Asia Leadership Fellow Program（ALFP）Fellow Profiles

Samrat Choudhury
Author; Journalist (Independent) / India

Mr. Choudhury is an author and journalist. After serving as an editor at mainstream newspapers in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru, he has been engaged in writing a book on the Brahmaputra River, which flows through Tibet in China, northeast India and Bangladesh. He is interested in such topics as the politics, history and culture of this complex and diverse region where India, Bangladesh and China meet, as well as of India as a whole. His publications include short stories, essays and a graphic novella, some of which have been translated into German, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. His novel The Urban Jungle (Penguin Books, 2011) was nominated for the Man Asian Literary Prize. Having studied electrical engineering before, he is also interested in technology and its impact on society. He divides his time between Shillong and Kolkata.
Mr. Choudhury’s report 

Aziz Ali Dad
Knowledge Management and Communication Specialist, Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP) / Pakistan

Mr. Ali Dad is Knowledge Management and Communications Specialist at the nongovernmental　Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP), engaged in research on the impact of socio-economic development on politically marginalized regions such as Gilgit-Baltistan (where he is from) and its neighboring areas and how globalization affects local culture, traditions, governance structure and people’s identities. He is also a leading writer in the region and a regular columnist at the major English daily The News. By writing extensively on philosophical, cultural, political and social issues and presenting research papers at national and international conferences, he hopes to represent the region of Gilgit-Baltistan. Mr. Ali Dad received an MSc in Philosophy of Social Sciences from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Recently, he completed the study “Horizons of CPEC in Gilgit-Baltistan” for AKRSP, which examines the opportunities and challenges the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) may bring to Gilgit-Baltistan. Mr. Ali Dad’s report 

Asmin Fransiska
Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia / Indonesia

Dr. Fransiska is the director of the Institute of Research and Community Services and a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Law at Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia. She has conducted research on human rights and drug policy focusing on drug law and human rights, health and children, democracy and past abuses. She obtained a master’s degree from Northwestern University, USA, and a Ph.D. from Justus Liebig University, Giessen, Germany. Besides publishing articles in international academic books and journals, Dr. Fransiska frequently writes essays for national and international media regarding human rights, the anti-death penalty movement, the rule of law and drug law. She serves as a coordinator of the Indonesian Coalition for Drug Policy Reform while seeking solutions to drug dependence and advocating health rights. She hopes to learn from other Asian countries’ efforts on human rights issues.
Dr. Fransiska’s report 

Lydia Lubon
Documentary Filmmaker and Producer (Independent)）/ Malaysia

Ms. Lubon is a documentary filmmaker whose 14-year career has seen her engaged in international documentary production across Asia. She currently holds the position of Secretary for the Malaysian Documentary Association and has received multiple film awards, including Best Documentary for her first film in 2004 and also for her Discovery Channel film Making the Cut in 2009. Most recently, she was Executive Producer for Operation Sumatran Rhino, which was the first Malaysian wildlife documentary to receive a global telecast on National Geographic Wild. Ms. Lubon works with international TV networks such as Discovery Channel, History Channel, Bio Channel, National Geographic, National Geographic Wild, Fox Sports and Al Jazeera English. Ms. Lubon is of mixed parentage, half-American and half-Iban (Malaysia’s largest indigenous tribe). She was born and raised in Malaysia, spending many months each year on the island of Borneo. She is passionate about wildlife and environmental conservation, and uses her films as a platform for raising awareness about social responsibility.
Ms. Lubon’s report 

Alongkot Maiduang
Academic Officer, Institute for the Promotion of Teaching Science and Technology; Art & Culture Journalist, Judprakai Newspaper / Thailand

Dr. Maiduang is an academic officer at the Institute for the Promotion of Teaching Science and Technology (IPST). His works cover all aspects of mathematics education in Thailand, ranging from developing national curricula, policies and textbooks, and training teachers to conducting national as well as international assessments. Dr. Maiduang also works as a film critic and writes commentaries on world cinema, especially Asian films and multi-national productions under the pen name “kalapapruek” for various media and has won several film criticism awards. He has visited most major film festivals, such as Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Rotterdam, London, Hong Kong and Singapore, while serving as a permanent jury member of the International Association of Theatre Critics (IATC) Thailand to judge awards for outstanding stage performances in Thailand. Apart from film, he writes reviews on literature, art exhibitions, classical music and stage performances. Dr. Maiduang’s repor 

Mikiko Sawanishi
Deputy Executive Head, United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF) / Japan

Ms. Sawanishi currently serves as Deputy Executive Head of the United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF) based in New York. UNDEF was created in 2005 as a United Nations General Trust Fund at the Millennium Summit with the objective of promoting democracy at the grassroots level. Through her work at UNDEF, she has worked with civil society organizations in almost all Asian countries and contributed to the enhancement of civil society in the local community, especially by enabling participation of all citizens including the most marginalized and vulnerable populations in decision-making processes. Prior to UNDEF, she worked for UN agencies, funds and programmes in the fields of development, conflict prevention, combating infectious diseases and peaceful use of nuclear technology. She has also engaged in projects relating to the empowerment of women and the promotion of equal participation of all sexes both in the home and workforce, as well as to educational assistance in developing nations. Before joining the UN, she worked for the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, Agency for Cultural Affairs and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation.
Ms. Sawanishi’s report 

Sun Dong
Poet; Professor and Deputy Director, Office of International Cooperation and Exchanges, Nanjing University of Finance and Economics / China

Dr. Sun currently works as a professor of English literature at Nanjing University of Finance and Economics. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at McMaster University in Canada after earning a Ph.D. in English literature from Nanjing University. Dr. Sun is a literary critic specializing in poetry and theater studies and a prominent poet. She has authored one monograph, two poetry books, numerous academic articles and hundreds of poems in various distinguished journals and newspapers while translating and editing a number of books relating to poetry. Her poems have also been translated into English, Turkish, Hindi, French and Romanian. Through her work at the Office of International Cooperation and Exchanges, Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, as well as at the Confucius Institute for Business, State University of New York as a Chinese director (2013–17), she has developed a passion for promoting cultural exchange and has collaborated with educational and cultural institutions in other countries.
Dr. Sun’s report 

Silot Uon
Career Advisor, SeeChange International Cambodia / Cambodia

Mr. Uon is a career advisor for SeeChange International Cambodia, a nongovernmental organization focusing on the empowerment of young people through job training and the improvement of their mindset. Its vocational training center in particular helps young individuals get into a more sustainable workplace than they are now by providing the opportunity to study for career advancement and connecting them with partner organizations on an individual basis. Mr. Uon is also a general manager of Cashew Nut Association Kompong Thom (CAT), a commercial association operated with the provincial department of commerce, where he is responsible for training farmers in Kompong Thom as well as for finding new markets to sell their products. In addition, Mr. Uon has worked as a translator cum coordinator for Teachers Across Borders Australia (TAB) since 2006 and helped organize workshops for teachers to improve the quality of teaching and conducted workshops for those in management and leadership positions in public institutions. In his activities, Mr. Uon places great emphasis on the importance of nurturing a mutual respect among people not only in his community but also in neighboring countries. Mr. Uon’s report 

Ayako Hatano
Visiting Scholar, U.S.-Asia Law Institute, New York University / Japan

Ms. Hatano specializes in international law and sustainable development. She is involved in the examination of how international human rights law and norms are internalized in local legal systems and cultures. Her recent research focuses on racial discrimination in Asia, including hate speech, with a special interest in strategic human rights litigation and its impact on social movements. She is also engaged in advocacy for the protection of the rights of minority women under the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and for the rights of children engaged in criminal behavior under the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC). She strives to deliver effective advocacy for the empowerment of people in vulnerable situations through connecting grassroots activities and global policies in the international human rights system so that marginalized voices are heard in the global and local communities. Ms. Hatano’s report 

Fazal Khaliq
Reporter, Dawn Media Group; Cultural Activist / Pakistan

Mr. Khaliq is a journalist, research writer and cultural activist with a commitment to protect the Pakistani cultural heritage from deterioration and terrorism through his writings and seminars. He has been working as a correspondent with Dawn, a widely read English newspaper in Pakistan, and has authored eight books on different topics, from militancy to cultural heritage, poetry to travelogues. He also organizes awareness-raising seminars regarding Gandhara civilization and its history. In addition, he used to teach at a local school in the Swat District, passing on the importance of cultural assets to his students, including Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai. He believes that the rich archaeological and cultural heritage in Pakistan, especially the ancient sites of Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam, has the power to bring people of diverse ethnicity and religions together and promote religious harmony in Asia. He has an M.A. in International Relations from the University of Peshawar and has received several journalism awards, including Agahi Awards in 2012, 2013 and 2016, and an Asia Journalism Fellowship, Singapore, in 2014. He has also been working as an editor for the Morning Post.
Mr. Khaliq’s report 

Sudirman Nasir
Senior Lecturer and Researcher, Faculty of Public Health, Hasanuddin University / Indonesia

As a senior lecturer and researcher in public health at Hasanuddin University, Makassar, Dr. Nasir has conducted research on various issues related to HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including the social context of HIV risk-taking behaviors among Indonesian youth in low-income neighborhoods. He obtained his master’s degree and Ph.D. from the School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, and has been involved in HIV prevention programs in Indonesia since the mid-1990s. Besides publishing articles in international academic journals, Dr. Nasir frequently writes essays for Indonesian and international media targeting the general public. He also serves as a vice president of the Indonesian Young Academy of Sciences (ALMI), whose mission is to empower mid-career scientists for building a strong science community in Indonesia. He is interested in demographic issues that most Asian countries will be facing in the future, and hopes to learn from Japan’s experience as an aging society. Dr. Nasir’s report 

Smita M. Patil
Assistant Professor, School of Gender and Development Studies, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) / India

Dr. Patil is a feminist academic cum activist working for the rights and dignity of Dalit women in India. She aims to create a network of public intellectuals and students among Dalit women activists within India, as well as in South Asia, and to link such an inclusive network with international marginalized women activist groups across the globe. She earned an M.Phil and Ph.D. from the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and has received various fellowships including the Research Excellence Program USC-India fellowship at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, while contributing a number of articles on class, caste and gender to academic journals and books. Her areas of interest include caste and gender, Indian politics, social and political theory, and gender and law. Dr. Patil’s report 

Phan Thanh Duc
Dean, Faculty of Management Information Systems, Banking Academy of Vietnam / Vietnam

