Institutes & Partners

Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research has a global presence with teams all over the world, producing research and printed materials, working closely with popular movements and other progressive organisations.

Vijay Prashad

Executive Director

Vijay Prashad

Vijay 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, written with Noam Chomsky. Vijay is the executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, the chief correspondent for Globetrotter, and the chief editor of LeftWord Books (New Delhi). He also appeared in the films Shadow World (2016) and Two Meetings (2017).

To reach Vijay for an interview, event, research, writing, or other request, please write to inquiries@thetricontinental.org.

Teams

Publications

The publications team manages the production of our texts, from the time an author’s draft is submitted through the editing and translation processes, and coordinates the launch.

Celina della Croce

Director and editor

Celina della Croce

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.

Pilar Troya Fernández

Translator and Researcher

Pilar Troya Fernández

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. She coordinates the feminisms working group of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Dafne Melo

Translator

Dafne Melo

Dafne is a psychoanalyst and translator living in São Paulo, Brazil. She has undergraduate degrees in journalism (Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo) and history (University of São Paulo) and a postgraduate degree in psychoanalysis (Sedes Sapientiae Institute). She worked at Brasil de Fato as a journalist from 2004 and 2011 and lived in Argentina for four years, where she participated in the founding of the popular communication vehicles Marcha and Notas – periodismo popular. She was an activist with Consulta Popular (Brazil), Frente Popular Darío Santillán (Argentina), and Movimento Patria Grande (Argentina). In addition to translating for Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, she has translated books in the human and social sciences. Currently, she also studies the relations between gender, neoliberalism, the social reproduction of life, and psychological suffering.

Luiz Felipe Albuquerque

Editor

Luiz Felipe Albuquerque

Luiz 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).

Ajit Singh

Editor

Ajit Singh

Ajit is a lawyer, researcher, and writer whose work focuses on US foreign policy towards China and ongoing developments in the New Cold War. He received his Juris Doctor from the University of Western Ontario and currently contributes to the institute’s English-language editing and publications.

Mikaela Nhondo Erskog

Researcher

Mikaela Nhondo Erskog

Mika is an educator and researcher. She is part of the Pan Africanism Today Secretariat, which coordinates the regional articulation of the International People’s Assembly and is also part of the No Cold War coordination committee, a peace platform promoting multilateralism and maximum global cooperation. She is also part of Dongsheng, an international collective of researchers interested in Chinese politics and society, and hosts The Crane: An Africa-China Podcast.

Efemia Chela

Editor

Efemia Chela

Efemia 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.

Art

The Art team illustrates and designs our publications, produces research on movement art and culture, and collaborates with cultural workers internationally.

Tings Chak

Director

Tings Chak

Tings 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.

Ingrid Neves

Designer

Ingrid Neves

Ingrid 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 specialised 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.

Daniela Ruggeri

Designer

Daniela Ruggeri

Born in Buenos Aires, Daniela is a teacher of visual arts, an illustrator, a designer, and a creator of fanzines. Her visual production focuses oncomics, 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 organising meetings and exhibitions of independent Argentine comic strips. She is part of the art department of Tricontinental: Institute of Social Research and is responsible for art and design for the Buenos Aires Office

Communications

The Communications team amplifies the work of the Institute through creating content for social media that highlights the most relevant aspects of the research developed and through building connections with the media.

Luciana Balbuena

Director

Luciana Balbuena

Luciana is a high school teacher and militant in Argentina. She has participated in various political movements since 2009, organising alongside 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.

Luiz Felipe Albuquerque

Communicator

Luiz Felipe Albuquerque

Luiz 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).

Efemia Chela

Communications Officer

Efemia Chela

Efemia 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.

Pindiga Ambedkar

Communications Assistant

Pindiga Ambedkar

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.

