CIS Team
CIS undertakes policy-focused, applied, and academic research on topics at the intersection of internet and society, driven by concerns of human rights and public interest. CIS is based in Bengaluru and New Delhi.
Directors
- Amber Sinha, Executive Director
Senior Staff
- Puthiya Purayil Sneha
- Tito Dutta
- Arindrajit Basu
- Aayush Rathi
- Ambika Tandon
- Pranav M. B
- Saumyaa Naidu
- Isha Suri
- Amrita Sengupta
Programme and Policy Officers
- Aman Nair
- Divyank Katira
- Pallavi Bedi
- Shruti Trikanand
- Shweta Mohandas
- Torsha Sarkar
- Yesha Tshering Paul
- Abhishek Raj
- Abhishek Sekharan
- Cheshta Arora
- Divyansha Sehgal
- Anamika
- Digvijay
- Indumathi Manohar
Programme Associates and Community Advocates
Administration and Finance
Directors
| Amber Sinha | |
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Amber Sinha is the Executive Director of the Centre for Internet and Society. He has led programmes at CIS on civil liberties research, including privacy, identity, AI, cybersecurity and free speech. Amber’s research has been cited with appreciation by the Supreme Court of India and several government committees. He is a member of the Steering Committee of ABOUT ML, an initiative to bring diverse perspectives to develop, test, and implement machine learning system documentation practices. Amber is a member of the the GPA Reference Panel of Global Privacy Assembly. Amber has also led CIS’s communciations and outreach efforts, setting up a communications team and revamping CIS’s outreach and dissemination strategy and efforts. His first book, The Networked Public, was released in 2019. Amber studied law and humanities at National Law School of India University, Bangalore.
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Senior Staff
| Anubha Sinha | |
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Anubha Sinha is a researcher working on impact of copyright law on access to knowledge, with a focus on users’ rights. She also tracks and comments on policymaking at international fora such as WTO and WIPO. She is a lawyer by training.
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| Puthiya Purayil Sneha | ||
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Sneha is a researcher with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), India. Her areas of interest and work include digital media and cultures, methodological concerns in arts and humanities practice and pedagogy, and access to knowledge.
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| Tito Dutta | ||
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Tito is the Programme Lead associated with the Access to Knowledge team at the CIS, and his work focuses on supporting Indic Wikimedia Communities and community members to plan and conduct Wiki-events.
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| Arindrajit Basu | ||
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Arindrajit Basu is the Research Lead at the Centre for Internet & Society, India, where he focuses on the geopolitics and constitutionality of emerging technologies. He is a lawyer by training and holds a BA, LLB (Hons) degree from the National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata, and an LLM in public international law from the University of Cambridge, U.K.
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| Aayush Rathi | ||
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Aayush Rathi does interdisciplinary work on labour informalities, welfare systems and digitisation. He aims to make academic and policy contributions through socio-legal research amplifying the experiences of marginalised communities.
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| Ambika Tandon | ||
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Ambika Tandon studies the intersections of gender and technology. She focuses on women’s work in the digital economy, and the impact of emerging technologies on social inequality. She is also interested in developing feminist methods for technology research.
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| Pranav M B |
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Pranav is the Communications Lead at CIS. He has studied humanities and law at National Law School of India University, Bangalore. His previous work at CIS has primarily centred on Artificial Intelligence research, and research on issues surrounding Privacy, Cyber-security, and the Future of Work.
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| Saumyaa Naidu |
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Saumyaa is a Design Researcher at CIS. She is a Communication Design graduate from the National Institute of Fashion Technology, Delhi, and has a master’s degree in Social Design from Ambedkar University Delhi. She works on critically examining the role of design in digital technologies, specifically in areas such as Digital Identities, Privacy, and AI.
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| Isha Suri |
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Isha Suri is a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Internet and Society. Her areas of interest include Telecom Policy, Competition Law, Internet Governance, Intellectual Property Rights, and Privacy and Data Protection. She holds an LL.B. (Hons.) with a specialisation in Intellectual Property Law from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. She also has a degree in Electrical Engineering that often comes to her aid when grappling with complexities of the techno-legal domain.
