Biraj Swain

Background

About Biraj Swain

Biraj Swain is a senior global development professional with over 23 years of experience. She has a body of work in India, Asia, East Africa and at global level. She works on the intersection of global development and media watch. Her expertise are advocacy, campaign and communications, social development, sector reforms and media watch. Her sector expertise are human rights and child rights, public health and nutrition, WASH, food justice, poverty and inequality and gender justice. She has won numerous prestigious fellowships, some select ones are Kalam Institute of Health Technology senior fellowship (2018-19), International Centre for Journalists Washington DC Fellowship (2017-18), Oxfam Advocacy Leadership Fellow Programme (2011-12) and Women In Security Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP) Fellowship (2003). She has led multi-country teams. She has been extensively published in peer-reviewed academic journals and highly impact credible media platforms (Guardian, Huffington Post, Wire, Hindu, Frontline, From Poverty to Power, Development Horizons etc). She has created the multi-media series #ChildhoodMatters and Global Summits: Where are we going? and edited the reader “Standing on the Threshold: Food Justice in India” published by Wiley-Blackwell and co-created and co-authored the reader “Nourishing the Indian Tribal” published by Unicef, which went on to inform Unicef’s nutrition programming with the indigenous population of the country. Some of the organisations where she has held key leadership positions are: Nutrition International, Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation, Global Call to Action Against Poverty, Oxfam, WaterAid, ActionAid. Some key consultancies she has done are with flagship initiatives funded by UK Aid, World Bank, Breakthrough.TV, Aga Khan Building and Planning Initiative etc. She has been invited to lecture at UN University Tokyo, SLU Uppsala, Jindal Global Law University, Rotary International Peace Centre, various journalism and public policy schools. She has also been the member of Mass Communication curriculum drafting task force for the National Institute of Open Schooling.