About Ritika

Ritika Ganguly holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Minnesota. An ethnographer of Science and Technology, and musician by ear-training, she is a recipient of the National Science Foundation ‘Science, Technology & Society’ Program award, and the McKnight Composer Fellowship. 

All of Ritika’s work is rooted in her experience and positive relationships with academic, artistic, corporate, and nonprofit worlds in different cultural contexts in different parts of the globe. She grew up in New Delhi, India, where she has worked professionally in the highest levels of the market research industry, performance industry, and academia. Since moving to Minnesota, USA, in 2004, Ritika has applied anthropological insights to problem-solving in the areas of equity in the arts, cross-cultural medicine, and philanthropy. 

Ritika is committed to using analytical, performance, and business storytelling to create new forms of making, being, and thinking. Her body of work aims to capture the multi-layered-ness of ever-evolving stories, mixing ethnographic research and publications in peer-reviewed academic journals, physical theater, and performance installations in arts and scholarly spaces, grant seeking capability building in health justice organizations, and cultivating deep listening and breath work with communities through voice coaching. Her transdisciplinary, cross sector approach has won her recognition from national, state, and regional funders, eminent academic and arts institutions, and folk practitioners of oral storytelling in rural India.

Ritika’s artistic practice engages with orally transmitted genres of music, poetry, and narration. She trains in the field with Baul poet-practitioners on what it means to develop aural skills in community. Her compositional works rely less on music notation and theory, and more on audiative practices that deepen our aptitude to hear and vocalize. Her works often read as an exploration of power and hierarchy while creating a space where the stories of ordinary citizens can be told.

Ritika’s artmaking has been generously awarded and supported by the Minnesota Opera, McKnight Foundation, Jerome Foundation, University of Minnesota, Minnesota State Arts Board, Pillsbury House Theater, Red Eye Theater, Cedar Cultural Center, among others. 

Ritika is currently at work on several agile storytelling projects. These collaborative, teamed projects – whether they are tasked with authentically connecting artists with creative prospects, or helping organizations co-define both problem and solution, or creating artistic productions that interrogate power – are nurturing and preparing the next generation of transdisciplinary thinkers and practitioners.

Agile storytelling has helped her secure over $1.5 million in grant funding from public agencies and foundations such as the National Endowment for Humanities, US. Department of Justice, National Endowment for the Arts, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence, among others, for organizations to implement the wide array of programs and services in our community.  

Ritika currently resides in St. Paul, Minnesota.