Maya Mirchandani

Maya Mirchandani is a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation and Head of Department, Media Studies at Ashoka University. Maya is the Chair of ORF's annual conference on countering violent extremism, Tackling Insurgent Ideologies. She researches subjects around radicalization and ‘Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism’ (P/CVE), and analyses the impact and efficacy of counter narratives, dialogue and community intervention. As part of ORF's Media and Tech  initiative, a core focus of Maya's research is on the impact of social media on discourse around identity politics in South Asia as a result of mis/disinformation, hate speech and computational propaganda

Prior to her position at ORF, Maya was Foreign Affairs Editor at NDTV, India's pioneering cable news network. In a journalistic career of 25 years, Maya has  reported extensively from Kashmir, survived LTTE suicide bomb blasts in Sri Lanka, civil war in Sierra Leone, and reported from New York on 9/11 and its immediate aftermath. Maya has won the prestigious Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism twice, the Red Ink Award for reporting on human rights as well as the Exchange for Media Broadcast Journalism Award for best international affairs reporting.

Maya obtained degrees in History from Delhi University, Mass Communications from Sofia Polytechnic in Mumbai and a Post-graduate Diploma in World Politics from the London School of Economics. She continues to be an active journalist and media commentator with regular columns for several news portals like TheWire.in and ndtv.com, amongst others.

Head of Department, Media Studies at Ashoka University