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Partha Sarathi Das, PhD

National Library of India, Ministry of Culture, Government of India New Delhi, India

Dr. Partha Sarathi Das currently serves at the National Library of India, with prior experience at the Botanical Survey of India under the Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change, Government of India. His expertise lies in library administration, with a keen focus on resource acquisition and the utilization of advanced IT applications in library settings. Additionally, he has been a dedicated practitioner of Rajyoga Meditation with the Brahma Kumaris for over a decade. 

Dr. Das is an Innovator and Mentor of South Asia through the International Network of Emerging Library Innovators India. This distinction is part of a global library leadership capacity building program supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Global Libraries Initiative. In recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field of librarianship, he received the prestigious Indian Librarian Pride Award as well as the Best Library Professional Award by the Central Government Library Association. Dr. Das has a portfolio of 39 publications that includes journal articles, conference papers, and book chapters. Among his notable works, he is a co-author of the books “The Story of Steel Bridge: the Howrah Bridge; A Testimony of Indo-British Co-operation in Engineering Field” and “Ram Mohun Roy: Herald of New Modern Age”.

Swaguna Datta, PhD

Jadavpur University, West Bengal, India

Dr. Datta has more than 15 years of professional experience and currently serving as the Assistant Librarian, Jadavpur University, West Bengal, India. Prior to that, she served at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata, where she was associated with documentation, digitization, and cataloguing of rare archival documents. She has vast experience in cataloguing, indexing, digitization, archiving, metadata creation, and overall digital content management for conventional, rare, and unconventional documents. As a trained history and library-information science professional, she has engaged in research work alongside regular professional responsibilities and published several research papers to her credit. Dr. Datta is the co-author of the book “Cumulative Index of “Granthagar” (1358-1428). As a researcher, her areas of interest include oral history, toponymy, local history, old and rare magazines and journals, bibliographic control, and interrelation between women’s studies with various facets of library and information science.

William Gould, PhD

Dr. Gould is Professor of Indian History at the University of Leeds, where he has worked since 2003.  Prior to that, he was trained in his BA, MPhil and PhD at the University of Cambridge and held the Smuts Research Fellowship at the Centre for South Asian Studies.  His research and publications have covered a broad range of themes in 19th and 20th Century Indian political, social and cultural history, including two Cambridge University Press books (2004, 2012) on the politics of religious community, a book on mid 20th Century histories of the Indian civil services/bureaucracy (2011), and a cross-border exploration of citizenship in India and Pakistan (2018).  As well as working with a filmmaker on the histories of Denotified and Nomadic Tribes in India and helping to digitize their archive with the help of the CSAS, Cambridge, he has acted as editor of Adam Matthew's digitisation of Foreign and Commonwealth Files on South Asia, and on the 'Records of the Raj' collection digitised by Microform. He is currently working on two larger inter-disciplinary projects which have external funding - firstly a history of Indian Anthropology and Sociology, and secondly, 'Tape Letters' which explores the nature of a cassette tape archive, which connected families moving and living between the UK and parts of South Asia from the 1970s to 1990s.

Aruna P. Magier, PhD

New York University, New York, NY

Aruna P. Magier is the South Asia Librarian and also International Relations Librarian at Bobst Library, NYU. She is the Associate Editor for South Asia of the Bibliography of Asian Studies (BAS), published by the Association for Asian Studies, and a Senior Editor of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia in Asian History. Dr. Magier received her PhD in History from Osmania University (Hyderabad) in 1999, with a research focus on Indian economic history, and a Masters in Library Science from Queens College in 2004. She has served on the faculty at Rutgers University (2009), Columbia University (2005-2010), and University of Pennsylvania (2006-2010). She began her work as Associate Editor of the BAS in 2000, and since 2008 has been the South Asia Librarian at NYU's Bobst Library, shaping the University's interdisciplinary print and digital research collections and primary sources from and about South Asia and the region's global connections, and creating broad South Asian Studies online research guides to assist students and scholars working in this field. At NYU, she has also created the South Asian Documentary Films Collection. Dr. Magier is currently writing up her research on foodways in the Asian diaspora. A trained oral historian, she is also working on oral histories as primary source documentation of the history of diasporic South Asian women's organizations and LGBTQ immigrant communities in the New York area.

Alka Rai, PhD

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University, Delhi, India

Dr. Rai currently serves as Deputy Librarian and Research & Publication Ethics (RPE) Course Coordinator at Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University. Over the past 14 years, she has cultivated a deep understanding of library operations, research trends, and innovative technologies.

 At Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD), Dr. Rai successfully established libraries across multiple campuses, implementing and managing library management software systems such as LIBSYS and KOHA. Under her leadership, the AUD Library transformed into a hub of digital resources, boasting a collection of 300,000 e-books, 20,000 e-journals, and 38 databases. Additionally, she has conducted extensive training sessions for over 6,000 library users, empowering them with essential research tools and fostering digital literacy.

Dr. Rai’s doctoral research work on the digital divide, with a focus on gender and lingual perspectives, showcases her commitment to addressing barriers faced by library users. She has actively contributed to the global library community, serving on review committees and advisory roles for international journals and conferences. These experiences have enhanced her expertise and instilled in her a passion for creating inclusive and equitable library environments. Dr. Rai was recently awarded the prestigious Commonwealth Professional Fellowship 2021-2022 at Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation, London, UK. During her fellowship, she worked on the project “Inclusion of Girls in ICT: Closing the Digital Gender Divide”.

J. Shivarama, PhD

Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India

Dr. Shivarama is a distinguished faculty member specializing in digital libraries, library automation, and content management systems at the Centre for Library and Information Management Studies. He is highly regarded as a sought-after resource person who has conducted workshops at various universities nationwide. He  has authored over 50 research articles published in both national and international journals.

Dr. Shivarama is deeply passionate about open-source tools and web technologies, particularly their applications within library settings. He previously held a position at Karnataka State Open University, where he played a pivotal role in overseeing the Bachelor's and Master's programs in Library and Information Science. Since 2012, he has been a dedicated educator at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, where he serves as the Coordinator for the PG Diploma program in Digital Library and Information Management.  Furthermore, his academic contributions extend to successful mentorship, having guided three scholars to the completion of their PhD degrees, while an additional four scholars are currently pursuing their doctoral studies under his guidance.

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