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| Amrita Sengupta |
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Amrita Sengupta is a Research and Programme Lead at CIS. Her research interests and work lie in the areas of gender and technology, digital cultures, ethics in research methods, digital access, algorithmic biases and tech design, and sustainability and tech. She holds an undergraduate degree in sociology from Miranda House, Delhi University and a post graduate degree in internet studies from the Oxford Internet Institute. In the past, Amrita has worked in managing and implementing large scale people practices, diversity and inclusion in the workplace, as well as in conducting and leading long-form research on impacts of tech on businesses and society, with both quantitative and qualitative methodologies.
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Researchers |
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| Aman Nair | ||
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Aman Nair is a policy officer at CIS, working on the cyber security and data governance project. His areas of interest include the data governance and the application of technology in government institutions - specifically in increasing judicial accessibility. He has a bachelors degree in Economics and Public Policy from Sciences Po Paris.
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| Divyank Katira |
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Divyank is a Technology Researcher primarily engaged with the Freedom of Expression and Digital Identity teams at CIS. He is an engineer by training and is interested in computer networks and information security in the context of censorship and surveillance on the web.
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| Pallavi Bedi | ||
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Pallavi is a Senior Policy Officer at CIS, where she works on privacy and data protection. She is a lawyer by training, and holds a BA, LLB (Hons) degree from the National Law Institute University, Bhopal and an LLM from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
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| Shruti Trikanand | ||
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Shruti Trikanad is a programme officer at CIS, working on the digital identity project. She is interested in producing research to safeguard individual rights and freedoms through the use of technology. She completed her studies in law and humanities from the Gujarat National Law University.
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| Shweta Mohandas | ||
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Shweta is a Policy Officer at the Centre for Internet and Society, India. Her areas of work and interest include Artificial Intelligence, Privacy, and Intellectual Property Rights and India’s policies surrounding them. She is currently researching on the development and use of voice based technologies in India, with a focus on languages, accessibility and privacy.
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| Torsha Sarkar |
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Torsha is a lawyer by training. At CIS, she primarily works on social media regulation, intermediary liability and digital expression. She occasionally explores the connection between constitutional guarantees and gender, sexuality and marital relationships.
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| Yesha Tshering Paul | ||
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Yesha Tshering Paul is a Programme Officer at the Centre for Internet and Society and works on the Digital Identities project. She studied Law at ILS Law College, Pune, and has a Masters in Regulatory Governance from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.
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| Abhishek Raj | ||
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Abhishek is a researcher at the Centre for Internet and Society. His research interests include telecommunications and internet infrastructure, internet governance, digital inclusion, and competition law and policy. Previously, he has worked at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, Competition Commission of India, and Idea Cellular Ltd. Abhishek holds a Masters in Regulatory Governance from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, where he was a Gold Medalist. He also has a bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering.
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| Abhishek Sekharan |
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Abhishek is a researcher working on issues of digital labour, informality, migration and gendered work in the Global South. He has studied applied economics and interdisciplinary urban studies. At CIS, he contributes to the digital labour project that aims to generate evidence on the rapid platformization of work in India and its implications for workers’ rights and the Future of Work.
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| Cheshta Arora | ||
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Cheshta Arora is a collection of cells whose work traverses the ethnographic and the theoretical to find various expressions of future immanent in the present. To that end it has been interested in studying practices and utterances that remain incomprehensible to the present. In the domain of internet studies, it is excited at the moment to chase the cypherpunk dream of privacy, decentralization and distribution.
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| Divyansha Sehgal | ||
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Divyansha Sehgal is a YLT Fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society interested in issues of access, equity, speech and fairness in tech. She is an engineer by training.
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Anamika is a Research Assistant with CIS. She graduated from the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata, and is a lawyer by training. Her interests include looking at the intersection of law and technology from a gendered perspective and the issues digitisation brings about for different communities.
