Dr Debanjan Chakrabarti is Director British Council, East and Northeast India, and was the UK’s in-post lead for the culture track of G20 in 2023. He is a member of British Council’s global creative economy programme board, and one of the research champions for South Asia.
He is a co-supervisor for Oxford-Cambridge-Open University Collaborative Doctoral Award on 'Multilingual teaching, learning and assessment of English in India’s primary schools,' which is a partnership with British Council.
Debanjan has a background in research, especially in public policy, and he has scoped and scouted two landmark research projects for the British Council:
(a) The Creative Economy Mapping of Durga Puja in West Bengal on behalf of the state government of West Bengal in India, working closely with the West Bengal Tourism Department to present a pioneering research in creative economy in India.
(b) Cambridge University-led project on multilingualism in Indian primary schools that provides an evidence base for some of the recommendations of India’s National Education Policy 2020.
A triple gold medallist in English literature from Jadavpur University, India, Debanjan has a multidisciplinary PhD, combining literature, films and media studies, from the University of Reading, UK, for which he received a Felix Scholarship from India. Debanjan is an alumnus of Ramakrishna Mission school and college, from Purulia and Narendrapur, respectively.
He started his career as a journalist with The Telegraph, and then taught literature, culture and films at Visva Bharati University in India and in the UK early in his career. He has a number of scholarly and journalistic publications to his name. A university 'blue' and captain of Jadavpur University tennis team, Debanjan retains an active interest in sports, especially tennis and cricket, and often writes and speaks on related topics for media publications and literature festivals.