Kanchi Kohli

Email: Heather Goodall

Researcher in residence April/May 2009 in association with IOSARN

Kanchi Kohli is a researcher and activist with Kalpavriksh Environmental Action Group based in Delhi (www.kalpavriksh.org). Over the last ten years, her work there has related to action research, campaigns and advocacy on various environment and biodiversity issues, which includes support to grassroots groups and networks. She writes widely for the media and co-ordinates an Information Dissemination Service for Forest and Wildlife Cases in the Supreme Court (www.forestcaseindia.org).

Kanchi is the author of Understanding the Biological Diversity Act 2002: A Dossier (2007), a joint publication of Kalpavriksh, GRAIN and International Institute of Environment and Development, which puts together current information on the implementation of the legislation and critical issues surrounding the Act (www.kalpavriksh.org).

Kanchi holds an MA in Social Work (a program in critical development studies) from the Tata Institut in Social Sciences Mumbai (www.tiss.edu) majoring in urban and rural community development.

Kanchi re-visited TfC and IOSARN in August 2010 as a special advisor and speaker in a workshop on Climate Change Politics, organised by IOSARN on the 19 August.

Annekatrin Bruenig

September 2008 - January 2009

Annekatrin is a PhD scholar at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies in Hamburg. Her research interests include: Integration policies, International Relations, International Law, Security and Foreign Policies in Asia-Pacific, Transformation, Media and Society.

Her background includes studying law and politics in Munich, Salzburg and Goettingen, internships in journalism and work in New Zealand with the Auckland City Council and the Office of Ethnic Affairs and an internship with the United Nations in Vienna.

Anna Obradors Pineda

May - October 2008

Email: Anna.Pineda@uts.edu.au

Contact: Transforming Cultures for more information.

Anna presented a Lunchtime Talk - on the 15th July 2008

"Social Exclusion: A critical perspective for a policy frame evaluation on the Spanish National Plans for Social Inclusion" is one of Anna's papers

Anna's research addresses the field of social exclusion and new policies for social inclusion. Since 2000 she has been developing various research projects on these issues at the Institute of Governance and Public Policy in the Autonoma University of Barcelona where she is currently completing her PhD. Anna's PhD research seeks to do a policy frame analysis on the National Action Plans for Social Inclusion (NAPSI) in Spain. The implementation of the European NAPSI was started from the E.U. Conference in 2000. As the rest of the European Community members, Spain is currently developing its 4th National Plan, but any evaluation on the theoretical frames of those Spanish national plans had been done. Her work while at TfC is to develop her own approach to the notions of social exclusion and inclusion based on a critical review of the main dominant theories behind the European NAPSI, and so on, establishing the methodological bases that will guide further evaluation of the Spanish plans.

Institute of Governance and Public Policy general website.

See member: Anna Obradors Pineda webpage at the Institute.

Shing Au Yeung

June - October 2008

Email: Shing.Au-Yeung@student.uts.edu.au

Contact: Transforming Cultures for more information.

Shing presented a Lunchtime Talk on Thursday, 25th September 2008

Abstract:

Hong Kong's arts funding policy and the grants supported Alternative Film and Video.

Hong Kong is commonly known as a society dominated by financial and economic directives, one in which the arts and culture takes a much lower priority in social agendas. The government has also been criticized for not providing adequate funding for the arts and culture, and not even having a cultural policy. While such critiques contain some elements of truth, they overlook the subtle essence that Hong Kong's cultural policy, rather than being absent, could better be understood as unarticulated. Since the late 1990s, attempts to generate an official narrative of cultural policy out of existing fragments of relevant government practices, have once evolved into a emerging discourse of a "liberal" and "descriptive" cultural policy emphasizing "diversity with identity". The talk will begin with a brief account of the government's historical involvement in the arts and culture since the colonial times, and then use the case of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council's one-year grants for "Film and Media Arts" to illustrate how a liberal interpretation of funding guidelines has provided a certain degree of sustainability for a wide range of artistic and cultural-political dissent for over a decade, despite their marginal position compared with more privileged "artforms" and popular culture.

Brief Biography:

Shing Au-Yeung is a researcher and art worker from Hong Kong. He is a Ph.D Candidate in Sociology, at the University of Hong Kong and has been a researcher at the University's Centre for Cultural Policy Research (CCPR). He graduated from the University of Michigan in 2000 and subsequently obtained his master's degrees in New Media (M.Sc., CUHK) and Sociology (M.Phil, HKU). He started his research career by involving in the Baseline study on Hong Kong's Creative Industries (2003), conducted by CCPR and commissioned by the Central Policy Unit of the Hong Kong government. As an art worker, he produces video art and has been active in various new media projects. Every summer from 2001-2004, he curated and taught the government and university sponsored "Video-making day camp" for teenagers. He was a board member of Videotage, a Hong Kong based Asian media arts organization until early 2008. He is also currently an examiner of Hong Kong Arts Development Coucil's Film and Media Arts Committee. In Sydney, he is working closely with Information and Cultural Exchange. Shing's research interests include comparative cultural policy and the study of new media arts organizations.