Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations in collaboration with the Consulate General of the Kingdom of Belgium held a seminar, ‘Remembering World War I & Exploring the future of non-violence’, to mark the centennial of WWI and the visit of the Belgian Navy Ship ‘Leopold I’ on October 13 to Mumbai.
Dominiek Dendooven (Bruges, 1971) has been working as a researcher and curator for the award-winning In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres since 1998. He is associated researcher at the University of Antwerp and guest lecturer at the University of Louvain. Dendooven has published extensively on the First World War and his main fields of interest are the involvement of ethnic minorities in the conflict and individuals’ war experience.
Squadron Leader Rana T.S. Chhina served in the Indian Air Force as a helicopter pilot. A recipient of the prestigious Macgregor Medal for best military reconnaissance in 1986, he had the distinction of carrying out the highest landing in the world by a medium-lift class of helicopter. He is currently Secretary and Editor of the United Service Institution of India Centre for Armed Forces Historical Research and Vice President of the Indian Military Historical Society, UK. He is also a member of the IAF Aerospace Museum Apex Steering Committee and the Government of India’s Archival Advisory Board. The author of a number of books, he is currently a member of the joint USI-MEA Steering Committee responsible for coordinating international and national commemoration of India’s participation in the First World War in connection with the centenary of the conflict.
Shiv Visvanathan is professor at the School of Government and Public Policy at the O. P. Jindal Global University, Haryana. He was a senior fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, and professor at the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute for Information and Communication Technology, Gujarat. He has been visiting professor at several universities including Stanford University, U.S., the University of Maastricht, Netherlands; University of Natal, South Africa; and Goldsmith College, London University. His research interests include cultures of knowledge, cognitive justice, urban cultures, the sociology of corruption, sociology and the philosophy of science, the history of technology, social movements, globalisation, the culture and politics of environmentalism, and popular cinema.
Neelam Deo is director at Gateway House, prior to which she served as consul general in New York. She has been the Indian ambassador to Denmark and Ivory Coast with concurrent accreditation to several West African countries. She has served in Indian embassies in Washington D.C, Bangkok and Rome. During her assignments in the Ministry of External Affairs, she was joint secretary for Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and the Maldives. Neelam Deo holds a graduate degree from the Delhi School of Economics.