Email: clarinda.still@area.ox.ac.uk

Dr Clarinda Still is a  Postdoctoral Researcher at the Contemporary South Asian Studies Programme, SIAS, University of Oxford. Dr Still trained as a social anthropologist at Edinburgh, UCL and the LSE, and joined the Contemporary South Asian Studies Programme in the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies in Oxford in 2008. Her research is based in rural Andhra Pradesh, Southeast India and is primarily concerned with Dalits (earlier known as ‘Untouchables’), especially Dalit women. Dr Still’s work looks at different forms of inequality (caste, class and gender), education, identity, affirmative action and labour relations. Her new book (Dalit women: honour and patriarchy in South India) explores the effects of a new ‘politics of culture’ on Dalit gender relations and a Dalit notion of honour.

Email: dd24@duke.edu or  dinesh.dhakal@duke.edu

Dr Dinesh Dhakal worked as the economic advisor of Bhutan government from August 1990 to October 1991; he left the country in protest when government began to evict ethnic Nepalese in 1990, labelling them as ‘anti-national’ and ‘illegal economic immigrants’. Since then he had been working for the resolution of the two-decade old Bhutanese refugee problem in Nepal and establishment of human rights and democracy in Bhutan. He has also specialized on the Rohingya in Nepal, India and Bhutan. He has done this work ‘under the cover’ of a prestigious academic career as an economist: first as a lecturer at Harvard (1989-2000), senior lecturer, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario (2001-2008), before becoming a senior fellow at Duke Center for International Development.

Email: jc280@cam.ac.uk

Chatterji Joya is the Director of the Institute for Modern South Asian History at the University of Cambridge. He is an expert on India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. His research topics are migrants, minorities and citizenship, South Asian history, Muslim migration, secularization, South Asian Diaspora, Refugee in west Bengal and the Bengali Muslims. He authored and published extensively and lectured in different universities around the world especially in the UK, India and the US. He speaks Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, Assamese, Punjabi.

Website
Email: kpembert@gwu.edu

Dr Kelly Pemberton is a professor of religion and women’ studies at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Professor Pemberton specializes in the study of gender, Islam, and Muslim communities in global perspective, with in-country experience in the regions of South Asia and the MENA (Middle East and North Africa). She has worked on a number of legal cases involving refugees from Pakistan and India who have sought asylum in the UK, US and Hong Kong. Prof Pemberton is experienced in preparing a variety of research-based and evaluative reports, including expert witness reports, white papers, institutional analyses, gender analyses, concept designs, program evaluations, and guidance documents.

Email: cohen@berkeley.edu

Lawrence Cohen is Sarah Kailath Professor of India Studies and Professor of Anthropology and South and Southeast Asian Studies at UC Berkeley, where he directs the Institute for South Asia Studies. A medical anthropologist, his India-based work has focused on four areas: (1) aging and the elderly, (2) queer/LGBT lives and politics, (3) medical markets and “trafficking” in organs, and their regulation, and (4) biometric identification, financial inclusion, and privacy. Lawrence Cohen has studied and had fellowships in Delhi and Simla. His fieldwork has been primarily in urban north India (Banaras, Lucknow, Allahabad), in the metropoli (Delhi, Calcutta, Mumbai, Chennai, and Bangalore), and in parts of rural U.P., Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh. His articles on same-sex desire ainclude “The Pleasures of Castration: the Postoperative Status of Hijras, Jankhas, and Academics,” and “Holi in Banaras and the Mahaland of Modernity”. Related work includes a 1999 essay, “The History of Semen: Notes on a Culture-Bound Syndrome,” Medicine and ta 1997 commentary “Semen, Irony, and the Atom Bomb”.