Atul Chandra

Communications Assistant

Atul Chandra

Atul is a postgraduate from the University of Delhi. He has been a student and youth activist since 2007. While pursuing his bachelor’s degree, he was elected as the central councilor of the University of Delhi student union (2009–2010). Prior to joining Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, Atul worked as a field investigator for the Right to Food Campaign, focusingon 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).

Operations

The operations team facilitates and supports the day-to-day running of the institute.

Tariro Takuva

Operations Director

Tariro Takuva

Tariro has extensive experience in finance and operations. She works in different capacities to support organisations and movements on the African continent that are focused on facilitating community and societal engagement, education, advancing and promoting social justice, human rights, and furthering democracy and equality.

Ursula Eggers

Operations Administrator

Ursula Eggers

Ursula is a Chilean feminist and defender of human rights. As the president of the Providencia Human Rights Coordinating Committee and a cofounder of the Observatory on Human Rights and Political Violence, she worked to condemn national and international human rights violations that took place during Chile’s political uprising from 2019 to 2020. Ursula was also an advisor during Chile’s constitutional process, where she founded and oversaw the Plurinational Union of Workers of the Constitutional Convention. She has a degree in social work.

Soledad Varela

Operations Manager

Soledad Varela

Soledad is an event manager, cultural facilitator, and researcher who focuses on organising seminars, book launches, and international conferences across diverse fields, with special attention to the social sciences, human rights, and women’s rights. She has engaged in research and editing work at the Institut Universitari d’Estudis Europeus in Barcelona and at the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York on El Salvador’s legislation on abortion. She holds a Master’s in International Studies from the University of Chile and an LLB from the University of Warwick. She has lived in the US, Italy, England, Mexico, and Brazil.

Technology

The Tech team keeps our tech infrastructure running and takes care of IT, tech support, web development, and other tech-related tasks.

Amílcar Guerra

Director

Amílcar Guerra

Amílcar is a graphic designer and self-taught web developer as well as a hacker in spirit. He has a long history of collaborating with various kinds of organisations in web development and technology across the world including Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, Germany, Australia, and Mexico. He has a strong interest in the intersection between technology and politics and coordinates the technology department of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Daniel Lage

Sysadmin

Daniel Lage

Daniel is a systems administrator, professor, samba dancer, poet, and political scientist. He has worked with open source software and with the Linux community. Parallel to his work as a computer scientist, he received his master’s degree in political science, became a popular educator, and, in 2021, launched his first book of poems, entitled Florecimientos (‘Blossoms’). With this hybrid trajectory, he found in the Tricontinental a promising space for his professional development.

Senior Fellows

P. Sainath

P. Sainath

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 also wrote the foreword for John Reed’s Ten Days that Shook the World (LeftWord, 2018).

Li Bo

Li Bo

Li Bo is the executive director of the Shanghai Chunqiu Institute for Development and Strategic Studies and the assistant dean at China Institute of Fudan University, one of China’s top 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.

Aijaz Ahmad (1941–2022)

Aijaz Ahmad (1941–2022)

Aijaz 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).

Grieve Chelwa

Grieve Chelwa

Grieve is a Zambian economist whose research focuses on African economic development. He is an associate professor of political economy at the Africa Institute as well as the coordinator of the Collective on African Political Economy (CAPE), a collection of emerging African academics and leaders of social movements interested in an emancipatory political economy as it relates to the African continent. Grieve previously served as a senior lecturer at the University of Cape Town and held postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard University and the University of the Witwatersrand. He is a regular commentator on African economic issues, with opinions appearing in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, CGTN, BBC, Mail and Guardian, People’s Dispatch, Lusaka Times, and Business Day, among many others. He holds a BA in economics from the University of Zambia and a PhD in economics from the University of Cape Town.

Pilar Troya Fernández

Researcher

Pilar Troya Fernández

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. She coordinates the feminisms working group of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Deby Veneziale

Deby Veneziale

Deby has been a researcher, journalist, and editor for left and progressive newspapers, journals, and books in the United States for many years. Her work focuses on Marxist theory, the national question in the United States, and the evolution of National Liberation Socialism, and she has also studied the global supply chain industry. She continues in that same capacity at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Researchers

Manolo de los Santos

Researcher

Manolo de los Santos

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.

