Email: fjansz@gmail.com

Frederica Jansz, currently residing in the United States, has lived in Sri Lanka for over four decades and has worked actively as a journalist and editor of a leading national newspaper. She has extensive experience in regularly commenting on a society that was caught in war, then one that was in between war and peace.  She has spoken at numerous international forums and is currently actively involved in functioning as an Expert Witness for Sri Lankan asylum seekers. Her company, ‘Asylum Pro Consultancy,’ works actively with UK based law firms and provides an Expert Witness service as well as document verification.

Email: darynsasia@gmail.com

Dr Gil Daryn is a social anthropologist (Ph.D. Cambridge 2002) and published scholar with expertise on the culture, society, history and politics of South Asia. Since 1989, he has visited, conducted research, worked and lived in the region for a total of over thirteen years, and currently resides in the region. In addition, he became professionally involved with asylum seekers and refugees while working in UNHCR’s Kathmandu office as an Associate Durable Solutions Officer during 2008-9. In this capacity, he went through UNHCR’s archives, read in detail many private refugee files, and became familiar with Pakistan’s Country of Origin information and the RSD process. In addition, he also conducted focus group discussions and interviews with many refugees and held detailed discussions with them. Since 2005, Dr Daryn has served as a consultant and expert on asylum and human rights and has written over 170 Expert Witness Reports. In recent years he also contributed information about specific issues to ACCORD (Austrian Centre for Country of Origin and Asylum Research and Documentation).

Among the issues Dr Daryn often writes about are: the justice system, gender issues including so-called ‘honour killing’ and gender minorities, sectarian violence, criminal and terrorist groups, land disputes, the health including mental health systems, minority groups, political parties, and other aspects of culture, society and history of the countries in South Asia.

Email: devottn@wfu.edu

Dr Neil DeVotta was born in Sri Lanka and had his primary and secondary education in the country before moving to the United States. He holds a Ph.D. in politics from the University of Texas at Austin and is currently an Associate Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. He has written extensively on Sri Lanka and returns regularly to the island to pursue his various research interests.

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.