Shakuntala Banerjee

Banerjee was born in 1973 in Rheydt, Mönchengladbach, North Rhine-Westphalia, West Germany^[1][2] to a German mother and an Indian Bengali father. She grew up in Rheydt and graduated from the Bischöfliche Marienschule Mönchengladbach [de].

Banerjee studied philosophy, German, and Indology in Bonn, later political science and public law.^[2] During her studies she gained her first journalistic experience as a student assistant in the capital studios of Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) and RTL.

After completing her studies, Banerjee helped set up the Volk Verlag [de] in Munich and supervised the publication of the lexicon of economic works at the University of Erfurt at the chair of Dietmar Herz [de].^[3] In 2003 Banerjee started working as a freelancer for Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF), from 2005 she worked as a reporter for the Mainz ZDF editorial team for the magazine Drehscheibe Deutschland and reported for blickpunkt. From 2008 to 2011, Banerjee worked as a speaker for the ZDF editors-in-chief Nikolaus Brender and Peter Frey. From the end of 2011, Banerjee reported as a reporter from the ZDF Landesstudio Hessen, from 2015 she was a correspondent in Brussels. Since March 2019, she has been the deputy head of the capital studio based in Berlin and alternates with Theo Koll to present the program Berlin direkt [de].^[1]