Nitheesh Narayanan

Researcher

Nitheesh Narayanan

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.

Mikaela Nhondo Erskog

Researcher

Mikaela Nhondo Erskog

Mika is an educator and researcher. She is part of the Pan Africanism Today Secretariat, which coordinates the regional articulation of the International People’s Assembly and is also part of the No Cold War coordination committee, a peace platform promoting multilateralism and maximum global cooperation. She is also part of Dongsheng, an international collective of researchers interested in Chinese politics and society, and hosts The Crane: An Africa-China Podcast.

Ajit Singh

Researcher

Ajit Singh

Ajit is a lawyer, researcher, and writer whose work focuses on US foreign policy towards China and ongoing developments in the New Cold War. He received his Juris Doctor from the University of Western Ontario and currently contributes to the institute’s English-language editing and publications.

Jie Xiong

Researcher

Jie Xiong

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.

Marco Fernandes

Researcher

Marco Fernandes

Marco has a BA and MA in history and a PhD in social psychology from the University of São Paulo. He has worked with popular movements for two decades and helped form the research group on evangelism in politics in the Tricontinental (Brazil) office. He currently lives in Beijing and has been researching and publishing work related to geopolitics from a Global South perspective, as well as on various aspects of China’s economy, politics, and culture. He is a co-founder and co-editor of the Dongsheng Collective.

Ghassane Koumiya

Researcher

Ghassane Koumiya

Ghassane is a researcher and the director of education and programming at the Zetkin Forum for Social Research in Berlinprofessor of translation at the Institute of Leadership and Journalism in Rabat (Morocco). He is also a professor of translation with a PhD in cultural anthropology, a political anthropologist, and a political activista political anthropologist who has worked on grassroots, political, and popular movements from the Maghreb region. Ghassane has written articles and studies on grassroots, political, and popular movements in the Middle East and North Africa and is active in the trade union movement and human rights movements in Morocco. He is currently completing his PhD in Cultural Anthropology at Ljubljana University (Slovenia).

Special Projects

Wenhua Zongheng

Ajit Singh

Coordinator

Ajit Singh

Ajit is a lawyer, researcher, and writer whose work focuses on US foreign policy towards China and ongoing developments in the New Cold War. He received his Juris Doctor from the University of Western Ontario and currently contributes to the institute’s English-language editing and publications.

Tings Chak

Researcher

Tings Chak

Tings 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.

Jie Xiong

Researcher

Jie Xiong

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.

Jojo Hu

Researcher

Jojo Hu

Jojo’s work focuses on global communications, in particular bridging communications divides within the Global South. She is part of the coordination team for the international edition of Wenhua Zongheng, jointly produced with the research collective Dongsheng, and has a degree in public relations from East China Normal University.

War on Drugs

Laura Capote

Coordinator

Laura Capote

Laura is a Colombian social activist and journalist who has been living in Argentina since 2013. She has a degree in communication sciences from the University of Buenos Aires and is an MA candidate in international relations at the National University of La Plata. She is responsible for the Secretariat of Political Education of ALBA, a continent-wide platform of social and people’s movements, and a member of the Colombian Group of Critical Thought at the University of Buenos Aires’ Colombian Institute of Latin American Studies. She is also a part of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research’s Observatory on the Conjuncture of Latin America and the Caribbean (OBSAL).

