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Laxmi Murthy

Journalist, Editor, Writer

Laxmi Murthy is contributing editor with Himal Southasian, the region’s premier political review magazine published from Colombo. From 2007-2010, she was associate editor at Himal Southasian in Kathmandu.

She also heads the Hri Institute for Southasian Research and Exchange a unit under the Himal banner, conducting cross-border research in South Asia. As director of the Hri Institute, Laxmi was a network partner of the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development, Amsterdam.

She has worked with the International Federation of Journalists from 2002 onwards, in various capacities. As the Asia Pacific project manager with the International Federation of Journalists, she focussed on press freedom and journalists’ rights. She edits the annual IFJ-UNESCO South Asia Press Freedom Report.

She was deputy co-ordinator of the Sexual Violence and Impunity research and publication project anchored at feminist publishing house, Zubaan Books, New Delhi, which culminated in the publication of a series of books on sexual violence and impunity in South Asia. She is currently involved with The Stepping Stones project, the next phase of taking forward the research findings through the performing arts.

Laxmi has worked as a consultant with SANGRAM since 2000, conducting training, carrying out research and editing of reports and research material related to sex workers’ rights. On behalf of the Centre for Advocacy on Stigma and Marginalisation (CASAM), a unit of SANGRAM, she was part of a multi-country research team to study violence against sex workers in selected countries of the Asia Pacific.

Till 2002, Laxmi was an editor at the Women's Feature Service, an international news-feature agency specializing in development issues with a gender lens. She was responsible for commissioning and editing articles from a gender perspective from across the global South. She has written extensively in the mainstream Indian media on gender issues.

Laxmi has been associated with the autonomous women’s movement for more than three decades. She was part of the drafting process of the civil law against sexual harassment in the late 1990s and continues her engagement with creating safe spaces for working women by evolving organisational policies, conducting training and serving as the external member of Internal Committees in a range of organisations.

She is one of the co-founders of the Network of Women in Media, India, a forum for women media professionals with more than 500 members across the country.