Ms. Rizio Yohannan Raj

Rizio Yohannan Raj is a writer, educationist, translator and governance thinker. Her multi-dynamic professional experience spans two decades of work in journalism, book publishing, academics and institution-building. She is the Founder and Executive Director of LILA Foundation for Translocal Initiatives, a think-tank engaged in multidisciplinary and intercultural knowledge production, dissemination and conservation. Earlier, at various stages in her career, she was affiliated to houses such as the Malayala Manorama Group, Macmillan India, Navneet Publications, and Katha, and the Universities of Madras, Mumbai, and Kerala; Calicut University, Central University of Kerala and Shiv Nadar University, New Delhi. She has played significant roles in establishing various departments and centres in some of these spaces. Her works including collections of poetry, novels, critical volumes, edited works, research papers and socio-cultural studies, have been published by Harper Collins, Cambridge University Press, Indiana University Press, Kendra Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, and several journals and magazines across the world. She has been a long-time associate of the Indo-Swedish translation project, under which she translated and introduced various writers from the two countries. She was part of the International Visitor Leadership Programme – 2010 of the US Department of State. Her PhD focuses on the intersection of Literature and Philosophy with special reference to the school of Samkhya. She has been on the editorial and advisory boards of various publications and organisations, and has held workshops and seminars for capacity building in different parts of India and abroad.