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PRIDE NOT PREJUDICE on 31st January 2020




Date: 31.01.2020

Time: 02:30 PM - 04:30 PM

Venue : Ambedkar Bhavan

This is a panel discussion where the speakers and the audience engage in a dialogue about the LGBTQ+ community and the hardships they face in their day-to-day lives. This discussion would focus on deconstructing gender, discrimination faced by the community, handling one's coming out, the Trans Bill and other relevant issues.

The Keynote Speech would be delivered by Mr. Arjun Kapoor. And the Panel includes the following esteemed speakers Anish Gawande, Shyam Konnur, Priyanka SE and Sonali Dalvi.



Key Note Speaker: Mr. Arjun Kapoor

Arjun Kapoor is a lawyer and psychologist with experience in human rights, access to justice and mental health. In 2012, he completed his B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) from NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad. He was then appointed as Law Clerk cum Research Assistant to the Supreme Court of India and assisted the Court in matters of constitutional law and public law. Subsequently, he worked with the Centre for Social Justice, Ahmedabad where he developed grassroots socio-legal interventions on access to justice in Gujarat. In 2017, he completed his M.A. Psychology (Psycho-Social Clinical Studies) from Ambedkar University, Delhi. Currently, he is based at the Centre for Mental Health Law & Policy, Indian Law Society, Pune where he is working with a range of stakeholders on law & policy reform for advancing mental health and suicide prevention in India. He is also certified as a Queer Affirmative Counsellor and provides peer-counselling to LGBTQ persons.



Panelist 1: Anish Gawande

Anish Gawande graduated with a BA in Comparative Literature and Society from Columbia University in 2018, focusing on the intersection of law, literature, and politics in South Asia and Francophone West Africa. He currently serves as the Director of the Dara Shikoh Fellowship, an interdisciplinary arts residency based in Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh. Invested in electoral politics, he advised candidates for the 2019 Indian parliamentary elections - and created Pink List India, the country’s first archive of queer-friendly politicians. Anish is a Rhodes Scholar -Elect and will be pursuing an M.Phil in Intellectual History at Oxford, studying global histories of sexuality and legal modifications of queerness in former Francophone and Anglophone colonies. 



Panelist 2: Shyam Konnur

Samuel (Shyam) Konnur is the founder of LGBTQ+ collective, 'Mist'. He was recently crowned Mr. Gay India 2020. His journey as a Queer Rights Activist began in 2008 and he has been invited to multiple corporations in Pune and Bangalore to talk/conduct workshops on LGBTQ+ topics. He initiated and started the LGBT BRG Group at ADP (ADP-PRIDE). He has also organized Bangalore Queer Pride for multiple years. His other few initiatives are Queer and Allies Art Festival, Making LGBTQ+ Digital, Story-My Life, My Story, Out & Loud - Pune International Queer Film Festival and Queer Talks And Meetings. He also named and started celebrating July 2nd as Indian Coming Out Day Since 2009. He is also one of the award recipients of 101 Top Global Diversity & Inclusion Leaders 2019. Shyam has delivered sessions and attended panels at many corporates and institutes like Infosys, Sungard, Alliance Francaise, IBM, Eton, ADP, Symbiosis.



Panelist 3: Sonali Dalvi

http://lgbtq.co.in/sonali-dalvi-a-trans-activist/

Sonali is a Pune based transgender activist. She works for LGBTQ and transgender rights.



Panelist 4: Priyanka SE

Audio engineer and Music Producer, Priyanka SE is based in Bombay, India and has five years of audio and music freelancing under her belt. Her work covers a broad spectrum: from film scoring, sound design and dubbing to recording an array of musical genres. A success story for anybody, but for a woman in India (and also queer at that!), she’s had to break down more barriers than most. She is a volunteer and activist for Equal Gender Rights and takes a keen interest in content blogging/writing and travel photography.