International Advisory Board

  • Neville Roy Singham
    Chairman
  • Abdallah Al-Harif
  • Carmen Navas
  • Cosmas Musumali
  • Madhav Kumar Nepal
  • Manuel Bertoldi
  • Neuri Rossetto
  • Stephanie Weatherbee Brito

Emiliano Lopez

Coordinator

Emiliano Lopez

Emiliano is a militant, researcher, and professor. Since 2004, he has been active in various political movements and spaces linked to labor organising and political education within popular movements. He is a member of the Laboratory of Sociological and Economic Labor Studies (LESET) at the University of La Plata. He received his PhD in economics at the University of La Plata (UNLP), where he teaches in the College of Humanities. He has published various articles and books, including The Post-Neoliberal Years: From the Crisis to the Consolidation of a New Method of Development. He studies themes linked to the political economy, political sociology, and methods of development that are in dispute in Argentina today.

Art, Design & Communications

Luciana Balbuena

Communicator

Luciana Balbuena

Luciana is a high school teacher and militant in Argentina. She has participated in various political movements since 2009, organising alongside 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.

Daniela Ruggeri

Designer

Daniela Ruggeri

Born in Buenos Aires, Daniela is a teacher of visual arts, an illustrator, a designer, and a creator of fanzines. Her visual production focuses oncomics, 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 organising meetings and exhibitions of independent Argentine comic strips. She is part of the art department of Tricontinental: Institute of Social Research and is responsible for art and design for the Buenos Aires Office

Julián Bokser

Communications specialist

Julián Bokser

Julian is an activist, university professor, and high school teacher. He has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Buenos Aires, where is currently a PhD candidate in social sciences. From 2015 to 2018 he was part of the national coordination of ALBA Movements’ Argentina chapter and participated in numerous forms of alternative, community, and popular communication. He is currently an advisor to the National Congress of Argentina and part of the communications team of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research (Argentina).

Researchers

Laura Capote

Researcher

Laura Capote

Laura is a Colombian social activist and journalist who has been living in Argentina since 2013. She has a degree in communication sciences from the University of Buenos Aires and is an MA candidate in international relations at the National University of La Plata. She is responsible for the Secretariat of Political Education of ALBA, a continent-wide platform of social and people’s movements, and a member of the Colombian Group of Critical Thought at the University of Buenos Aires’ Colombian Institute of Latin American Studies. She is also a part of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research’s Observatory on the Conjuncture of Latin America and the Caribbean (OBSAL).

Fernando Vicente Prieto

Researcher

Fernando Vicente Prieto

Fernando is a journalist, editor, and social justice activist. Born in Argentina, he has been involved in people’s movements since 1995. He has worked as a journalist, editor, correspondent, and publisher in several media houses, including Prensa De Frente, Marcha Noticias, ALBA TV and NotasPeriodismo Popular, between 2003 and 2017. From 2013 and 2018, he was part of the communications team of ALBA Movements. Since 2014, he has participated in political education initiatives related to communication and geopolitics with the José Carlos Mariátegui School. Since 2018, he has coordinated the Batalla de Ideas publishing house. He is part of the project of the Latin America and the Caribbean Observatory that is being developed in the Buenos Aires office of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Maisa Bascuas

Researcher

Maisa Bascuas

Maisa is a feminist activist of the people, a university professor, and a researcher. She has participated in various political organisations and political education spaces with people’s organisations, unions, and feminist organisations in Argentina. She has a degree in Political Science and teaches at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and at the National University of General Sarmiento (UNGS) in the Gender, Politics, and Social Participation Diploma. She is a tutor in the Latin American Program for Online Learning in Social Sciences (PLED) in issues related to gender and social economics. She is a researcher at the Institute of Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of Buenos Aires (IEALC-UBA) and the Oral Archive of Open Memory. She is the author of articles and publications on the State, public policies, Latin American feminisms, and people’s and feminist economies.