Dr. Duc is the dean and a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Management Information Systems of the Banking Academy. As a visiting lecturer he has also taught at universities in Vietnam, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States. The main focus of his research and teaching is business process management, e-learning, e-banking and big data. He has conducted research and projects related to the application of technology in education and management in Vietnam. One example is his contribution to the promotion of the ITPEC Examination in Vietnam, a common IT certification program made for Asia with assistance from the Information Technology Promotion Agency, Japan. He writes textbooks for students, publishes papers in journals and conferences, and contributes articles to newspapers. He also hopes to use information technology to achieve equal opportunity in education, and is interested in the teaching methods used in various countries and how shifts in the education curriculum are reflected in the way in which society evolves. Dr. Duc’s report 

Saroj Srisai
Head, Environment Division, ASEAN Secretariat / Thailand

Mr. Srisai has worked for sustainable development issues in the Royal Thai Government and international organizations, ranging from climate change mitigation and adaptation, disaster risk reduction and management, to environmental education. Currently, he serves as Head of the Environment Division at the ASEAN Secretariat office in Jakarta, overseeing regional cooperation on environmental issues. He recognizes the necessity of enhancing disaster prevention measures and support systems in his country and region, and has a keen interest in Japan’s risk reduction culture and education. With increasingly pressing problems of natural disasters, loss of biodiversity, wildlife trafficking crimes and many others in the ASEAN region, he hopes to contribute to alleviating the severity of the problems by linking the international community and high-level national policy makers with civil society and communities on the ground. He has also been a strong advocate for gender equality by mainstreaming the issue into all of his work and projects. Mr. Srisai’s report 

Wang Xin
Deputy Director, Multimedia Center, Nanjing Daily / China

Ms. Wang has worked in the newspaper industry for 13 years, specializing in economy and city construction, with knowledge in multimedia and administrative experience in the news and advertising departments. She hopes to exert her influence as a journalist to help more people, especially disadvantaged citizens like laid-off workers and physically challenged children. With a passion to build a bridge between China and its neighboring countries, including Japan, Ms. Wang believes that the “pen” can reduce the distance that may exist in people’s hearts in today’s Asia, and that the dissemination of positive and objective information will promote mutual understanding among the public. Her research interests include the role and responsibility of media in the development of society at the city level. She obtained her master’s degree in Public Policy from King’s College London as a Chevening Scholar sponsored by the British government.
Ms. Wang’s report 

Emiko Fujioka
Secretary General, Fukushima Beacon for Global Citizens Network / Japan

Ms. Fujioka is the secretary general and co-founder of the Fukushima Beacon for Global Citizens Network (Fukuden), a Fukushima-based nonprofit organization. Fukuden’s main mission is to share lessons from Fukushima after the nuclear accident with the world from a citizen viewpoint. She moved to Fukushima from Tokyo in 2012 as a member of the disaster response task force of the Japan NGO Center for International Cooperation (JANIC) and started Fukuden after JANIC closed its operations in Fukushima in 2014. She is also a board member of Shapla Neer=Citizens’ Committee in Japan for Overseas Support, an NGO working for underprivileged people in South Asia. From 2005 to 2009, she served at the Shapla Neer Bangladesh Office as a country representative. She translated The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India by Urvashi Butalia (ALFP 2000 Fellow) into Japanese during her stay in India from 1998 to 2001. The book was published in Japan in 2002. Ms. Fujioka’s report 

Amran Hossain
Faculty Member, Department of Political Science, University of Dhaka / Bangladesh

Dr. Amran earned his Ph.D. in Politics at the University of Sheffield, U.K., and M.Phil in Public Administration at the University of Bergen, Norway. He was awarded an International Visitor Leadership Program Fellowship in 2002 by the U.S. Department of State, worked as an EU research fellow in Portugal in 2011, and has presented papers at various international conferences and seminars on topics from Bangladesh’s community-based rehabilitation and democratization process to Islamic extremism. He is the author of ten academic books on politics, power and corruption in Bangladesh, international law and politics, social science research design and ethical concerns in academic research as well as a Bangladesh compendium: pre- and post-historic events of the liberation war. He has also published a number of articles, and his research interests include religious extremism, the party system, human rights and democratic norms and values. He is concerned about the increasing activities of religious radicals all over the world, and explores Asia’s future through his research on Bangladesh, especially from the perspective of democracy, peace and violence. Dr. Amran’s report 

Lee Taeho
Chair, Policy Committee, People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD) / Korea

Mr. Lee is a civic activist in South Korea. He joined People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD) in 1995, one of the most influential watchdog NGOs in South Korea, and served as secretary general in 2011–2016, leading PSPD’s major activities from economic justice and civil and political rights to peace and disarmament. He has organized various campaigns and projects concerning anti-corruption, political reform, freedom of expression, social welfare reform, anti-FTA, anti-war, peaceful resolution of armed conflicts and democratic control of security power. He graduated from Seoul National University in 1991 with a bachelor’s degree in Western History, and was appointed as a visiting fellow at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute of Columbia University in 2008–2009, and an Executive Committee member of the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA) in 2010–2016. He is strongly interested in Japan’s peace movement, including recent youth activism and other civil movements relating to human security after the Fukushima disaster. Mr. Lee’s report 

Phan Ngoc Diem Han
Chief Executive Officer, Rainbow Media & Entertainment / Vietnam

Ms. Han gained extensive experience in marketing through her career with various companies such as Phuong Nam Cultural Corporation, and has published over 100 articles on social and business issues in national newspapers, business magazines, and sports and cultural newspapers. She started a media company in Ho Chi Minh City in 2014, and recently, as a successful author cum screenwriter, she creates TV programs and historical documentaries and writes essays for dailies widely circulated in Ho Chi Minh City. Her exceptional creativity and entrepreneurship are also exhibited in her documentary films, into which she incorporates her original perspective and therefore adds fresh dimensions to the traditional view of historical events in the country. Her works include a screenplay titled Tra gia (Payment, VTV3, 2014) and a TV series titled Doi Mat Cua Trai Tim (Eyes of Heart, Today TV, 2014), which won the Best TV’s Drama 2014 Award. Ms. Han’s report 

Kumar Sundaram
Senior Researcher, Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace / India

Mr. Kumar is a senior researcher with India’s Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP) and a leading activist. Particularly after Fukushima, he has been actively collaborating with the Japanese and international civil society for a nuclear-free world and founded DiaNuke.org, which has become a popular website for nuclear-related resources and dialogue. He believes that civil society networks serve a crucial role in nuclear-related issues, where sharing a common vision across borders becomes particularly challenging due to the differences in national policies. Mr. Kumar has a keen interest in democracy as an enabler of peace and justice, and has been working actively toward creating solidarity across Asia. He has also created popular and collaborative web-platforms and apps such as IndiaResists.com and AsiaProgressive.com that focus on people’s movements and human rights. Mr. Kumar’s report 

Criselda Yabes
Writer; Journalist (Independent) / Philippines

Ms. Yabes is the author of eight books, for the most part dealing with the military and armed conflict in Mindanao. Her latest, Peace Warriors: On the Trail with Filipino Soldiers, won the National Book Award for Creative Non-Fiction in 2012. She has also published fiction works that have won literary awards. She has been a journalist for foreign news organizations for the past thirty years, having covered politics and other major events in her country and elsewhere. One of her distinguished work as a journalist is her reportage on defense and military issues, including a territorial dispute in the South China Sea. She travels to as many coastal villages as possible to see the situation up close. Currently, she is in Palawan where she is trying to get information on maritime security as well as ecotourism for another book project. She is interested in how Asia can reduce the increasing tension within the region through dialogue, stop the arms race with preventive diplomacy, and establish common rules for the development and preservation of marine resources. Ms. Yabe’s report 

Ayang Utriza Yakin
Lecturer, UIN Jakarta; Vice-Chairman, Central Board of Nahdlatul Ulama for Mosque Affairs / Indonesia

Dr. Yakin has a B.A. in Islamic Law from the State Islamic University, Jakarta, studied Islamic law at the University of al-Azhar, Cairo, and completed an M.A. and Ph.D. in History and Philology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. He was a visiting research fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies of the University of Oxford, and a visiting fellow at the Islamic Legal Studies Program of Harvard Law School. He emphasizes the importance of interfaith dialogue advocated by religious pluralism and universal human rights rooted in Islamic teachings, while claiming the necessity of intellectual exchange to share thought processes. He is also the Saiful Mujani Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Islam and Society (PPIM) of State Islamic University (UIN Jakarta) and vice-chairman of the Mosque Management Institute of the Central Board of Nahdlatul Ulama (LTM-PBNU), the largest Islamic mass organization. He also works for cultural and historical aspects of Java as a vice-chairman of the Cultural Heritage Expert Team of the Province of Banten and the Expert Team of the History of Jakarta.
Dr. Yakin’s report 

Arulanantham Sarveswaran
Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, University of Colombo / Sri Lanka

Mr. Sarveswaran has an M. Phil in Labour Law from the University of Colombo and an M.A. in International Peace Studies from University for Peace (UPEACE), a United Nations mandated University in Costa Rica. Previously serving as a senior consultant to the Law Review Project of the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka, he teaches labor law and environmental law and serves as the Coordinator and Senior Lecturer for postgraduate programs in Conflict and Peace Studies. He is a resource person in human rights, environmental rights, workers’ rights and peace-building, working with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka and the National Peace Council. He often visits Jaffna and other places in the northern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka, where Tamil and Muslim minority communities live and internally displaced people during the civil war have come back, to conduct programs in environmental conservation, human rights, reconciliation and peace-building. He also writes in newspapers and participates in television programs on current affairs in the country. Mr. Sarveswaran’s report 

Jaideep Hardikar
Special Correspondent, The Telegraph, India; Core group member, People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI) / India

Mr. Hardikar currently reports on a wide range of issues in central India for Kolkata-based the Telegraph. He has for over a decade reported from India’s heartland on issues ranging from massive human displacement to agrarian distress; from the emergence of dubious water markets to people’s struggles over forest rights; from politics to central India’s armed conflicts and from global farm subsidies to market volatilities. Remaining, by choice, outside of the major cities, he looks at processes rather than events. Among his focus areas in reporting is rural India, one of the most complex areas on the planet: its many conflicts and crises, community-driven solutions, people’s governance models, astonishing stories of change and hope. His first book, A Village Awaits Doomsday (2013), tells the stories of millions pauperized by so-called development. In addition, he is a core-group member and volunteer for the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI), a new online archive and journal that seeks to document Indian villages. He also teaches International Communications at Nagpur University. He is part of the world cinema movement and honorary president of a film society in his home town, Nagpur.
Mr. Hardikar’s report 

