ICG Discussion Forum

Pandemics: Past, Present, Future

In conversation with 

  Thomas Abraham  

Honorary Associate Professor

Journalism and Media Studies Centre, University of Hong Kong

Chinmay Tumbe

Assistant Professor, IIM-Ahmedabad

Moderator:  Dr. Pushkar, Director, ICG

Live on Zoom Wednesday 5th May 2021

4.30 pm IST

Register at: bit.ly/3dv4qvH

Thomas Abraham works in the areas of risk communication during infectious disease epidemics, the role of the media in communicating risk and infectious diseases, and global health security. He has been a consultant for the World Health Organization and other international organisations on risk communication, and worked at WHO headquarters in Geneva during the influenza pandemic. He has earlier worked 25 years as a journalist including as a former Editor and Deputy Editor of the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong and 13 years as a foreign correspondent based in Sri Lanka, the United Nations Office in Geneva, and London for The Hindu. Thomas has a master’s degree in International Relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, and a BA in Economics from Madras University. He is the author of Twenty-first Century Plague: The Story of SARS; and Polio: The Odyssey of Eradication.

Chinmay Tumbe is a faculty member in the Economics Area at IIM-Ahmedabad. An alumnus of the London School of Economics and Political Science, the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore; Ruia College, Mumbai; and Rishi Valley School, Madanapalle; he has been a faculty member at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad. Chinmay was a 2013 Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence, and the 2018 Alfred D. Chandler Jr. International Visiting Scholar in Business History at Harvard Business School, Boston. His first book, India Moving: A History of Migration, was published in 2018 and second book The Age of Pandemics, 1817-1920: How they shaped India and the World, was published in 2020. He is a member of the The Lancet Covid-19 India Taskforce and was a member of the Working Group on Migration of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation in 2016-17. He has published widely in leading journals and newspapers and helped set up the IIMA Archives.