele has worked as a Curator, Education Officer, Researcher, Librarian, Events/Programmes Coordinator and Translator. He has a very strong interest in History, both written or oral, and in Historical/Heritage sites. He has worked at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Documentation Centre and Campbell Collections, specifically the Killie Campbell Africana Library, at Digital Innovation South Africa (DISA), and at the Luthuli Museum in Groutville which celebrates the life of Chief Albert Luthuli. More recently he spent several years in Ginsberg, King William's Town (eQonce) in the Eastern Cape at the Steve Biko Foundation and Centre, and is currently the Archivist and Public Programmes Director at New Frame in Johannesburg. He has published a range of articles in Newspapers, Academic Journals, in Books and online publications. Mainly he is interested in historical/political/cultural research, reading, writing, and feature films.

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Yvonne Phyllis

Yvonne Phyllis

Researcher

Yvonne is a researcher, author, and teacher. She received a master’s degree in Political and International Studies from The University Currently Known as Rhodes. She is currently the co-director of operations at The Forge, a radical pan-African project in Johannesburg, Braamfontein. Prior to joining The Forge, Yvonne was a lecturer of Political and International Studies at The University Currently Known as Rhodes. Her research interests include the landlessness and exploitation of farmworkers in South Africa and their land aspirations as well as land redistribution and agrarian reform in Africa.

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