Jaya Luintel
Co-Founder & President
The Story Kitchen
About
Jaya Luintel (she/her) is a feminist researcher, journalist, and narrative justice and peace practitioner from Nepal. Her work explores the intersections of gender, memory, storytelling, and peacebuilding, with attention to women survivors of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). She began as a broadcast journalist in 1999 and has since challenged dominant representations of women’s lives and knowledge.
She is the Co-Founder and President of The Story Kitchen, a feminist initiative that uses community-rooted, reflective storytelling, informed by narrative therapy principles and practice, to challenge dominant gendered knowledge systems. Since 2015, she has worked with women survivors of CRSV from Nepal’s ten-year armed conflict, supporting survivor-led truth documentation, healing, advocacy, and movement-building. Her work has contributed to Nepal’s transitional justice discourse, especially on CRSV and survivors’ agency. Jaya also worked as a gender expert, supporting Nepal’s Ministry of Home Affairs in drafting the second phase of Nepal’s National Action Plan on UN Security Council Resolutions 1325 and 1820, with a focus on the rights and recognition of women survivors of CRSV.
Jaya holds a Ph.D. in Applied Conflict Transformation Studies from the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies and Paññāsāstra University of Cambodia. Her doctoral research developed Truth Listening (सत्य श्रवण), a feminist grounded-theory framework and alternative to truth-telling and truth-seeking models within transitional justice mechanisms. She also teaches Men and Masculinities in the Gender Studies Master’s program at Tribhuvan University in Nepal.