Alejandro Jasinski

Researcher

Alejandro Jasinski

Alejandro is a journalist with a PhD in history, as well as an eternally aspiring advocate of just causes. He researches, writes, and teaches at the University of Buenos Aires and works at the Secretary of Human Rights of the Nation, collaborating on judicial cases of crimes against humanity committed in Argentina. His most recent book is titled The Spell of Tannin (El encanto del tanino, 2023). He is also the author of the book Worker Rebellion and Massacre in La Forestal (Revuelta obrera y masacre en La Forestal) and the co-coordinator and co-author of the report Corporate Responsibility in Crimes Against Humanity (Responsabilidad empresarial en delitos de lesa humanidad).

Pindiga Ambedkar

Co-coordinator

Pindiga Ambedkar

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.

Atul Chandra

Co-coordinator

Atul Chandra

Atul is a postgraduate from the University of Delhi. He has been a student and youth activist since 2007. While pursuing his bachelor’s degree, he was elected as the central councilor of the University of Delhi student union (2009–2010). Prior to joining Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, Atul worked as a field investigator for the Right to Food Campaign, focusingon 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).

Team

Bodapati Srujana

Researcher

Bodapati Srujana

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.

Satarupa Chakraborty

Researcher

Satarupa Chakraborty

Satarupa is an activist and is currently pursuing a PhD in philosophy at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in 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’s student union in 2016. In 2015, she held the position of convener of the student union at the School of Social Sciences. She has been active part of the movements #OccupyUGC and #StandWithJNU. She received her MA from the University of Hyderabad and her M.Phil from JNU in the philosophy of language. She was also awarded the Junior Research Fellowship by the Indian Council of Philosophical Research.

 

Subin Dennis

Researcher

Subin Dennis

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.

Srabani Chakraborty

Researcher

Srabani Chakraborty

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 through the Student Federation of India from the time she pursued her BA in history at Jadavpur University. She ran for the post of student representative for the Gender Sensitisation Committee Against Sexual Harassment at 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.

Harleen Kaur

Researcher

Harleen Kaur

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.

Miguel Enrique Stédile

Co-coordinator

Miguel Enrique Stédile

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).

Miguel Yoshida

Co-coordinator

Miguel Yoshida

Miguel is a coordinator of the Tricontinental (Brazil) office as well as an editor of the Journal of Studies of the Global South (RSG). He has extensive experience in book publishing through the publishing house Expressão Popular in Brazil and is the convener of the International Union of Left Publishers (IULP). He has a bachelor’s degree in literature and a master’s degree and PhD in comparative literature, and his main research interests are the relationship between art and society, with an emphasis on literary studies as a form of knowledge of reality and of resistance and organisation. He also works with the thought of Florestan Fernandes, mainly in his reflections on dependent capitalism and the dilemmas of Brazilian social formation.

Team

Cristiane Ganaka

Researcher

Cristiane Ganaka

Cristiane 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.

Rebecca Gendler

Administrator

Rebecca Gendler

Rebecca 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.

Luiz Felipe Albuquerque

Communications Specialist

Luiz Felipe Albuquerque

Luiz 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).

Delana Corazza

Researcher

Delana Corazza

Delana is a researcher with a bachelor’s degree in social sciences from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, a master’s degree in Architecture and Urbanism from the University of São Paulo, and a PhD in Geography from São Paulo State University. She began her activism in housing movements and urban occupations in the city centre of São Paulo, was an activist with Consulta Popular, and worked on land regularisation in favelas on the outskirts of São Paulo and with popular education in various spaces. She coordinated the research project Observatory on Evictions with the School of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of Sao Paulo and the Federal University of ABC and was the coordinator of the Women in Struggle project for the Gaspar Garcia Centre for Human Rights. She has coordinated research on evangelicals, politics, and grassroots work with Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research since 2019.