Saranarat Kanjanavanit
Chairperson, Green World Foundation / Thailand

Dr. Kanjanavanit is Chairperson of the Green World Foundation (GWF), a nonprofit environmental NGO based in Bangkok. She is an ecologist and a writer, with a passion for creating meaningful connections between Nature and human beings. She initiated the Environmental Detectives education program 18 years ago, which empowers children and local citizens with tools to “read” the local environment through observation of biodiversity, and to take creative action based on knowledge. The work extended from stream headwaters to the sea and from natural habitats to urban settings. Her recent focus with the Foundation is on promoting urban resilience and a livable city that is generous to both human beings and other species in co-existence. This includes pioneering an agenda for a bicycle-friendly Bangkok, equipped with crowd-sourcing tools that support citizen action. Current personal interests are bio-mimicry learning and design, and the art of inter-species communication. Dr. Kanjanavanit’s report 

Karen Lai Yu Lee
Programme Manager, Penang Women’s Development Corporation / Malaysia

Ms. Lai is the Programme Manager for Women’s Empowerment and Leadership at the Penang Women’s Development Corporation, the first state government agency of its kind in the country, set up in 2011 with the aim of mainstreaming gender equality and promoting social justice in Penang, Malaysia. Prior to that, she practiced law, developing a broad range of experience in litigation and conveyancing. Ms. Lai has been active within the Malaysian and regional women’s human rights movement for almost a decade, which includes advocating on sexual assault laws and procedures, holding watching briefs for victims and their families in sexual assault trials, and pro bono representation for social and political activists caught in urgent arrest situations. Ms. Lai is a resource person affiliated with the International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia-Pacific (IWRAW Asia-Pacific), for which she has served as a rapporteur, and a trainer on the content and application of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Ms. Lai is also a jazz vocalist and has performed at various public events in her spare time. Ms. Lai’s report 

Mai Nomura
Global Strategic Partnerships Manager, Central European University Business School, Hungary / Japan

Ms. Nomura has experience in purpose-oriented projects for over forty countries. After working at the Asia Foundation Japan office, the Japan Society of Boston, and the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and in mutual funds for institutional investors globally, she served in partnership projects in the area of international cooperation, corporate social responsibility and communications in accordance with millennium development goals at Sony and Ericsson. With the purpose of enhancing social mission dialogue among multi-stakeholders, she founded a social salon, Knot Work Café. She also served as a curator at IMPACT Foundation Japan. Currently, Ms. Nomura works as manager for global strategic partnerships at Central European University Business School in Hungary. She is also a lecturer at the Nihon University Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies and a researcher at the Graduate School of System Design Management at Keio University. Ms. Nomura’s report 

Dinah Roma
Poet; Professor, Department of Literature, De La Salle University, Manila / Philippines

Professor Roma teaches literature and creative writing at De La Salle University, Manila. She has also been active as a poet. Her works explore the liminal spaces between place and language, where possibilities of journeys are manifold. They draw inspiration from the rich traditions of Asia to chart the traveler’s passage across landscapes and terrains, peoples and cultures, through time and memory. This aspect of her creative work also is a crucial part of her scholarly work on literature and travel theory for which she has been awarded grants and fellowships from various institutions. She is the author of three books of poetry: A Feast of Origins (2004), which won the 2004 Philippine National Book Award for Poetry in English and two other major awards; Geographies of Light (2011), whose core collection won third prize in the Carlos Palanca Award for Poetry in English in 2007; and her most recent collection Naming the Ruins (2014), launched in Sydney, Singapore and Manila. Professor Roma’s report 

Harry Surjadi
Executive Director, Society of Indonesian Science Journalists / Indonesia

Mr. Surjadi began his journalism career at Trubus, an agriculture magazine. He then worked for the Kompas Daily for nearly 10 years. In 2000, Mr. Surjadi helped to develop Astaga.com, an Internet news portal. He founded and became the first Executive Director of the Society of Indonesian Environmental Journalists in 2006 and the Society of Indonesian Science Journalists in 2014. He was a former Knight International Journalism Fellow of the International Center for Journalists, at which he helped to launch weekly sections and programs dedicated to the environment at regional newspapers and radio stations. And in 2011-2012, he launched a mobile environmental news service for rural Indonesians with little access to information. He was granted the Communication for Social Change Award from the University of Queensland, Australia. He has worked as a freelance reporter and media trainer in Indonesia and elsewhere in the region. A graduate of Bogor Agricultural University in West Java, Indonesia, he received a master’s degree in January 2010 from the University of Indonesia Faculty of Social and Political Sciences. Mr. Surjadi’s report 

Yin Shuxi
Professor, Hefei University of Technology / China

Dr. Yin is Professor and also Director of the Center for Inter-Faith Dialogue at Hefei University in China, where he teaches and does research as well as consulting independently in cooperation with other scholars and practitioners. He received his bachelor’s degree from Peking University, master’s degree from Harvard University and Ph.D. from the University of Tubingen. After growing up in a rapidly changing China and studying and working on three continents, he is fully aware of the importance of spirituality. After living in the West for years, he feels the need to reflect on Asia’s spiritual heritage as well as having a commitment to inter-faith dialogue. He holds that spirituality can play a great role in promoting Asian unity. Dr. Yin has helped his university organize a summer training program on religion and rule of law, the first of its kind in China, taught by faculty from more than 10 countries, whose graduates have become pioneering advocates of religious freedom in China. His major academic interests are religion and society in a broad sense, and he has published widely on this topic.
Dr. Yin’s report 

Vishalache Balakrishnan
Senior Lecturer, Department of Educational Foundation and Humanities, University of Malaya / Malaysia

Dr. Balakrishnan was a secondary school teacher for fourteen years before becoming a lecturer in 2002 at the University of Malaya, Malaysia. During her late teens, Dr. Balakrishnan worked with several international NGOs and was active in social work. Coming from Indian and Chinese backgrounds, Dr. Balakrishnan is multicultural, multi-religious and multilingual. This background led her to pursue her career in moral education, and she is actively involved in teaching and the training of future and current educators. Her vision is to develop educators who are creative in cultivating moral values in students in the global arena and have self-regulated learning skills. She writes academic books, journal articles and chapters in books for moral education, civics and citizenship, and lately about multicultural education. She obtained her B.Ed. and MEd. at the University of Malaya and completed her doctoral studies at Victoria University, New Zealand. Dr. Balakrishnan is also an office bearer of the Asia Pacific Network for Moral Education and a member of the Association for Moral Education.
Dr. Balakrishnan’s report 

Lee Wonjae
Vice President, The Hope Institute / Korea

Mr. Lee is a writer and educator for social innovation. He is currently vice president of the Hope Institute, a civic think tank based in Korea. Prior to his current position, he was CEO of the Social Fiction Lab, a social venture to provide workshop programs to help social entrepreneurs develop their imagination and to make a difference in society. He was a policy director to Dr. Ahn Cheol-Soo, a prominent candidate in the 2012 Korean presidential election. Earlier, Mr. Lee founded and led HERI (Hankyoreh Economic Research Institute), and worked as a researcher at Samsung Economic Research Institute and as an economic journalist at Hankyoreh Newspaper. His interests are corporate social responsibility (CSR), social entrepreneurship and public policies for social innovation. He has been involved in various CSR projects including “East Asia 30,” a research project to establish a CSR evaluation model for leading Chinese, Japanese and Korean corporations. He also designed “MBA for Social Entrepreneurs,” a management educational program for social entrepreneurs in Korea. He earned an MBA at MIT Sloan School of Management and a B.A. in Economics at Yonsei University.
Mr. Lee’s report 

Akiko Mera
Executive Director, Oxfam Japan / Japan

Ms. Mera is the executive director of Oxfam Japan, an international NGO working in over ninety countries. She also serves as a vice chair for JANIC (Japan NGO Center for International Cooperation), an umbrella organization for ninety-six organizations. Prior to working in the non-profit sector, she worked in the private sector as a merchandizer and sales with extensive work in Southeast Asia. She was one of the founding members of FM YY, the first multi-lingual radio station in Japan based in Kobe, which was established after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995. After studying sustainable international development at Brandeis University, Ms. Mera worked in Cambodia to develop the educational television series, such as Sesame Street and public service announcements in Khmer language. She has been with Oxfam Japan since 2005. 

Sikder Monoare Murshed
Professor, Department of Linguistics, University of Dhaka / Bangladesh

Dr. Murshed (also known as Shourav Sikder) is the director of the Scandinavian Study Center at the University of Dhaka, which is one of the initiatives on Scandinavian Studies in the South Asian region. As an educator and a social and human rights activist, he is active in working for human rights and the development of his country. He earned his Ph.D. in Linguistics and completed his post doctorate at Aalborg University, Denmark. His main research interests include the Bengali language, language and culture, indigenous languages and education. As a prominent Bangladeshi linguist, he has published more than twenty books on issues of linguistics and the indigenous languages of Bangladesh. Over the last two decades, he has been working as the point person for indigenous-language culture education and protection of minority rights in Bangladesh. His writings on these issues in national dailies are bringing concern to the mass level. His affiliations with organizations for social work are aimed at creating “communal peace and harmony.” Dr. Murshed’s report 

Nguyen Viet Khoi
Professor, University of Economics and Business, Vietnam National University, Hanoi / Vietnam

Dr. Khoi joined Vietnam National University, Hanoi in 2000 and has been the deputy head of Department of International Business since 2011. He has also been providing key advices on export strategies to the Assembly of Vietnam. His research interests are global value chains, supply chains and the global strategies of multinational corporations. Dr. Khoi has been teaching and doing research at institutions, such as University of Wisconsin and University of Southern New Hampshire. In 2012 and 2013, Dr. Khoi joined Columbia Business School, Columbia University as a post-doctorate researcher under the Fulbright Scholarship. Dr. Khoi has published books including Global Value Chains of Transnational Corporations: A Practical Approach from China’s Current Situation (VNU Publishing House, 2013), International Economics (co-author; VNU Publishing House, 2010) and Transnational Corporations: Theories and Practices (co-author; VNU Publishing House, 2007). Dr. Khoi’s report 

Ambeth R. Ocampo
Associate Professor, Department of History, Ateneo de Manila University / Philippines

