Ananta Kumar Giri is the Founding Honorary Executive Trustee of Vishwaneedam Center for Asian Blossoming, Puducherry and Chennai. After three decades of service, he retired as a Professor from the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, India, in March 2025. He has taught and done research in many universities in India and abroad, including Aalborg University (Denmark), Maison des sciences de l'homme (Paris, France), the University of Kentucky (USA), University of Freiburg & Humboldt University (Germany), Jagiellonian University (Poland), and Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi). He has an abiding interest in social movements and cultural change, criticism, creativity and contemporary dialectics of transformation, theories of self, culture and society, and creative streams in education, philosophy, and literature. Dr Giri has written and edited more than six dozen books in Odia and English.