Rodrigo Lentz

Researcher

Rodrigo Lentz

Rodrigo is an attorney and holds a PhD in political science from the University of Brasília. He researches political thought within the Brazilian military and political system and has published scientific articles, book chapters, opinion articles, interviews, and the book The Republic of National Security (República de Segurança Nacional, 2022). He was a consultant at the United Nations (UNDP), coordinator of the Amnesty Commission of the Ministry of Justice, and field coordinator for the 8th Brazilian Legislative Survey (Getúlio Vargas Foundation – FGV/Oxford). In addition to working as a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, he is currently an advisor for the Amnesty Commission of the Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship, visiting professor of human rights and public policy at University of Vale do Rio dos Sinos Campus São Leopoldo (Unisinos), executive board member of the Brazilian Coalition for Memory, Truth, Justice, Reparation, and Democracy, and a member of the research group Democracy and Society (a project of Demodê – Research Group on Democracy and Inequality at the University of Brasília).

Marcelo Álvares de Lima Depieri

Researcher

Marcelo Álvares de Lima Depieri

Marcelo is an economist with a master’s degree in political economy and a PhD in social sciences. He has been a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research since 2021, where he has conducted research on the Brazilian labour market, Marxist dependency theory, development and the effects of agribusiness in Brazil, China’s developmental policies, and the new right in Brazil (specifically on the ways in which neoliberal ideas are reproduced in our society). He also led the Observatory on the Conjuncture of Latin America and the Caribbean (OBSAL) in the Brazil office from 2021 to 2023 and is an economics professor at Paulista University (Unip) and the author of the books How to Understand the Brazilian Economy: Questions in their Right Place (Para entender a economia brasileira: as questões en seu devido lugar, 2024) and Pandemics, Crisis, and Capitalism (Pandemias, Crise e Capitalismo, 2021), both published by Expressão Popular.

Angélica Tostes

Researcher

Angélica Tostes

Angélica is a theologian and holds a master’s degree in religious science from the Methodist University of São Paulo (UMESP). She completed academic exchanges in contextual theology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (the Netherlands, 2018) and in interfaith dialogue and combating poverty at Henry Martyn Institute in Hyderabad (India, 2018). She has been a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research since 2020. She also works as course coordinator at the Ecumenical Centre of Evangelical Services and Popular Education and is a staff writer at CartaCapital magazine for the column Faith in Dialogue.

Tariro Takuva

Coordinator

Tariro Takuva

Tariro has extensive experience in finance and operations. She works in different capacities to support organisations and movements on the African continent that are focused on facilitating community and societal engagement, education, advancing and promoting social justice, human rights, and furthering democracy and equality.

Network of African Research Institutes

NARI

Consistent with our broad aim of driving movement-driven research, analysis, and collaboration, NARI is the coordination body of our research interests on the continent.

Mikaela Nhondo Erskog

Researcher

Mikaela Nhondo Erskog

Mika is an educator and researcher. She is part of the Pan Africanism Today Secretariat, which coordinates the regional articulation of the International People’s Assembly and is also part of the No Cold War coordination committee, a peace platform promoting multilateralism and maximum global cooperation. She is also part of Dongsheng, an international collective of researchers interested in Chinese politics and society, and hosts The Crane: An Africa-China Podcast.

Yvonne Phyllis

Researcher

Yvonne Phyllis

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.

African Union of Left Publishers

AULP

AULP is a network of like-minded publishers advancing the dissemination of Left ideas and political texts across the African continent, using a solidarity rights model.

Efemia Chela

Managing Editor of Inkani Books

Efemia Chela

Efemia 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.

Collective on African Political Economy

CAPE

CAPE is a grouping of emerging academic and activists interested in an emancipatory political economy for Africa.

Grieve Chelwa

Senior Fellow

Grieve Chelwa

Grieve is a Zambian economist whose research focuses on African economic development. He is an associate professor of political economy at the Africa Institute as well as the coordinator of the Collective on African Political Economy (CAPE), a collection of emerging African academics and leaders of social movements interested in an emancipatory political economy as it relates to the African continent. Grieve previously served as a senior lecturer at the University of Cape Town and held postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard University and the University of the Witwatersrand. He is a regular commentator on African economic issues, with opinions appearing in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, CGTN, BBC, Mail and Guardian, People’s Dispatch, Lusaka Times, and Business Day, among many others. He holds a BA in economics from the University of Zambia and a PhD in economics from the University of Cape Town.