Dr. Ocampo is a leading public historian in the Philippines whose research covers the late 19th century Philippines: its art, culture and the people who figure in the birth of the nation. Dr. Ocampo is also professorial lecturer in the Department of Filipino and Philippine Literature, University of the Philippines (Diliman). He has previously held appointments in Kyoto University, Chulalongkorn University and recently Sophia University. He served as Chairman, National Commission for Culture and the Arts (2005-2007) and Chairman, National Historical Commission of the Philippines (2002-2011). His work on history and culture has been recognized through awards including decorations from France, Spain and the Philippines. Dr. Ocampo has published twenty-one books, writes a widely read Editorial Page column for the Philippines Daily Inquirer and moderates a growing Facebook fan page. His books include Rizal Without the Overcoat (National Book Award for Essay; Anvil Publishing, 1990) and Prehistoric Philippines: Looking Back 6 (Anvil Publishing, 2012). Dr. Ocampo’s report 

Mallika Shakya
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, South Asian University / Nepal

Dr. Shakya is an economic anthropologist working on labor movements, trader communities and development. She examined the rise and fall of readymade garment industry in Nepal, and then followed the trajectories of Marwari trader diaspora in South Asia and South Africa. Gradually, she became interested in concepts of pan-nationalism especially in the postcolonial context. She has taught in University of Pretoria and University of Oxford, and currently she teaches at South Asian University. Prior to joining academia, she worked for the United Nations and the World Bank where she initiated and led an Export Competitiveness Thematic Group (EC-TG) which brought on board leading economic sociologists, business scholars and macroeconomists to jointly build an interdisciplinary framework for industrial development. Her handbook on export competitiveness has now been applied in several of the World Bank country operations in Asia, Africa and Latin America. She has also advised governments in Asia and Africa on their policies for industrial development. Dr. Shakya’s report 

Nelia G. Balgoa
Associate Professor, Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology / Philippines

Dr. Balgoa is currently Associate Professor of the English Department and Assistant Dean of the School of Graduate Studies of Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT) in Mindanao, Philippines. Her research interests include international migration studies, migration writing and Philippine women’s writing. Trying to find a “third space” (a space where identity can be negotiated and conflict can be resolved) between local and global perspectives in her teaching and advocacy, Dr. Balgoa believes that Asian societies and cultures can be best studied and approached from non-Western perspectives. She has a number of publications in academic journals and has presented at international conferences. She has a doctoral degree in Area Studies from the Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University, where she studied on a Japanese government (MEXT) scholarship. Dr. Balgoa’s report 

Chin Oy Sim
Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Bar Council Malaysia / Malaysia

A lawyer by training, Ms. Chin is the Deputy Chief Executive Officer at Bar Council Malaysia, a bar association well-respected for its dynamism in upholding the rule of law and the cause of justice, prior to which she served as Executive Officer of its Human Rights Committee. Ms. Chin was previously engaged in advocacy work at Women’s Aid Organisation, with specific emphasis on the impact of civil and Sharia laws on women in multi-ethnic and multi-religious Malaysia. She continues to be involved in social activism, especially pertaining to women’s rights. Given her particular interest in the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Ms. Chin has served as a trainer and resource person for International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific, which focuses on using CEDAW as a tool for realizing women’s human rights. She has also worked at the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York and London, as well as at the UN Compensation Commission in Geneva. 

He Runfeng
Correspondent and Region Supervisor, China Central Television (Asia Pacific Bureau, Hong Kong) / Hong Kong

Mr. He is a correspondent with the Asia Pacific Bureau of China Central Television (CCTV) mainly responsible for covering major global events, planning news coverage within the region and hosting his own commentary program, Runfeng Observes, which focuses on relations between China and other countries, including the United States, North Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Myanmar, and the Philippines. He joined CCTV in 2010 after six years of working as a correspondent and “Observer of International Issues” for Phoenix TV. Over the past years, Mr. He has covered numerous major international incidents and issues, including the Israel-Lebanon war in 2006, Pakistan’s anti-terrorist war in 2007, the civil war in northern Myanmar in 2009, the Libyan revolution and the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, the territorial disputes in the South China Sea between China and neighboring countries in 2012 and the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War in 2013. Born in mainland China in 1977, Mr. He moved to Hong Kong in 2002. He holds master’s degrees in International Relations and Communications. 

Katsuji Imata
Senior Advisor, CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation / Japan

Mr. Imata is Senior Advisor at CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, based in Johannesburg, South Africa. CIVICUS is a global alliance of civil society organizations working to strengthen citizen action to build a more just and equitable world. He was with CIVICUS’s senior management between 2008 and 2013, culminating in the Acting Secretary General position in 2012-13. Prior to joining CIVICUS, he worked at the GCAP (Global Call to Action against Poverty) global secretariat in 2007. Between 2000 and 2007, he was in Japan and worked for CSO Network Japan (for which he is presently the Board Chair). He gained his nonprofit management experience in the United States by founding Japan-US Community Education and Exchange (JUCEE) in Oakland, California in 1996 and serving as its Executive Director. He has an MPP (Master of Public Policy) degree from the University of California at Berkeley and an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies in Social Science from the University of Tokyo.
Mr. Imata’s report 

Lwin Lwin Mon
Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Yangon / Myanmar

Educated as an archaeological anthropologist at the University of Yangon, Dr. Lwin Lwin Mon holds a B.A., an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Anthropology and an M.A. and an MRes (Master of Research) in Archaeology. She has participated in departmental research on remote and rural ethnic minorities and community studies in Myanmar as a researcher and a team leader since the 1990s. For the past few years, she was involved in two projects, “The Gender Roles of Lisu Nationals” and “Social Value of Myanmar Lacquerware Art in the Bagan Area,” as a project leader. Her publications discuss various customs, beliefs and cultural value systems of Myanmar peoples. Currently, she is participating in the Korea-Myanmar International Project for Inclusive Local Community Development in Myanmar—a project jointly launched by the University of Yangon, Hanyang University and ReDI (Re-shaping Development Institute) with the support of KOICA (Korea International Cooperation Agency)—as a researcher. Dr. Lwin Lwin Mon’s report 

Saba Naqvi
Political Editor, Outlook Magazine / India

Ms. Naqvi is the political editor of Outlook, one of India’s leading newsmagazines. She writes about national politics, government, political parties, people’s movements and identity mobilizations in India. She spent several years covering the emergence of the right-wing political party, the BJP, and its six year long stint in government. Ms. Naqvi is currently editing a volume for Harper Collins about the ideology and actions of extremist groups that have resorted to violence in India. In 2012, Ms. Naqvi published a book titled In Good Faith (Rainlight Rupa) about India’s composite and plural traditions, based on her travels across the country over two decades. The book has been widely reviewed and been a commercial success. Ms. Naqvi is also a regular commentator about national affairs on television news channels. She lives in New Delhi. 

Zubair Torwali
Executive Director, Idara Baraye Taleem-o-Taraqi (IBT) / Pakistan

Mr. Torwali is the executive director of Idara Baraye Taleem-o-Taraqi (IBT) or the Institute for Education and Development, an organization that works for development and education in Bahrain, Swat, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). As a human rights advocate and educationist, as well as a writer, columnist, researcher, teacher and revolutionary, he has been engaged in various activities, including the revival and preservation of the mother tongue as the basis for human existence, identity and devolvement. His commitment and passion to quality education is illustrated through the efforts he has made in his community and in Pakistan. Furthermore, his work and dedication to save the minority language Torwali in KP is a great achievement in adverse circumstances. This initiative reduces the chances of language/culture shift. His endeavors to improve culture, language and the learning environment of local schools are equally acknowledged. Recently, Mr. Torwali has been feted by Human Rights Watch for his commitment for the freedom of expression. He is also the recipient of second prize of the Anita Ghulam Ali Teacher’s award-2010 for Teachers and Education in Emergencies.
Mr. Torwali’s report 

Imtiaz Gul
Executive Director, Centre for Research and Security Studies / Pakistan

Mr. Gul is currently the Executive Director of the Islamabad-based independent Centre for Research and Security Studies that he founded in December 2007. He has presented papers at international security and counter-terror conferences in Brussels, Germany, New Delhi, Kabul, New York, Washington, the Hague, Riyadh, and Italy. He is also a member of the Bellagio Forum, Milan, which is working on the establishment of the World University for Peace Studies.
As a journalist, he has been reporting for various media such as Deutsche Welle (1989-2009), CNN (1998-2000), Hong Kong-based Star World TV, NHK, and National Public Radio in the United States. Besides offering advice as a consultant to foreign diplomatic missions and development sector organizations, he regularly appears as an analyst/expert on Al-Jazeera. As of July 2012, his fourth book, Pakistan: Before and After Osama bin Laden (Rolli Books, India), is in the print. 

Chihiro Imai
Researcher, Baltic Defence College / Japan

Former First Secretary at the Embassy of Japan in Afghanistan. Ms. Imai obtained an M.A. in International & Public Affairs from the University of Pittsburgh in the United States. She has worked with Plan Japan, the Nippon Foundation, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the Japan Mine Action Service, the International Peace Cooperation Headquarters of the Cabinet Office, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for program formulation and management in various sectors. Ms. Imai’s main interests are community development, civil-military coordination, peacebuilding and conflict prevention and disaster response. Her hobbies are traveling and taking photographs. 

Miryam Saravasti Nainggolan
Chair, Board of Directors-Pulih Foundation: Center for Trauma Recovery and Social Empowerment / Indonesia

Educated as a psychologist in the area of industrial and organizational psychology at Padjadjaran University and having a master’s degree in social work from the School of Social Work, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Ms. Nainggolan started work as a lecturer at the Bandung School of Social Work and Faculty of Psychology, Padjadjaran University, and then became a practitioner in the area of human resources, organizational development and strategic management. In 1998 she was chosen as the Executive Director of the Indonesia National Human Rights Commission. Since 2000, she has been active in human rights, conflict resolution, peacebuilding, transitional justice and interfaith/pluralism issues in Indonesia. In 2004, she began serving as a board member of the Pulih Foundation and from 2006 a board member of the Tifa Foundation and the Coordinator for the Center for Empowering Reconciliation and Peace (CERP). In April 2012, she was appointed as the Director of the Building Professional Social Work (BPSW)-Indonesia. 

Jehan Perera
Executive Director, National Peace Council of Sri Lanka / Sri Lanka

Dr. Perera is the Executive Director of the National Peace Council of Sri Lanka, which is a nonpartisan and independent peace advocacy group. He was part of a group of civil society activists who founded this organization in 1995 to facilitate a people’s movement for peace that could support top level political initiatives taken by political leaders. He is also a member of a government-appointed advisory committee on national integration. He has written extensively on war and peace in Sri Lanka and is a regular political commentator with the Sri Lankan media, writing newspaper columns in English, Sinhala, and Tamil. He has obtained international peace prizes from institutions in India, Sweden, and Japan. He studied economics and law at Harvard University. 