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Digvijay is a Researcher at the Centre for Internet and Society working on data governance and privacy. He has studied humanities and law at National Law University, Lucknow.
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Indu came to a career in design via theatre, dance, and scuba diving. As Communications Designer, she works on making CIS research publications, annual reports, podcasts, events, and op-eds, more accessible to a larger audience through visual design— whether it be through layout design, infographics, social media creatives or web banners.
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Programme Associate and Community Advocates
| Bodhisattwa Mandal | |
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Bodhisattwa is a volunteer editor in different Wikimedia projects since 2012, mostly active in Bengali Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. As a Wikidata Advisor at CIS, he supports Wikidata community in India both on-wiki and off-wiki, in all possible ways. He can be contacted at User Bodhisattwa. His contributions as a volunteer can be tracked here. |
| Jayanta Nath | |
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Jayanta Nath works as a Wikisource Project Advisor for CIS. As a Project Advisor of the Indic Wikisource Project, his work is to support Indic Wikisource Communities and community members to plan or conduct Wiki-events, support them with resources. |
| Nitesh Gill | |
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Nitesh Gill works with CIS-A2K as a Project Tiger 2.0 coordinator. |
| Satpal Dandiwal | |
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Satpal works as a Community Advocate for Punjabi Wikimedians. As a community advocate, his work is to increase the development of Punjabi Wikimedians User Group and community members. |
| Subodh Kulkarni |
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Subodh is a Community Advocate with the Access To Knowledge team at the CIS.
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| Suswetha Kolluru | |
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Suswetha has been contributing to Wikimedia and it's sister projects since November 2017 and I mainly contribute to En Wikipedia, Te Wikipedia, Wikidata. She is an undergraduate at VVIT and her major is Electronics and Communication. She is also part of the club VVIT WikiConnect and currently working as Project Tiger coordinator for 2019 at CIS A2K! |
Administration and Finance
| Ajoy Kumar | |
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Ajoy is an Administrator at the CIS. He manages all the events organised by CIS including hotel and travel bookings, does the liasoning with government offices and Members of Parliament, etc. Ajoy also works as a part-time lawyer doing property documentation.
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| Nagaraj MP | |
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Nagaraj has a background in Advanced Accountancy with a specialisation in NGO Accounting and Practices. As Manager - Finance and Operations, he handles the preparation of accounts statements, statuary compliance, budget and monitoring, and accounts for all research projects at CIS. He has previously worked at Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS), ‘Kalike’ associate organisation of TATA Trusts, India Foundation for the Arts (IFA), Ramaiah Public Policy Centre, and CIS in its early days.
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Medini is a Senior Accounts Officer at the Centre for Internet and Society. Medini began her work as an accountant in 1992. After completing her Bachelors in Commerce from Andhra Pradesh S V University, she procured a Diploma in Accounts and began working with a Chartered Accountant to learn the ropes of her profession. For the past fifteen years she has worked with Chartered Accountants, companies and NGOs in handling company and organisation’s accounts. In 2003, she joined the Accounts team of Partners in Child Development, an EveryChild partner. In 2004, she joined EveryChild India as the Head Office Accountant. Since then she has been managing the organisation’s accounts and streamlining into handling the organisation’s partners project accounts. Having been with EveryChild India since its inception, Medini has seen the organisation grow from infancy into adulthood. A mother of two, Medini loves to play with her children and make handicraft items in her free time.
- E-mail: [email protected]
Nima Lama
Nima has been in charge of security at CIS since 2015. He maintains the daily staff register and provides assistance to the administration team. Prior to CIS, Nima worked as a security person at a car parking solution. Velankanni Royson
Royson is the Office Assistant in the Bangalore office. He assists the administration department in organising events, takes videos of the events, uploads them to the CIS website, Blip TV, YouTube, etc.
- Email: [email protected]
Filed under:
Internet Governance