On March 13, 2025, Carly O'Connell of IIE-SRF moderated an informal conversation with Indigenous scholar and peacebuilder Binalakshmi “Bina” Nepram. The session was not recorded to protect the privacy of those who attended.
Nepram's work focuses on deepening democracy and championing women-led peace, security, and disarmament in Manipur, India, and in seven socio Indigenous regions of the world. She is also the Founder-Director of the Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network, the Northeast India Women Initiative for Peace, and the Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples, Gender Justice, and Peace. She is currently a fellow at the Harvard University Asia Center.
Nepram is the recipient of the CNN IBN Real Heroes Award and the Sean McBride Peace Prize. She was honored by London-based Action on Armed Violence as one of the "100 most influential people in the world working on armed violence reduction." She has authored and edited five books, the latest one called Manipur: Histories and Stories of my Indigenous Homeland due to be out in Spring 2025.
From 2018-2019, she undertook IIE-SRF fellowships at Connecticut College, where she taught “Women, War, and Peace,” delivered talks on topics such as environmental justice and indigenous women, and published research on the intersections of gender, conflict, and democracy.