Elmer Sayre
In-House Adviser, Water, Agroforestry, Nutrition and Development (WAND) Foundation / Philippines

Dr. Sayre’s work experience is varied and includes being an agriculture extension worker, a college teacher, a local consultant and an NGO adviser. He implements initiatives related to water system development, biodiversity, agro-forestry, and ecological sanitation, promoting a culture of peace, micro-financing and rural organizing with emphasis on the poor mainly in Mindanao, the Philippines. His initiatives have won much recognition, including an award from the Bill and Melinda Gates Grand Challenges Explorations in Global Health for his work on ecological sanitation. He was an Endeavour Leadership Fellow in Australia in 2007 and a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow in Bellagio, Italy, in 2010. He has published manuals on community-based seedling nurseries and tree planting and on promoting a culture of peace in Mindanao, as well as a book on ecological sanitation. He is also a published poet and short-story writer. 

Vuong Thanh Huong
Senior Researcher, Director of Center for Education Information, Vietnam Institute of Educational Sciences / Vietnam

With more than twenty-three years of experience in education, Dr. Huong has participated in a variety of educational research regarding educational planning and management, education management information systems and comparative studies on education development between Vietnam and foreign countries. She has served as a leading consultant for a number of World Bank, Asian Development Bank and other prominent internationally funded projects in Vietnam. Furthermore, she has been well exposed to international practice and has developed efficient and fruitful relationships with international donors and national educational management units at different levels. She has written extensively on Vietnamese education and education management and has published several articles in the Vietnamese Educational Review and the Journal of Educational Sciences on education management, educational development issues in Vietnam and comparative studies of Vietnam and the world in education. 

Zhang Yali
Researcher, United Nations / China

Dr. Zhang received her PhD in Political Science in the United States. Her research interests include conflict prevention and resolution, social movements, transition and democratization, transitional politics in China, and evolution of the Security Council and its working methods. She is currently a researcher in the Department of Political Affairs of the United Nations. She participates in the data compiling and drafting of studies for the Repertoire of the Practice of the Security Council for the period of 2008 to present, whose subjects range from threats to international peace and security to the situation in Afghanistan. The Repertoire, mandated by the General Assembly in 1952, is a constitutional and procedural guide to the proceedings of the Council since 1946. It presents, as comprehensively as possible, relevant data regarding the practice of the Council and the application of the UN Charter and the Council’s provisional rules of procedure. 

Ahn Byungok
Head, Institute of Climate Change Action (ICCA) / Korea

Dr. Ahn is the head of the Institute of Climate Change Action (ICCA), a nongovernmental organization providing research, analysis, and commentary covering climate change and energy issues. He joined the Korean Institute for Pollution Problems (KIPP) in 1985 as a graduate student, when the environmental movement was just getting started in Korea. As a German Ökumenisches Studienwerk scholar, he has spent time in Germany and researched ecology at the University of Essen. After earning a Doctoral degree in Germany, he returned to Korea to join the Korea Federation for Environmental Movement (KFEM). In 2007, he was selected as the Secretary General of KFEM and was involved in various environmental and societal issues in the country. He provides theoretical and practical foundations for climate change mitigation and adaptation and lectures in diverse fora: universities, public policy workshops and training of civil society groups. 

Guo Zhiyuan
Deputy Director of Department of Social Sciences of Anhui University; Attorney of Anhui Guoyun Law Firm / China

Dr. Guo obtained a B.A. (International Economic Law) and an M.A. (Procedural Law) at the Anhui University Law School, and received a Ph.D. (Procedural Law) at China University of Political Science and Law. His main interest is in conducting comparative law research on the theory and practice of alternative dispute resolution, civil procedure, evidence, and human rights law. He has authored more than thirty publications in China on research in these fields. He was selected by the American Fulbright Committee as a 2009-2010 Humphrey Fellow to take pre-academic training at the University of Arizona, study at the University of Minnesota Law School, and form a professional affiliation at Dorsey & Whitney LLP. 

Sasanka Perera
Professor & Head Department of Sociology and Department of International Relations and Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, South Asian University, New Delhi / Sri Lanka

Trained as a cultural anthropologist, Dr. Perera is presently based at the South Asian University, New Delhi. His research interests are varied, but include the following: issues of urbanization, space and dynamics of urban experience in South Asia/Sri Lanka; the role of education in eradicating or promoting sectarian conflicts; political violence, nationalism and post-violence trauma; transformation and politicization of religion in Sri Lanka and Nepal; politics of memory; interpretation of culture and the politics of the visual arts. He has worked in Sri Lanka, the United States, Cambodia, Pakistan, Nepal, Japan, and India. His work has been published in English and Sinhala while some of his works have also been translated into Tamil, Japanese, and Spanish. He also has an interest in photography, poetry, blogging and journalism as well as music and art. 

Kong Rithdee
Film Critic; Deputy Director of Arts and Culture Section, Bangkok Post / Thailand

Mr. Rithdee is a film critic and deputy director of arts and culture section at the Bangkok Post. He has been writing about arts and culture, with a specialty in film, for the Bangkok Post for 17 years. His pursuits are born out of the belief that film criticism (and art criticism in general) can be a form of literature, and that writing on movies and art can help interpret the state of the world we are living in by way of creating a constructive dialogue among artists and viewers. He has co-directed three documentary features that touch on the subject of the Muslim minority in Thailand. His second film, The Convert, was screened at film festivals in Vancouver, Bangkok, Taiwan, Singapore, Jakarta, and Yamagata in Japan. He is interested in the politics of moving images at a time when the world is saturated with visual information, and he is particularly eager to explore new possibilities since he straddles the role of a print journalist at a time when newspapers are believed to be on the way out. 

Fouzia Saeed
Director, Mehergarh / Pakistan

Dr. Saeed is well known in activist circles of Pakistan’s social movement, having worked for decades on women’s issues, especially those linked to violence against women, prostitution, women in the entertainment business, women’s mobility and sexual harassment. She founded the first women’s crisis center in Pakistan in 1991. During her career she has headed the UN Gender Program in Pakistan, served as Pakistan Country Director for Action Aid and currently is an international consultant in the field of Gender and Development. In addition to her current activist work, an urgency to work on anti-Talibanization has moved her to be a part of a nationwide movement against this vicious process. She has a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and is the author of Women in Folk Theater, as well as of Taboo! The Hidden Culture of a Red Light Area, based on eight years of field research among prostitutes in Pakistan. 

Kaoruko Seki
Humanitarian Policy Officer, United Nations / Japan

Ms. Seki Works with the United Nations and covered issues related to humanitarian affairs, peacekeeping, peacebuilding, law, protection of civilians and counter-terrorism. In Asia, Africa and Europe, she worked on coordinating international humanitarian response to assist victims of armed conflict and natural disasters. She also served with four UN Peacekeeping Operations: in Mozambique (ONUMOZ), Liberia (UNOMIL), Kosovo (UNMIK), and recently in Timor-Leste (UNMIT) where she supported rebuilding of the national police and security sector reform aimed at consolidation of peace. Having engaged in developing UN civil-military policy and guidelines, she is the Managing Editor of [Civil-Military Guidelines and Reference for Complex Emergencies,] available in six languages. She has lectured worldwide: in Afghanistan, Chile, Denmark, Dominica Republic, Guatemala, Hungary, Japan, Kenya, Liberia, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, UK, USA, etc. She holds three master’s degrees from universities in Japan, Netherlands and United States. 

Iqbal Haider Butt
Programme Manager, Heinrinch Boll Stifting, Pakistan Office / Pakistan

With over twenty years of professional experience, Mr. Butt has extensively assisted projects affiliated with national, regional and international development agencies—mainly to stimulate development and the peacebuilding role of youth in Pakistan. He thematically led and pioneered the youth track of peace diplomacy in South Asia. He has also formulated the Youth Policy of Punjab, the biggest province, as the lead consultant, and is preparing similar policies for other provinces of Pakistan. He has deeply interacted with fifty-four universities; conducted much celebrated research on peace and youth; developed curricula for faculty members; and co-designed the first-ever formally recognized master’s-level course on peace in Pakistan. A political scientist by training, he has edited around fifty books. 

Kaori Kuroda
Executive Director, CSO Network Japan / Japan

Ms. Kuroda is Executive Director of the CSO Network Japan and is also Japan Director at the Japan Foundation. Prior to her current position, she worked for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd., the Center on Japanese Economy and Business at the Columbia University School of Business in New York, and the Asia Foundation Japan office as Senior Program Officer and then Assistant Representative. Ms. Kuroda has written and published many articles on international NGOs, civil society, and standards and guidance on social responsibility. She is an adjunct lecturer at the Graduate School of Global and Asian Politics at Hosei University and the Graduate School of Environmental Studies at Tohoku University (e-learning). She received her M.A. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and her B.A. from Seikei University. She is a doctoral student at the Osaka School of International Public Policy at Osaka University. 

Marco Kusumawijaya
Director, Rujak Center for Urban Studies / Indonesia

Mr. Kusumawijaya is an architect by training, and has been working as a professional and activist in the fields of architecture, environment, arts, cultural heritage, urban planning and development. He is focusing his thought and practice on sustainable approaches to urbanism and architecture, and the social changes required towards sustainability. He works with both public and private sectors, international and local agencies and NGOs, communities and civil society groups. His experiences include an award-winning project of community-driven reconstruction of 23 villages in post-tsunami Aceh. He lectures in diverse fora: public policy workshops, training of civil society activists, universities, and community-initiated advocacies and action planning exercises. He was chair of the Jakarta Arts Council (2006-2010). 

Ma Jifang
Training and Capacity Building Officer, International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, China Office / China

Ms. Ma has been working with and for marginalized people in Chinese society, such as farmers, migrant workers, women and people without access to health care, and bringing their voices to the public. Her recent work mainly focuses on protecting people from the harm of tobacco by promoting smoke-free legislation and establishing a smoke-free environment in China. Before joining The Union, she was Program Coordinator for the Fair Labor Association (FLA) and the Partnership Development and Child Sponsorship Manager of the Actionaid China Office. Prior to these, she worked for the Environment and Development Program at the Ford Foundation Beijing Office. Ms. Ma obtained her BA in English Literature at the Institute of International Relations and her second BA in Mass Media at the China School of Journalism. 

