Beyond the Gender Beat

Laxmi Murthy  is a contributing editor with Himal Southasian, the region’s premier political review magazine published from Colombo. Currently based in Bangalore, she also heads the Hri Institute for South Asian Research and Exchange, a unit under the Himal banner, conducting cross-border research in South Asia. She is currently engaged in a project challenging visual depiction of violence against women in Southasia.

Laxmi has worked with the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) since 2002. She is editor of the annual UNESCO-IFJ South Asia Press Freedom Report. She was deputy co-ordinator of the Sexual Violence and Impunity research and publication project anchored at feminist publishing house, Zubaan, New Delhi. Laxmi has been associated with the autonomous women’s movement for more than three decades. She is co-founder of the Network of Women in Media, India, and the Free Speech Collective, a platform to promote the right to free speech and expression and lobby for journalists’ rights in India.

Priyanka Tupe is a Senior Correspondent and Lead for Gender-Based Violence at Behanbox, a web portal dedicated to gender journalism. She is deeply committed to reporting on law, human rights, policies, and socio-economic inequities, particularly poverty.

As the leader of the gender-based violence vertical, Priyanka ensures comprehensive and intersectional coverage of the issue. Her reporting on gender, human rights, and marginalised groups sheds light on an often invisible India, with stories that are frequently sidelined in mainstream media. From caste atrocities to generational poverty, bonded labourers to the exclusion of India’s most marginalised communities in flagship national schemes like MGNREGA (मनरेगा), her work offers deep insights and presents a bird’s-eye view of India through a gender lens, delivering compelling narratives backed by thorough research.

Shabani Hassanwalia is a writer and a filmmaker, working with image making, research and narratives since the year 2000. Her work engages with changing socio-political realities, volatile subcultures, and intimate personal histories in an India-in-transition. For eleven years, she was part of the core editorial team for First City Magazine, an arts and culture monthly that helped shape New Delhi’s relationship with itself. She is the co-editor and assistant director of Star, Bombay Talkies, directed by Dibakar Banerjee and is currently working on a documentary that emerged from the process feat. Nawazuddin Siddiqui. 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 is currently the chief editor and producer for the feminist think tank The Third Eye, powered by Nirantar, Centre for Gender and Education.

Priti David is a Journalist and a Teacher. She is Executive Editor at the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI) where she leads a team of reporters and editors covering rural lives and livelihoods. In her stories, Priti covers forests, Adivasis, education, health, and livelihoods. Her story on how a changing climate is impacting our insect population and another on women’s rights to reproductive healthcare are part of an award-winning series. Battle of the bugs: on wings of climate change is also a case study in environmental courses, and ‘Copying our design is not correct’ on Geographical Indication (GI)GI infringement is used as a case study for design students. Her two stories on cheetahs led to a question being asked in the Lok Sabha in 2022. And her 2023 piece, In Jaisalmer: gone with the windmills was on the Shortlist for the Red Ink Awards 2023. The story’s Hindi translation was used by protestors seeking re-categorisation of forests and 11 days later, the state government granted rights back to the community, recognising it as a community forest.

Priti is Visiting Faculty at Ashoka University in Sonipat, Azim Premji University, Bangalore and Bhopal, among others. She has done workshops on rural reporting and sensitisation to lives on the margins in schools, universities and NGOs across the country.  In 2022 and 2024 she designed the media syllabus for the Delhi state schools for grades 9 and 11.

She is the author of Jamuna Begs to Differ (2023) and Coming Home ( listed on the Parag Honours List for 2022), both novels for ages 10 -14 years and published by Karadi Tales.

Priti is a co-founder of the Rural Hospital Network (www.ruralhospitalnetwork.org), a free-to-access platform that brings together people interested in working in healthcare in rural India and the opportunities.