Dr. Deepti Priya Mehrotra is an independent thinker and activist, deeply interested in feminist and human rights issues. Her work includes pioneering research on single mothers’ lives in India, women in traditional theatre, peasant and anti-colonial movements, as well as issues of gender, power and knowledge.
     Trained as a political scientist and philosopher, she has engaged with human rights and anti-communal struggles, child rights and working class issues in New Delhi’s resettlement colonies, and interventions in education and popular media. She works extensively with civil society organizations in India as an adviser and consultant.
     A concern for the individual as well as collective rights and well-being runs through all her work. She tries to bridge many diverse worlds. She has taught at graduate and under-graduate levels across several departments and courses, including `Conflict Transformation and Peace Building’, Philosophy, Political Science, Education and Gender Studies. As a visiting lecturer at Ambedkar University Delhi, she is presently teaching an interdisciplinary course on `Ideas, Knowledge and Ethics’ and another on `Marginalisation, Resistance and Transformation’. At Delhi University, she holds gender workshops and workshops on textbook analysis. At the Indira Gandhi National Open University, she is helping design course material on Integral Education and on gender and women’s issues.
   She is currently exploring research on `educational for peace’ forms of non-violent resistance, and theoretical understanding of women’s movements. Her book Irom Sharmila and the Struggle for Peace in Manipur (Penguin India, 2009) has generated wide interest. She has written on the same theme in Hindi, and her book is being translated into Tamil and Bengali languages.