Associate Teaching Professor; Executive MPA Program Director, University of Washington, Bothell, USA

Erica Barnhart earned her MPA from the Evans School in 2001 and her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington in honors French and Political Science. She also holds a Certificat d’Études Politique from L’Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris.
Barnhart is known for her work on using language to increase organizational and individual impact. Her Stanford Social Innovation Review article, Good mission. Bad statement: why the social sector should worry about words, was one of SSIR’s top 10 articles of 2016. As a consultant, she has worked with and trained hundreds of organizations, including Art with Heart, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Cloud Mountain Farm Center, Mission Aviation Fellowship, PATH, Splash, Thrive Washington, and the UN Foundation.

Academic Engagement:
Professor Barnhart was one of the resource persons in a five-day long Faculty Development Programme, organized by the School of Liberal Studies. She also delivered lectures to undergraduate and postgraduate students from the Department of Humanities on Leadership Skills and Communication. 

Clinical Associate Professor, Global Health,  Lecturer, Evans School, University of Washington, Bothell, USA

Dr. Badshah is the Distinguished Practitioner at University of Washington at the Evans School of Public Policy & Governance, the Business School, Bothell campus and faculty advisor at the START Center Department of Global Health. He is the founder and curator of Accelerating Social Transformation, a mid-career professional development certificate course on social impact. Dr. Badshah is a seasoned executive with over 30 years of experience in international development. Dr. Badshah is Chief Catalyst at Catalytic Innovators Group advising individuals and organizations to catalyze their social and philanthropic investments. Dr. Badshah led Microsoft’s philanthropic efforts for ten years, where he administered the company’s community investment and employee contributions. His new book Purpose Mindset: How Microsoft Inspires Employees and Alumni to Change the World, was recently published by Harper Collins Leadership. Dr. Badshah serves on the boards of Microsoft Alumni Network, Global Washington, Restart Partners and The Indus Entrepreneurs, Seattle. He is an accomplished artist and a doctoral graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Academic Engagement:

Akhtar Badshah had interactive sessions on communication and entrepreneurship with the PhD scholars from the School of Liberal Studies. He also conducted a Faculty Development Programme on Leadership, Media and Communication. 

Associate Professor, Universite Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris

A member of IRET, Romain Fohr is a lecturer at the Institut d’Études Théâtrales de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, where he was deputy director between 2019 and 2021. He founded LIRIS (Laboratoire International de Recherche sur les Images et la Scénographie) in 2023. He has taught at the national colleges of visual arts in Brussels (La Cambre), Lyon (ENSATT), Monaco (Pavillon Bosio) and Paris (Arts décoratifs). A specialist in scenography, he has published numerous articles, interviews and books in France and abroad. Romain Fohr holds a Ph.D in Theatre and Performance Studies from the University of Amiens (France). He teaches theatre history and theory at the university and his research work focuses on performance spaces and the aesthetics of contemporary theatre. Apart from his academic work, Romain is also a scenographer and director. He majored from the Centre Européen de la Jeune Mise en scène Gaston Baty. His theatrical works have toured throughout Europe and in North Africa.

Academic Engagement:

Romain Fohr conducted a theatre workshop with the postgraduate and undergraduate students from the Department of Humanities, School of Liberal Studies, KIIT-DU. The workshop was based on Shakespearean play in its translation in contemporary theatrical space and performatory expressions. He also gave classes on Postcolonial and Postmodern Theatre to BA and MA students respectively.

Senior Adult Educator, Career Adviser and Hungarian Language Teacher, Expert in ESOL

Professor Balogh is an ESOL DL Coordinator Cambridge Community Learning Center, Cambridge. She is also the the Hungarian Cultural and Language Instructor, US Army Special Forces Ft. Devens, and the Chief Academic Advisor, Kossuth Lajos University, Debrecen, Hungary. She specializes in ESL and Hungarian Language education, counseling, and methodology for all age-groups in a multicultural setting, curriculum development, and teaching methods.

Academic Engagement:

In the Department of Humanities, School of Liberal Studies, KIIT-DU, apart from interacting with international students, faculty members and she conducted a four-day long workshop on the Pedagogy of ESOL.

Clinical Assistant Professor at the University at Buffalo, USA.

Jay Barber is a faculty member in English department and directs the Journalism Certificate Program.  Professor Barber has a particular interest in science journalism and her current research explores the intersection of creative writing and science.  She recently spent six months in Bangalore, India on a Fulbright-Nehru fellowship facilitating a workshop in which students integrated their knowledge about carbon into creative writing projects. In the Spring of 2025, Professor Barber will begin teaching a class titled “Community Reporting” that will connect student journalists with local media outlets.

Academic Engagement:
In the Department of Humanities, KIIT School of Liberal Studies, she conducted workshops for students and faculty members on Technical Communication and its pedagogical aspects. She also gave courses on Scientific and Technical Writing.

