Manish Jain

Manish Jain is deeply committed to regenerating our diverse local knowledge systems, cultural imaginations and inter- cultural dialogue. Inspired by the lineage of MK Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Ivan Illich, his illiterate village grandmother, his unschooled daughter, indigenous communities, tricksters and Jain spiritual philosophy, he is one of the leading planetary voices for unlearning, deschooling our lives and reimagining education.

He has served for the past 26 years as Chief Beaver (ecosystems builder) of Shikshantar: The Peoples' Institute for Rethinking Education and Development based in Udaipur, India and is co-founder of some of the most innovative educational experiments in the world - the Swaraj University, the Jail University, Complexity University, Tribal Farmversity, the Creativity Adda, the Learning Societies Unconference, the Walkouts-Walk-on network, Udaipur as a Learning City, the Families Learning Together network, Berkana Exchange. He co-launched the global Ecoversities Alliance with 500+ members in 50 countries.

He is a senior advisor to the Economics of Happiness network for localisation. He has worked as a facilitator with Social Labs, Art of Hosting and World Cafe. He has served as guest faculty for Schumacher College (UK), National School of Drama-Theatre in Education (India) and for the Peace Boat (Japan). Manish has been invited to give inspiring public keynote speeches on Reimagining Education in many countries such as USA, England, Portugal, Brazil, Mexico, India. He has edited several books on Vimukt Shiksha (liberating learning) on themes such as radical pedagogies, hacking education, learning societies, unlearning, gift culture, community media, and tools for deep dialogue.