Kavita Puri is a multi award-winning journalist, executive producer and broadcaster who has created, presented and written landmark radio series on BBC Radio 4 and The World Service.
She is also the author of the critically acclaimed book “Partition Voices: Untold British Stories” which was adapted for the stage as “Silence” at the Donmar Warehouse in London and has toured England.
The BBC podcast Three Million won Gold for Best New Podcast at the British Podcast Awards 2024, Best History Series at the Association of International Broadcasters, and Best Presenter at the Eastern Eye Arts and Culture Awards.
Kavita was also a finalist for the Orwell Journalism Prize. It was a podcast of the year in the Times and Guardian.
She devised and presented Partition Voices which was awarded the Royal Historical Society’s Best Radio and Podcast Prize and its overall Public History Prize. The award-winning Three Pounds in My Pocket which she created and hosts, is the first social history of British South Asians and is currently on its fifth series on BBC Radio 4.
The Radio Times has described Kavita as “our foremost chronicler of the lives of British South Asians.”
She has lectured and spoken on the subject around the world, and has written for publications including the Guardian, Times and Evening Standard. Kavita was also a regular presenter of the weekly affairs programme The Inquiry.
Kavita has worked at the BBC in senior editorial positions on its flagship current affairs programmes including Newsnight and Panorama, covering politics, investigations and foreign affairs. As editor of the foreign documentary series Our World, she commissioned and oversaw its coverage of the war in Yemen which won numerous awards including from the Royal Television Society and the Foreign Press Association.
She is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a Trustee of the Victoria and Albert Museum where she chairs the V & A East Committee which is overseeing the opening of the Storehouse and the Museum at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Stratford.