Sanjoy Hazarika combines roles as researcher, columnist, mentor and practitioner. Author, journalist, filmmaker, policy analyst and human rights advocate, he is a former reporter for the New York Times. In 2000, Hazarika founded the Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research whose flagship programme is the innovative fleet of boat clinics on the Brahmaputra valley (www.c-nes.org) which, with support from the National Health Mission, reach nearly three lakh people every year with health care since 2005. Between 2016-2022 he was international director of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) which has worked extensively on police, prison reforms and Right to Information. Regarded as an authority on the region and its neighborhood, Hazarika founded CNESPR at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, the first such Centre for the study of the NER in a Central University. He is engaged with river-related including climate uncertainty and its impacts on governance and livelihoods. A veteran journalist, Hazarika has written extensively in Indian and international newspapers and journals in a career spanning over 40 years when he reported for The New York Times for over 16 years. He is author of five books including Bhopal, the lessons of a Tragedy, the acclaimed Strangers of the Mist on conflict in the North East of India and its neighborhood and its successor, 25 years later, Strangers No More. He has also co-edited several books including Hope Behind Bars & another on Japan and the North east of India. His essays have appeared in peer-reviewed journals, collections and anthologies including the Routledge Companion to the North East.
Hazarika has scripted and produced over a dozen documentaries including on the Brahmaputra River and on governance and conflict. Currently, he is completing a travelogue on his journeys on the Brahmaputra – from Tibet to the Bay of Bengal and beginning research on a new book on a state of the NER.