Professor of Creative Practice, Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra, Australia.

Jen Webb is a Canberra-based poet, born in Cape Town, South Africa, and who lived for extended periods in New Zealand and Canada before moving to Australia in 1991.
She holds a PhD in cultural theory, and a DCA in creative writing, and is a professor at the University of Canberra. Both her scholarly and her creative work focus on creative arts: how the arts fit within contemporary society, and the role of creative work in wellbeing and meaning-making. She’s an established editor, and an award-winning writer, and is widely anthologized and translated. She also produces poetry as artist books for installations (often in collaboration), and has been exhibited in galleries in Australia, New Zealand, and the USA. Her most recent poetry collection, The Daily News (2024), traces the environmental and social difficulties we lived through from 2019 to the end of the COVID crisis.

Academic Engagement:
In the Department of Humanities, School of Liberal Studies, KIIT-DU, Professro Webb delivered lectures on “Postcolonial and Feminist Thought and Practice” and “Preparing a Labyrinth: Writing the Self in the World.” She also conducted a workshop on Creative Writing. 

Professor of International Relations and Diplomacy from Afe Babalola University, Nigeria

Professor Osondu-Oti is a distinguished professor of International Relations and Diplomacy. Her one of the major research is on the interrogation of Nigeria’s poverty reduction program  from a gender perspective using six states in Nigeria as case studies. She published books and articles on Human Rights, Gender and the politico-cultrual relationship between Nigeria and India.

Academic Engagement:
In the School of Liberal Studies, she conducted session on the Pedagogy of Gender and also interacted with the PhD Scholars to discuss newer research avenues.

Associate Professor, Department of Literatures and Cultural Studies, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, USA

Dr. David Anshen earned his PhD in Comparative Literature from Stony Brook University. Dr. Anshen’s related publications include “Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville: An Italian Neorealist, Science Fiction Fable about Hollywood” in Radical Fantasy: Italian Neorealism’s Afterlife in Global Cinema (2007) and “Out of the Depths and Through the Postmodern Surface: History and Class Figuration in Cameron’s Titanic” in the journal CineAction (2000). His article, “Famine, Caste, and Class in the novels of Bhabani Bhattacharya” has been accepted for the upcoming collection Representations of Indian Famine Literature edited by Dr. Shubhanku Kochar, which will be published in the Routledge South Asian Literature Series. His last monograph Marxist Literary and Cultural Theory (2017) was published by Black Swan Orient Press. He also has published on cinema and Television, as well as literary and Marxist theory. 

Academic Engagement:
In the Department of Humanities, KIIT School of Liberal Studies, David conducted two courses namely “Introduction to Film Studies” and “Historuography and Historical Literature.” Apart from that he delivered several lectures on Marxist Interpretation of Art and Narrativization of History. He is also one of the Advisory Board Members of the School and played an instrumental role in the formation of Centre for Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature (CCSCL).

Associate Professor in Cultural Studies, Media Studies, and Digital Humanities

Dr. Roy is a founding member of India’s first Digital Humanities collective, the Digital Humanities Alliance for Research and Teaching Innovations (DHARTI), and has led several key initiatives, including the inaugural DHAI Conference in 2018 (#DHAI2018), the first DHARTI Twitter Conference (#DHARTITwitterConf), and the recently concluded #DHARTI2022 Conference on The Digital Divides: Discontents, Debates, and Discussions. He is also an affiliate of the Data and Society Research Institute and actively leads numerous public outreach initiatives aimed at strengthening Indian digital humanities.  Currently, Dr. Roy serves as a nominated member of the Executive Council of the British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS). With extensive experience as a researcher and educator in multidisciplinary academic environments across three different continents, Dr. Dibyadyuti Roy facilitates public and cultural policymaking by putting data-driven knowledge into collaboration and productive friction with interpretive and exploratory humanistic inquiry.

Dr. Roy is a founding member of India’s first Digital Humanities collective, the Digital Humanities Alliance for Research and Teaching Innovations (DHARTI), and has led several key initiatives, including the inaugural DHAI Conference in 2018 (#DHAI2018), the first DHARTI Twitter Conference (#DHARTITwitterConf), and the recently concluded #DHARTI2022 Conference on The Digital Divides: Discontents, Debates, and Discussions. He is also an affiliate of the Data and Society Research Institute and actively leads numerous public outreach initiatives aimed at strengthening Indian Digital Humanities. Currently, Dr. Roy serves as a nominated member of the Executive Council of the British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS).

Academic Engagement:
During his stay, Dr. Roy delivered a series of lectures and interactive sessions with both undergraduate and postgraduate students. His sessions explored not just the pedagogy of Digital Humanities, but also delved deep into the politics and evolving nuances of the term itself. Dr. Roy also initiated conversations about potential collaborations between KIIT and the University of Leeds, including plans for joint lecture series and collaborative research projects. He also helped the School develop a set of minor courses on Digital Humanities.