Prof. Ramu Manivannan
Prof. Ramu Manivannan is the Director/Chairperson of the Multiversity – Center for Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Kurumbapalayam Village, Vellore Taluk & District, Tamil Nadu, India. He served as a professor & Head in the Department of Politics & Public Administration, University of Madras for sixteen years. He also served as the Director of the Center for Dravidian Research and Studies, University of Madras. He taught in Delhi University for over eighteen years before joining the University of Madras. He was a Fellow of the United Nations University, Tokyo, Japan. He served as the Fulbright Professor and Community Scholar in the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver, Denver, Colorado, USA in the year 2023.
He has been working with the refugees from Tibet, Burma and Sri Lanka for over two decades in the areas of peace, education and development. He has founded fifteen non- formal schools for the children from tribal areas, stone quarry areas and the weavers’ community before building the school for poor children in Kurumbapalayam village in Vellore district of Tamil Nadu. This school “Garden of Peace” was begun in 2004 with seven children and one teacher and today this school functions with 180 children and seven teachers.
He has published seven books and several articles both in India and abroad. Ramu Manivannan is a teacher-social activist engaged at the grassroots with the human rights and other social movements in India/South and Southeast Asia. He is a trainer in holistic education and nonviolent conflict resolution. He has trained more than 500 teachers from the Tibetan community spread across India, Nepal and Bhutan. He has been part of the development and implementation of the Basic Education Policy (BEP) of the Tibetan Government –in- Exile for over a decade. He has also contributed to the development of education policy/curriculum for the Myanmar (Burmese) Refugees Community in India and Thailand since 2003.
He has been the Visiting Professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver, USA(2023), Department of Southeast Asian Studies, University of Passau, Germany(2014), Department of Political Science, University of Paris-8, France(2016), Department of Peace & Conflcit Research, Uppsala Forum for Peace, Democracy and Justice, University of Uppsala, Sweden (2017) and the Centre for International Studies, National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan(2018). He has been engaged in developing an alternate approach to grassroots based participant-research and teaching oriented MULTIVERSITY for preserving and promoting indigenous knowledge systems. He has completed a certificate programme in ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND DATA SCIENCE at the MIT, USA. He currently heads the Vellore Movement for Climate Awareness, Green and Good Governance.