Tanvir Mokammel
Filmmaker; Writer / Bangladesh

Mr. Mokammel studied English literature at Dhaka University, was a left-wing journalist and then worked as a left-wing activist to organize the landless peasants of rural Bangladesh. Always a film enthusiast, he has so far made five full-length feature films and eleven documentaries such as A Tree Without Roots (LALSALU), Lalon, The Garment Girls of Bangladesh, and Teardrops of Karnaphuli. A prolific writer, he has written articles in newspapers, poems and literary criticism. His books include A Brief History of World Cinema, The Art of Cinema, Grundtvig and Folk Education, a book on alternative educational ideas, and a translation of Maxim Gorky’s play The Lower Depth. He is at present also the director of the Bangladesh Film Institute (BFI). 

Jennifer Santiago Oreta
Assistant Professor, Ateneo de Manila University / Philippines

Dr. Oreta holds a PhD in Political Science. She is the Chair of the Board of Trustees of Pax Christi-Pilipinas, and a member of the Board of DemokraXXia, a think tank aimed at promoting the values and ideals of democracy. She sits on the steering committee of the Philippine Action Network to Control Arms (PhilANCA), a group that advocates for stricter gun-control and lobbies for the passage of an international Arms Trade Treaty. She is the government-nominated independent observer in the Monitoring Committee on CARHRIHL (Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and Int’l. Humanitarian Law), the first substantial agreement between the Government of the Philippines and the National Democratic Front (NDF). 

Andrew K. L. Soh
College Instructor, Department of Philosophy, Ateneo de Manila University / Malaysia

Mr. Soh graduated with an MA in Philosophy with a thesis entitled [Wei Ziran: A Daoist Ecological Ethic of Continual Becoming] from Ateneo de Manila University, where he also obtained his BA in Philosophy. He is currently a doctorate student in philosophy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. In Ateneo, he teaches courses in Daoist Philosophy, Philosophy of the Human Person, and Philosophy of Religion. As a teacher, he is committed to a holistic formation of persons through an education of the mind and heart, and is a strong advocate of service learning in which students are given an opportunity to incorporate their engagement with persons on the margins with their philosophical reflections in the classroom upon the meaning of being human. A Chinese-Malaysian who has lived in the Philippines for the past ten years, Mr. Soh finds himself in an ongoing dialogue of life in which diversity holds distinct possibilities for unity—a genuine harmony of distinct cultures and perspectives. 

Atiya Achakulwisut
Deputy Editor, Bangkok Post / Thailand

Ms. Atiya obtained her BA from the Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University. She received her MA in Environmental Studies from the University of Oregon, USA. In her role as Deputy Editor of the Bangkok Post, Ms. Atiya seeks to bring out diverse views about what is going on in the country and the region and attempts to present views and analysis of what these events mean and where they may be taking us. Ms. Atiya is interested in finding out what common values and interests hold the region together as China continues to rise and the United States is receding further into recession and political difficulties of its own. She believes an ageing population and the tendency among youths to be increasingly cocooned in their individualized interests ignoring the problems of people from other backgrounds are two of the common trends found across the region. 

Jose Luis Martin C. Gascon
Undersecretary, Office of the President, Republic of the Philippines / Philippines

Mr. Gascon is a lawyer, political activist and social reformer. Currently, he is the undersecretary at the president’s office. He served as the youngest member of the 1986 Constitutional Commission that drafted the Philippine Constitution and was also the Youth Sector Representative to the 8th Congress. He was the principal author of legislation that institutionalized youth participation in local governance and that introduced special protection measures for children from all forms of abuse. He was also a founding trustee of the International Center for Innovation, Transformation, & Excellence in Governance, the policy group for the [Hyatt 10]—a group of former senior officials of the Arroyo Government who collectively resigned in 2005. He obtained his BA and Law degrees from the University of the Philippines, Diliman. He also read for a LL.M at St. Edmund’s College at the University of Cambridge. 

Gu Yi An
Actor, Director and Professor at the Acting Department, Shanghai Theatre Academy / China

Professor Gu is well known as one of the few avant-garde directors in China. He has devoted his life and work to experimental, innovative theatre, constantly pushing the boundaries of what is or has been the norm of what is acceptable to perform on stage. To increase cultural exchange between the East and the West, Prof. Gu set up the Shanghai International Performing Arts Research Centre (SIPARC) at the Academy. In 1989 he directed the play Owls in the House by Zhang Xian, which was performed first in Shanghai, and then participated in China’s first National Experimental Theatre Festival, held in Nanjing. In 1992 he was awarded the Cultural Award for directing the play DaQiao-Big Bridge and in 2004 he received the Chinese Golden Lion Award for Best Director.  

Kim Haechang
Professor, Kyungsung University / Korea

Mr. Kim was a reporter for 17 years at the Kookje Daily News in Busan, Korea, and wrote numerous reports on environmental issues. He became a member of AMR, a Japanese environmental group in Tokyo (1997-1998) and also serves as a member of the Citizen’s Alliance for Anti-Nuclear Power in Korea. As a social designer, Mr. Kim collaborates with diverse networks and local communities. He received his Ph.D. in Environmental Economics at Busan Graduate School and currently teaches Environmental Economics at the College of Engineering. Prior he served as vice president of the Hope Institute, an NGO think tank in Korea. His books in Korean include Japanese Newspapers, the Power that Moves Japan (2005) and Japan Running to a Low-Carbon Society (2009). He tries to find solutions to climate change and environmental pollution, hoping be trained as an “Amenity Leader.” 

Chandra Kishor Lal
Independent Columnist and Commentator / Nepal

A leading political commentator in Nepal, Mr. Lal is currently a columnist for Republica and Nagarik Dainik newspapers and the Himal Southasian monthly magazine published from Kathmandu. He also wrote regularly for the Nepali fortnightly newsmagazine Himal Khabarpatrika and was a columnist for the Nepali Times weekly for over a decade. He reads and writes in four languages—Maithili, Nepali, Hindi and English. In 2006, he was voted the most influential columnist in Nepal. In 2010, his much-acclaimed play “Sapana ko Sabiti” was staged by the Aarohan Theatre Group in Kathmandu. His book Human Rights, Democracy and Governance in South Asia was published in 2010 (Pearson, New Delhi). In 2011, his “think paper” on the future of “Nepali identity,” Nepaliya hunalai was published. 

Lee Soo im
Professor, Faculty of Business Administration, Ryukoku University / Japan

Professor Lee received her doctorate in education from Temple University. She is actively working to improve the human rights of foreign residents in Japan and currently serves as a member of the Osaka City Committee for Policy on Foreign Residents. A naturalized citizen of Korean descent in Japan, she is actively exploring the political and social contexts of the range of diversity in Japanese society. In her book, Japan’s Diversity Dilemmas: Ethnicity, Citizenship, and Education, Professor Lee examines the decades-long experience of Koreans in Japan from their early migration during the colonial period, through the loss of their Japanese nationality at the end of World War II, to current efforts to promote naturalization and the recovery of ethnic names. She is also looking at how the forces of globalization undercut the notion of homogeneity and give rise to new notions of diversity and multiculturalism in Japan. 

Jyotirmaya Sharma
Professor of Political Science, University of Hyderabad / India

Professor Sharma is currently a fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. His recent publications include Hindutva: Exploring the Idea of Hindu Nationalism (Penguin/Viking, 2003/2011) and Grounding Morality: Freedom, Knowledge and the Plurality of Cultures (co-edited with A. Raghuramaraju, Routledge 2010). His next book explores the creation of Hinduism as a religion in the 19th century and will be published by HarperCollins in 2013. He has been a fellow of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies and the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, and has lectured at the universities of Baroda, Hull, and Oxford, and at St. Stephens College, Delhi. He also held senior editorial positions at the Times of India and The Hindu (1998-2006), and continues to write columns for Mail Today, Hindustan Times and Outlook. 

Kaoru Aoyama
Associate Professor of Graduate School of Intercultural Studies, Kobe University / Japan

Dr. Aoyama has worked at Tohoku University and Kyoto University after obtaining her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Essex, UK. She has specialized in issues of gender and sexuality, social inclusion/exclusion, trans-border migration, and sex work and trafficking. Striving to create theoretically and methodologically sound social research that will be useful for those being researched, she has been involved in team research projects including one on women returnee migrants in northern Thailand and another on migrant sex workers in Japan. She has also been a board member of the People’s Plan Study Group, since her civic activism revolves around the networking of socially committed academics and activists aiming for participatory democracy beyond national and other hierarchical borders. She is currently interested in the changing notions of intimacy and citizenship under globalization. 

Bina Sarkar Ellias
Writer; Poet; Curator; Editor & Publisher of International Gallerie / India

Ms. Ellias is founder, editor, designer and publisher of International Gallerie, an award-winning global arts and ideas publication from India. During 15 years of publishing, she has been committed to encouraging critical awareness and understanding of culture as interpreted through the arts, performing arts, essays, poetry, features on communities and people, cinema and photography. She is a poet and writer, published in anthologies and on online sites. As art curator, she has had group shows of Indian artists, besides having curated the 2010 online show for Pen and Brush, Inc, NY. 

Petula Sik-ying Ho
Associate Professor, Department of Social Work & Social Administration, The University of Hong Kong / Hong Kong

Dr. Ho’s main research and teaching interests are in the area of gender and sexuality as well as issues in qualitative studies. Her publications have made important contributions to the development of a dynamic theory of gender and sexuality by helping to resist Western hegemonies through empirical case studies that make connections between discourses, cultural practices and political economy. Dr. Ho also uses documentary films to explore the integration of arts and scholarship. She wants to continue experimenting with the use of audio-visual research methods to supplement the use of words and verbal language in qualitative studies, leading to a new way of knowledge generation. 

Huang Jiansheng
Professor of Social Anthropology, Yunnan Provincial Institute of Ethnic Researches, Yunnan University of Nationalities / China

Dr. Huang is currently director of Social Impact Assessment & Monitoring Yunnan and director of Southeast Asia Ethnic Studies at Yunnan University of Nationalities. He was the Chinese partner of “Education Policy and Sustainable Community Development,” the team leader of “Targeted Capacity Building for Mainstreaming Indigenous Peoples Concerns in Development,” and team leader of the China-EU co-operation project “Sustainable Users’ Concept for China Engaging Scientific Scenarios.” He was also a national consultant for several ABD and World-Bank-supported social impact assessment projects. 

Sriprapha Petcharamesree
Lecturer, Institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies / Thailand

After receiving her first degree in political science from Thammasat University, Dr. Petcharamesree received her D.E.A. and Ph.D. in international politics from the University of Paris-X Nanterre, France. Her first formal contact with human rights works started when she served as a social worker for the UNICEF’s Emergency Operations for Cambodian Refugees. She joined the Department of Technical and Economic Cooperation, and then Mahidol University where she remains to the present. Until 2007 she chaired the first International Master’s Program in Human Rights ever established in Thailand and in Southeast Asia. Her recent work focuses mainly on issues of citizenship, migration, statelessness, rights to development, human rights-based poverty eradication, and human rights in international relations. Since October 2009, she has been appointed by the Thai government as the Thai representative to the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights. 