Email: naveen.k@nestingminds.com

Naveen Khan is a COI Expert specializing in Pakistan, Afghanistan and India. An experienced researcher
and published writer, she has a special interest in human rights issues and security affairs. Since 2016,
she has been associated with the Asia-Pacific Foundation, London — a credible think-tank that provides
analysis on international security and geopolitical issues. During this time, Naveen worked on NATO
and the UK Home Office projects, and also attended multilateral security conferences. Notably, she has
conducted original primary researches in the crucial Afghanistan-Pakistan strategic Pashtun region. She
holds an MSc in Sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

Email:  nitasha.kaul@gmail.com

Nitasha Kaul is a Kashmiri novelist, academic, poet and economist. She is currently an Assistant Professor in Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR) at University of Westminster, London, and has previously been a tenured academic in Economics at the Bristol Business School and in Creative Writing at Royal Thimphu College in Bhutan. Her research and writing over the last decade and a half has been on identity, justice, political economy, democracy, feminist and postcolonial thought, Kashmir and Bhutan. She speaks within and outside academia, on issues of justice and borders. In her recent work, she has addressed issues of nationalism and neoliberalism in contemporary India and the question of nation-states and refugees in Europe. She has authored books including the scholarly monograph ‘Imagining Economics Otherwise’ (Routledge, 2007/2008) and a Man Asian Literary Prize shortlisted novel ‘Residue’ (Rainlight, 2014).

Email: shantanu@smalegal.in

Shantanu Mohan Puri is a qualified Advocate in the Indian Judicial System since 1999. Mr. Puri is a recipient of the prestigious Felix Fellowship which enabled him to study Law and Society in South Asia for an LL.M. at the School of Oriental And African Studies, University of London, among other subjects.  He is the Managing Partner of a boutique law practice, SMA Legal- Legal Advisory Services, in Chandigarh (a city in North India).

Mr. Puri continues to serve as an expert witness for over 20 years and has prepared numerous expert reports/opinions on a range of issues including (but not limited to) those on Afghan Refugees in India, Treatment of Hindus and Sikhs in Afghanistan, Afghan Refugees seeking Asylum in the UK, Indian Laws on Citizenship and Nationality, the veracity of Indian documents and claims of asylum applicants in the UK, the Indian  Government’s treatment of Refugees and Asylum seekers, Treatment of Tamil nationals and former LTTE members from Sri Lanka, Indian Government’s policy and approach towards Bangladeshi migrants to India, The Rohingya crisis and the impact on India, Rohingya refugees and their treatment in India. Apart from the specific issues mentioned, Mr. Puri is a lawyer who has a wide experience of having assisted foreign missions across India on a range of issues in involving Indian Civil and Criminal Laws.

Email: ali@policy.hu

Syed Mohammad Ali is an anthropologist with twenty years of experience working on international development, governance, human rights, and human security challenges within the South Asian context. Besides his academic writings, which include a book, several book chapters and academic articles, Dr Ali writes a weekly newspaper op-ed since 2004. Dr. Ali is a Non-Resident Scholar affiliated with the Middle East Institute in Washington D.C. He does research on varied socio-cultural and political challenges confronting Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. He is experienced in preparing a variety of evidence-based reports, including project evaluations, terrain assessments, and policy and position papers for bilateral and multilateral agencies, and for prominent think-tanks like the United States Institute of Peace. Dr. Ali has also taught graduate and undergraduate level in Australia and the United States. Recently, he has been teaching graduate seminar courses at American, Georgetown, George Washington, and Johns Hopkins Universities. Dr. Ali also speaks Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu.

Email:  up1@soas.ac.uk

Dr Pagel’s areas of expertise are Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and Buddhist Monasticism. He has published and edited several books, including  Buddhist Monks in Tax Disputes: Monastic Attitudes towards Revenue Collection in Ancient India   (2014), Dhondup, Yangdon and Pagel, Ulrich and Samuel, Geoffrey, eds. (2013)  Monastic and Lay Traditions in North-Eastern Tibet.   and Pagel, Ulrich and Skorupski, Tadeusz, eds. (1994)  The Buddhist Forum III: Papers in honour and appreciation of Professor David Seyfort Ruegg’s contribution to Indological, Buddhist and Tibetan Studies.   He held the position of General Secretary at the International Association of Buddhist Studies (2011), or the Editor-in-Chief at the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (2010).