Zetkin Forum for Social Research

The Zetkin Forum for Social Research is a Europe-based platform created to foster international exchange. The forum collaborates with institutes and movements throughout Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa to analyse developments in these regions and their impact on the global economy. It also coordinates the dissemination and discussion of research produced by movements in the Global South in order to work towards a collective analysis of our contemporary reality. Among the Zetkin Forum’s projects is the Internationale Forschungsstelle DDR (IFDDR), which researches and writes about the practical and theoretical knowledge accumulated in the forty years of socialist construction in the German Democratic Republic (DDR). Within IF DDR’s work, special attention is given to socialist countries’ understanding and practice of anti-imperialism and their alliance with national liberation movements during the second half of the 20th century. The Zetkin Forum follows the tradition of the revolutionary feminist Clara Zetkin and her son, the socialist physician Maxim Zetkin: It is their principles of internationalism, anti-fascism, social progress, and rigorous scientific research that guide the work of the Zetkin Forum.

You can reach the Zetkin Forum at contact@zetkin-forum.org.

Florentine Sandoval

Operations director

Florentine Sandoval

Flo ensures that operations run smoothly at the Zetkin Forum for Social Research, including day-to-day administration and organisational management, and is an editor of the forum’s publications. At the Internationale Forschungsstelle (IF DDR), Flo researches the history of women’s emancipation and internationalism in the DDR as well as the cultural policies and practices in East German socialist society.

Matthew Read

Researcher and Coordinator

Matthew Read

Matthew is a researcher engaged in political education, organising, and solidarity work in Berlin. At the Zetkin Forum for Social Research, he coordinates the research agenda of the Internationale Forschungsstelle DDR (IFDDR) and writes about socialist health care, anti-imperialist strategies, the planned economy, and state theory, among other topics. His research focuses on analysing the historical experiences of and scholarship from Eastern European socialist states and connecting these insights to contemporary struggles. He is also an editor of the Zetkin Forum’s publications and coordinates the European section of the International Union of Left Publishers (IULP).

Max Rodermund

Researcher

Max Rodermund

Max primarily researches and writes about the history of socialism in the German Democratic Republic (DDR) and its impact on the world, including in the areas of agriculture, health care, and democracy, as well as the anti-imperialist strategy of the socialist camp. As part of his research, Max conducts interviews with former citizens of the DDR and other key figures who had first-hand experience with the country in order to compile a searchable video archive for future generations, documenting the contradictions and struggles of building a socialist society. He also helps circulate Tricontinental’s publications in Germany by drawing a close connection between the content, rooted in perspectives and analyses from the Global South, and progressive forces and movements in Germany.

He Zhao

Designer

He Zhao

Zhao’s writing is focused on revolutionary music, design, and culture. He has published in magazines such as ThisIsAfrica, Das Argument, Usbek&Rica, and Starwax; has given talks at The House of World Cultures (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin), Robert Johnson Theorie, the University of Art and Design Offenbach, Mousonturm Artists’ House (Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt), and Iwalewa House (Iwalewahaus) at the University of Bayreuth; and has performed as DJ Zhao in many countries.

Laura Pierson

Systems administrator

Laura Pierson

As the systems administrator for the Zetkin Forum for Social Research, Laura ensures that tech runs smoothly. Outside of the Zetkin Forum, they organise with the Berlin Tech Workers Coalition and run workshops on the materiality of the cloud, applying materialist analysis to the functioning of our digital infrastructure.

Mariana Yante

Fundraising and partnership manager

Mariana Yante

Mari expands the Zetkin Forum for Social Research’s network of researchers, translators, and collaborators and manages relationships with funders. She also researches critical political economy and international cooperation, mainly concerning South-South relations in food and gender affairs.