Hishamuddin Rais
Lecturer, National Arts Culture and Heritage Academy / Malaysia

Mr. Rais, an artist and activist of many talents, was an influential student leader in the 1970s at the University of Malaya. He went into exile from 1974 until his return in 1994. Educated in filmmaking in London, he made his first feature film in 1998. He also initiated an agit-prop theater group that conducts guerrilla performances. Mr. Rais initiated an [unemployed-youth-collective] that runs a politically correct alternative café in a newly opened arts center in Kuala Lumpur. At the arts center, he delivers weekly free lectures and workshops for the public on philosophy and critical thinking. He performs as a stand-up comedian at various venues in Kuala Lumpur and also has been one of the commentators from Malaysia for Al-jazeera International. 

Mohiuddin Ahmad
Researcher; Columnist / Bangladesh

Mr. Ahmad is an economist by training, a development planner by profession and a poet by passion. As a solidarity activist, he is engaged with several global and regional networks. He is a fellow of ARENA, former chairperson of Jubilee South-APMDD, board member of the South Asian Alliance for Poverty Eradication, steering committee member of People’s SAARC, founding member of LDCWatch and an adviser of the Asian Resource Foundation. He has so far authored and edited 37 books including six of poetry, two novellas, and several anthologies. He writes a column for Prothom Alo, the highest circulated national daily. 

Albert E. Alejo
Assistant to the President for Social Development, Ateneo de Zamboanga University / Philippines

Father Alejo combines a priestly ministry, fighting corruption, intrafaith dialogue, indigenous rights advocacy, human trafficking research, and creative writing, while animating social development at Ateneo de Zamboanga University. His insights from conducting two major public consultations on the Mindanao conflict have enriched the Mindanao 2020 Peace and Development Framework. His book Generating Energies in Mount Apo has helped in training a new breed of anthropologists and in the establishment of Mindanawon Initiatives for Cultural Dialogue and the Coalition of Mindanao Indigenous Peoples for Peace Advocacy. Another book Ehemplo: Spirituality of Shared Integrity expands Ehem! Anticorruption Program (now adopted in Jakarta). He serves as a member of the National Council for Culture and the Arts and journal editor of Asia Mindanaw. He finished a PhD in Anthropology at SOAS, University of London. 

Kunda Dixit
Editor and Publisher, Nepali Times / Nepal

After graduating from Columbia University, Mr. Dixit started his career in journalism with BBC Radio in New York. He later served as the Asia-Pacific Director of the Inter Press Service and established Panos Institute South Asia. He is now editor and publisher of the Nepali Times in Kathmandu, as well as the author of Dateline Earth: Journalism As If the Planet Mattered (Inter Press Service, 1997) and a trilogy of books on the Nepal conflict. His media company Himalmedia, which publishes three periodicals including the Nepali Times, is known for its credibility and professionalism, reaching out to readers in over 30 countries. 

Maria Hartiningsih
Journalist / Indonesia

Ms. Hartiningsih is a journalist who has been working with Kompas Daily since 1984. Her consistent commitment to marginalized groups in society made her the first journalist to be awarded [The Yap Thiam Hien Award for Human Rights Educator.] Previously, she also received numerous awards, such as from UNCHS Nairobi, for her reports on homeless people. She graduated from the Institute of Journalism in Jakarta, and earned a master’s degree in Women Studies at the University of Indonesia, Jakarta. Since 1992, she has been covering international conferences on the environment and development, population, women, children, and other social issues. Currently she is actively doing field work, writing an in-depth report on social injustices, multiculturalism, and religious intolerance in contemporary Indonesia. 

Yoji Kamata
Chairperson, Atelier for Development and the Future / Japan

Mr. Kamata’s academic background is; BA in agricultural economics, University of Tokyo and MA in the anthropology of development and social transformation, University of Sussex. He has been exploring the way to shift the paradigm of world system from globalization to localization. His vision is to reaalize natsukashii mirai (the concept of [Ancient Futures]) where society is sustainable and people can live happily. Natsukashii is a special Japanese term means deep feeling spring up when we remember and/or reconnect to something long-forgotten but intimate. Mirai means futures. Major works in these 5 years are; 1) initiating Ecovillage Design Education in Japan, 2) promoting empowerment of the Nepalese youth through practical peace education, 3) Organizing international conference on Economics of Happiness, 4) promoting Ecovillage and Transition Town in Japan, 5) directing/producing a short version of the film Ancient Futures – Learning from Ladakh etc. 

Lee Seejae
Co-President, The Korea Federation for Environmental Movement / Korea

Educated as a sociologist at Seoul National University (B.A.) and the University of Tokyo (MA and Ph.D), Japan, Dr. Lee teaches sociology as a Professor at Catholic University of Korea. He has participated in the environmental movement from the early 1990s and worked on anti-desertification in China. His main focus is currently the emerging civil society in China, and functions of neighborhood organizations in urban Japan. He is involved in Environmental Research Committee of the International Sociological Association, the East Asian Sociologists’ Symposium (annual), and the East Asian Environmental Sociologists’ Conference. 

Nguyen Thanh Son
General Director, T&A Ogilvy / Vietnam

Mr. Nguyen is an entrepreneur, communications expert, lecturer, and art and literary critic. He began his career as a desk editor at the Vietnam News Agency (VNA) in the World News Section. A native of Hanoi, he graduated from the Moscow Institute of International Relations with an MA in International Journalism. He is also widely known as a literary critic and an expert in cross-cultural integration. He also lectures on communications at Hanoi National University in Vietnam. Mr. Nguyen is a Global Shaper (a World Economic Forum Community) Ho Chi Minh City Hub Curator, where he encourages and guides Vietnamese young trendsetters to work toward a better world. 

Janet Pillai
Senior Lecturer, University Sains Malaysia / Malaysia

Ms. Pillai lectures in acting & directing, performance theory and children’s theater. A pioneer and veteran director in the field of young people’s theatre in Malaysia, she has directed more then 30 major performances at the commercial, educational and community level. She also co-ordinates ARTS-ED, a non-formal multi-arts education program in the state of Penang specializing in program development and training for young people in the traditional as well as contemporary arts. Ms. Pillai is also a regional consultant and trainer in heritage education for young people. Her research and publication focus is on non-formal arts education, heritage education, and conflict and learning theories related to the arts.(at the time of participation in the ALFP) 

Karina Africa Bolasco
Assistant General Manager/Publishing Manager, Anvil Publishing, Inc. / Philippines

Ms. Bolasco has been in the book publishing business for thirty-two years —ten years at the National Bookstore and twenty-two years at Anvil, which she founded and grew into the biggest and most prestigious publishing house in the Philippines today. Anvil has been cited as Publisher of the Year nine times, and close to 132 of its titles have been given the National Book Award in different categories by the Manila Critics Circle. She was hailed as one of the Ten Outstanding Women in the Nation’s Service in 1995 for her work in book publishing and literacy development. She was a former chair of the National Committee on Cultural Education of the National Commission on Culture and the Arts (NCCA) from 1995 to 2001 and is a current governor of the National Book Development Board (NBDB). 

Kinley Dorji
Secretary of the Ministry of Information and Communications, Bhutan / Bhutan

After 39 years as a journalist, Mr. Dorji took on a government job as Secretary of the Ministry of Information and Communications. He is currently responsible for national policy, legislation, and roadmaps for media, information communications technology, and transport. He was a reporter, editor, and editor-in-chief of Bhutan’s national newspaper, Kuensel. Having completed his Master of Science degree in journalism at Columbia University, Mr. Dorji has been a regular observer and commentator on the dramatic political and socio-economic changes taking place as Bhutan rapidly transformed its political system from a monarchy to a democracy. He also promotes Gross National Happiness (GNH) as a new paradigm for development. Central to its conceptual framework is a holistic approach to progress, beyond GDP, emphasizing sustainable socio-economic development, preservation of culture, conservation of the environment, and good governance. 

Faye Chunfang Fei
Professor, East China Normal University / China

Dr. Fei is an artist-scholar of world theater. Having obtained her doctoral degree from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, she taught critical theory, dramatic literature, and theatre history in the United States for eight years before returning to Shanghai. She has authored and edited publications including Chinese Theories of Theatre and Performance from Confucius to the Present (University of Michigan Press, 1999, 2002, 2005), for which she was awarded support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Dr. Fei is a professionally produced playwright. All her plays are intercultural in form and content, and her most recent works are critically acclaimed adaptations of Ibsen and Strindberg in the style of Chinese classical theatre. She is also an author of poetry and short fiction. 

Jamhari
Executive Director, Center for the Study of Islam and Society, National Islam University (PPIM-UNI, Jakarta) / Indonesia

Having received a Ph.D. in anthropology from the Australian National University, Dr. Jamhari is a reputed researcher on Islamic studies with a focus on the installation of democracy in Islamic society and Muslim’s compatibility with civil society. Among his current interests and concerns is the aggravated poverty in rural areas as an underlying root cause for the upsurge of religious fundamentalism. Dr. Jamhari facilitates the interdisciplinary research activities of PPIM-UIN Jakarta, which are designed to enhance mutual understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims. He grapples with injustice against Muslim communities due to misperceptions, and explores the contemporary significance of Islam through linkage with Western value systems. His publications include Islamic Contemporary Movement: The Rise of Islamic Radicalism (Logos, 2004). 

Chandrika Sepali Kottegoda
Executive Director of The Women and Media Collective; Researcher / Sri Lanka

Dr. Kottegoda has a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka. She read for her M.Phil and D.Phil in Development Studies at IDS, University of Sussex, U.K. She is also the founding Coordinator of the Sri Lanka Women’s NGO Forum 1993-2009. She is currently the Chair of Asia Pacific Women’s Watch (APWW) 2010, having been Vice Chair from 2008-2010. She has been on drafting committees for the National Policy on Foreign Employment, Ministry of Foreign Employment, Colombo, Sri Lanka, and the National Plan of Action on Women, Ministry of Women’s Affairs. Her research focus covers household politics, gender and disaster, women’s reproductive rights, women’s overseas employment migration, gender and poverty and women’s engagement with new media. 

