After the most successful Purple Fest, Goans will have yet another opportunity to listen to two legendary scholars from the fields of mental health and women with disability.
Dr Vikram Patel, the co-founder of the internationally renowned organisation ‘Sangath’, will inaugurate a daylong seminar on “Silent Cries of Women with Disabilities”, organised by the Women’s Cell of DMC College, Assagao in collaboration with the Directorate of Higher Education.
The keynote speaker at the event would be Dr Bindulakshmi, Associate Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and the Chairperson at the Advanced Centre for Women’s Studies in the School of Development Studies.
The public seminar would be held on Friday, 17 February at the Multipurpose hall of the Directorate of Art & Culture at Patto Plaza in Panaji, from 9.30 am to 5 pm.
Dr Patel is also the co-founder and former Director of the Centre for Global Mental Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). In April 2015, he was listed as one of the world’s 100 most influential people by TIME magazine, for his dedicated research work in the areas of child development, adolescent health and mental health.
Dr Bindhulakshmi worked as a Post-doctoral fellow at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research. She has published widely on gendered migration, transnational labour, and domestic work. Recently she is actively engaged in the area of critical disability studies on the experiences of women who have been diagnosed as ‘mentally ill’ within the paradigm of bio-medical psychiatry.
The seminar would also be addressed by Mr Guru Pawaskar, Commissioner for Persons with Disability; Mr Prakash Kamat, a journalist; Ms Maya Kamat, a poet; Ms Aditi Phaldesai, a teacher at Lokvishwas Pratishthan school and Joanita Pinto, trustee of Street Providence.
The daylong seminar would deliberate on double discrimination of women with disability, problems faced by women with disability, how the government can help women with disability, what can be done to rehabilitate orphan women with disability, how to empower women with disabilities and what sensitized terminology to be used for persons with disability.
