Dr Sunita VS Bandewar
Dr Sunita Bandewar has training in Anthropology and Bioethics. She was awarded an International Fellowship by the International Fogarty Centre, NIH, USA, to pursue a Masters in Health Sciences (Bioethics) at the Joint Centre for Bioethics, University of Toronto, Canada, in 2003-04. She was a senior research fellow in bioethics and global health at the University of Toronto on the initiative titled 201 Ethical, Social, Cultural Program in Global Health 201, Canada, for five years. Her engagement with health, as a field of enquiry over these past 30 years, is primarily via empirical research and advocacy in the areas of women and health, gender-based violence, global health, and bioethics, global health, research methodology, program evaluation, and policy analysis. She is the General Secretary, FMES, and serves on the core editorial team of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics (IJME), and heads FMES’ newly established programmatic platform namely, Health, Ethics and Law Institute (HEaL Institute) for Training, Research and Advocacy. She serves on the International Ethics Review Board, Médecins Sans Frontières, Geneva. She serves on the editorial board of Health Care Analysis. Her contributions at ResearchGate
Dr Hemalata Pisal
Dr Hemalata Pisal is PhD in Physical Anthropology from Pune University and Master in International Health from Swiss Tropical Institute, Basel, Switzerland. She has also done Diploma in LGBT and Human Rights from RFSU & RFSL, Sweden. She is honored with scholarships from Tribal Research and Training Institute (Pune), Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (Switzerland) & Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sweden). She has been honored PhD for her work on “Inheritance of Thenar/Ist Interdigital Patterns on Palm”. In her initial career she has worked among various tribal communities from Amravati, Gadchiroli, Nandurbar, Junnar, Thane, and Nashik. Having qualitative research expertise, she has worked in the area of stigmatized issues of women’s health (Abortion, HIV/AIDs, Domestic Violence etc.), and with stigmatized sexual minority communities such as female sex-workers and transgender. She has written several popular articles on above-mentioned issues in Marathi magazines and popular edited books and also written a book named “HIV/AIDS – Majhya Janiva, Maajhi Jababdari (My awareness-my responsibility)” for community health workers published by Masum. She has conducted several trainings on Adolescent Health, Women’s Health, Gender, HIV/AIDS, Sexuality and Health Rights of Sexual minorities.
Dr Amita Pitre
Amita Pitre has a Master’s in Public Health and is currently working towards her Ph.D. in Women’s Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, India. She has worked for nearly 15 years in the development sector, mostly on issues of gender and health. Her research looks at how systemic gender, class, and caste discrimination operate within society and is directed at making recommendations for policy change. Her current project will look at judgments and trial court data in rape cases in order to understand how medical evidence is used in the adjudication of cases. She is also interested in looking at how women’s bodies are constructed in the process of the trial and how meaning is made of medical evidence.