Ms Estelle Keerthana Ramaswamy

Estelle Keerthana Ramaswamy (she/they), is a Thirunangai (Tamil equivalent to a Trans Woman) from Chennai, India. She is the first Thirunangai to have been awarded an RTP Scholarship by the Australian Government and the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney to pursue her PhD on gender-based violence (GBV) experiences of trans and gender diverse (TGD) people during disasters. She has a wealth of experience as a social worker, educator and in the space of international education. She is also the first trans woman researching on gender responsive disaster management. She is currently a member of the GBV student reference group (SRG), CoPQTI, SCON and the Board of the School of Social Sciences (Faculty of ADA) at UNSW Sydney and is an Associate with UNSW Australian Human Rights Institute and UNSW Institute for Climate Risk and Response. Estelle Keerthana has previously taught at Bharathidasan University (Tiruchirappalli, India) and Crown Institute of Higher Education (Sydney, Australia). Currently, she teaches and mentors (Convo Cafe) within the School of Social Sciences (SoSS) at the UNSW Sydney.