Takayoshi Kusago
Professor, Faculty of Sociology, Kansai University / Japan

Professor Kusago received his MA in development economics from Stanford University and his Ph.D. in development studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He worked for the World Bank as an economist and for the United Nations Development Programme as a senior policy advisor on poverty reduction. He has published numerous research papers and books on social and economic development. His research interests include societal well-being and community empowerment. He provides local communities and municipalities technical as well as spiritual assistance for promoting people-centered endogenous development as an action researcher. 

Nguyen Van Chinh
Professor of Anthropology, Vietnam National University, Hanoi / Vietnam

Dr. Chinh received his doctorate from the Amsterdam School for Social Research, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He also serves as Deputy Director of the Center for Asia-Pacific Studies at Vietnam National University and is a member of the Board of Trustees, Southeast Asian Studies Regional Exchange Program (SEASREP). His academic interests focus on the issues of migration, labor, and cross-border ethnic groups in the Southeast Asia Massif. He also participates as a senior consultant for development projects in Vietnam. His recent publications include “Social Transformation and Children’s Work in Vietnam” in Hugh Hindman (ed.) The World of Child Labor: An Historical and Regional Survey (New York: Sharp, 2009) and Mekong Arranged and Rearranged (Chiang Mai: Mekong Press, 2006). 

Hamid Basyaib
Writer; Activist, AKSARA Foundation / Indonesia

Mr. Hamid is one of the leading Muslim intellectuals who speak, with a great deal of courage and determination, for a radical reexamination of Islamic precepts, including the issues of Islamic law, an Islamic state and personal freedom. Currently, he is a writer and researcher for the Aksara Foundation, a nonprofit organization contributing to the peaceful development of an intelligent and interactive civil society in Indonesia. Before joining the Aksara Foundation, he had been editor-in-chief of several magazines and daily newspapers. He conducted his graduate study at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Gadjah Mada. 

Chung Chin-Sung
Professor, Department of Sociology, Seoul National University / Korea

Dr. Chung is a professor of sociology at Seoul National University. She received her Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Chicago.She has published books on social movements in Japan, Japanese military sexual slavery and the human rights situation in Korea and Japan. She has also published many papers in various prestigious academic journals including Human Rights Quarterly. She recently conducted national surveys on prostitution and human rights consciousness. She has served as Director of the Institute for Social Development and Policy Research, SNU, and now is President of the Korean Association of Women’s Studies. She was elected as president of the Korean Association of Sociology of 2013. She wrote several important reports at the United Nations as a member of the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, and is now on the UN Human Rights Council Advisory Committee. 

Supara Janchitfah
Environmental & Social Issues/Human Rights & Media Literacy / Thailand

After working as a journalists for 19 years in which had won numerous local and international awards, including with the Gold Medal Awards from United National Correspondents Association, Reuters Foundation fellowship, Jefferson Fellowship,presently, she establishes a People’s Media for Grassroots Movement to transfer and foster key technical, production and media strategy skills for grassroots people. The project will enable existing key grassroots networks to gain a much larger voice in the national media and also foster alliances with influential media and academic sectors and will contribute to the building a more inclusive and equitable society at a time of deepening social conflict and rifts in Thailand. The project aims to increase media representation of grassroots issues and improved understanding of those issues among the public and policy makers. 

Yoshiko Nakano
Associate Professor (Japanese Studies), School of Modern Languages and Cultures & Associate Dean, Faculty of Arts,
The University of Hong Kong / Japan

Dr. Nakano received her Ph.D. from Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and moved to Hong Kong in 1997. In 2000, using the rice cooker as an example, she began looking into the globalization of ‘Made in Japan’ products and Hong Kong’s role in the transnational process. The resulting book, Where There Are Asians, There Are Rice Cookers: How ‘National’ Went Global via Hong Kong (HKU Press, 2009), recounts the rice cooker’s odyssey from Japan to Hong Kong and beyond. As part of her efforts to reach out to the community, she sits on the Board of Directors of the Hongkong Japanese Club alongside business leaders and is a regular contributor to the Asian edition of Yomiuri Shimbun. 

Marian Pastor Roces
Critic and Independent Curator, President, Tao, Inc. / Philippines

Ms. Roces is an independent curator and critic who works, lectures and writes internationally. Her theoretical work is grounded in the politics of cultural representation, mainly in museums, but also in relation to larger agendas dealing with indigenous cultures, the traumas of modernization, and power as it operates in urbanization. She is also the president of Tao, Inc., a corporation specializing in the development of museum and exhibition projects, and cultural planning and management, focused by a social justice agenda. Her curatorial work includes [Laon-Laan,] which dealt with the politics, science, and culture of rice in the Philippines (National Museum, 2003). 

Palagummi Sainath
Freelance Journalist / India

Mr. Sainath, one of India’s leading journalists, is committed to shedding light on marginalized people living in rural areas, and to bettering their condition through his reportage. After receiving an M.A. in history from Jawaharlal Nehru University, he launched his career as a journalist at the United News of India. Later he joined the Blitz, a major South Asian weekly in Mumbai, where he worked as deputy chief editor for ten years until winning a Times of India fellowship in 1993 and setting out on two-year-long travels to the ten poorest districts in India. His reports during this period were published as the award-winning book Everybody Loves a Good Drought: Stories from India’s Poorest Districts (Penguin, 1997). In the last decade, he has spent on average three-fourths of the year with village people, sending articles to various newspapers. 

Ham Samnang
Translator and Interpreter (Freelance); Researcher, SK&P Cambodia Law Firm / Cambodia

Mr. Samnang is now working with a privately run law firm, the SK&P Cambodia Law Firm, as a researcher and a legal assistant as well as running his own translation/interpretation company to render translation/interpretation services to various organizations and institutions for their meetings, workshops, conferences organized domestically and overseas. He has also served the Khmer Rouge tribunal, the Extra-ordinary Chambers in the Counts of Cambodia (ECCC), for two years as a translator/interpreter and a field interpreter for the Office of the Co-Investigating Judges (OCIJ) (April 2008- March 2010). He also worked as Assistant Director and Senior Research Fellow at the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace (2002-2006) and as a Media Monitor with the Cambodia Daily (1996-2002). 

Yang Guang
Professor and Director-General, Institute of West-Asian and African Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences / China

Mr. Yang is one of China’s leading scholars in Middle Eastern Studies. He has published numerous articles and monographs on development, economics, and energy issues in Middle Eastern countries. His publications include [Development Report for the Middle East and Africa] (Social Scientific Documentation Publishing House, 1997-2003) and [The Social Security Systems of the West-Asian and African Countries] (The Publishing House of Reform, 2000). He has served as executive president of the Chinese Association for Middle East Studies and the Chinese Society for Asian and African Studies. He received a master’s degree in law from the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1999. 

Reiko Kinoshita
Journalist; Member of Board of Directors, International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) / Japan

Since the 1990s, Ms. Kinoshita has been conducting research and reporting under the theme of [the power Japan lacks,] resulting in the publication of 4 books: Influential, The Prize, The Club, and American Bubble. At IWMF in Washington, DC, she plays a unique role as the sole Board member representing the Asia/Pacific region, working on the development of a network of women journalists active in that region, Africa, the Americas, and Europe. 

Hu Tao
Senior Associate, World Resource Institute / China

Dr. Hu is one of the pioneers in China in environmental economics as a methodology of environmental policy. He often works as policy advisor or project consultant for international organizations and bilateral cooperation organizations, as well as national ministries. He has held prominent positions such as Coordinator for the UN-China Climate Change Framework Program (CCPF), Chief Economist of the Policy Research Center of the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) of China / Chief Expert of the Trade and Environment Expert Group for the WTO New Round Negotiation, State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) of China. 

Maznah Binti Mohamad
Associate Professor, Department of Malay and Southeast Asian Studies, National University of Singapore / Malaysia

Dr. Maznah was formerly with the University of Science, Malaysia. She wrote regularly for a public-interest newsletter, The Aliran Monthly, and provided an unencumbered, if not alternative analysis of the current Malaysian political situation. Recent publications include Feminism and the Women’s Movement in Malaysia (co-authored, 2006); Muslim-Non-Muslim Marriage: Political and Cultural Contestations in Southeast in Asia (co-edited, 2009) and Melayu: The Politics, Poetics and Paradoxes of Malayness (co-edited, 2011). She is also a member of the Board of Directors of the International Women’s Rights Action Watch of the Asia-Pacific (IWRAW-AP), an international NGO based in Kuala Lumpur. 

Nguyen Thi Hieu Thien
Vice Dean, English Department, Ho Chi Minh City University of Education / Vietnam

After receiving her BA in electronic engineering from the Odessa University of Technology in the former USSR, Ms. Nguyen was involved in Russian language education in the 1980s. She later earned an MA in TESOL at the University of Canberra and has become a noted expert in Vietnam in American literature, with her broad knowledge of American culture and extensive reading of American literary works as well as research on U.S. multicultural literature. She has contributed to the introduction of a number of important reforms in administration and curriculum development, in cooperation with other educational institutions both at home and abroad. 

Vinod Raina
1950-2013 / India

Dr. Raina had a Ph. D in theoretical physics. He had resigned his job at Delhi University to work full-time for the education of deprived children. He was deeply involved in rights based work—Right to Education, Right to Food. He worked on science-society issues such as the Bhopal gas disaster, Narmada dams and issues regarding nuclear energy. He was part of the People’s Science Movement in India, which looks for people based solutions to issues such as water, food, energy, and climate change. He also worked with global movements like Alternatives International, ARENA, and Jubilee South; and was a member of the International Council of World Social Forum. For the last several years, he was a visiting senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS). 

David M. Celdran
Media Professional / Philippines

Mr. Celdran is a multi-awarded broadcast journalist with more than twenty years of experience as a television news manager, anchor, reporter, and producer. He is currently a program host and producer for the ABS-CBN News Channel and Editor-in-Chief of ABS-CBN Publishing’s VAULT magazine. He is also the Chairperson of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism and a regular columnist for the Manila Bulletin newspaper. 

Huang Ping
Professor, Director General, Institute of American Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences / China

Having received his Ph.D. from LSE, University of London, Dr. Huang is an internationally acclaimed sociologist. As an erudite scholar, he has written numerous books and papers in the field of the social sciences. In his empirical studies of contemporary Chinese society, he attempts to re-examine the validity of Western conceptional frameworks in the social sciences. Through various UN-related activities, he explores the application and implementation of theoretical studies and research into action. He is currently also Director General, Institute of American Studies, CASS, and President, Chinese Association of American Studies. 

Mahendra P. Lama
Founding Vice Chancellor, Sikkim University / India

Professor Lama is the founding Vice Chancellor of the newly established Central University of Sikkim. He became the youngest Vice Chancellor of a National University in India. He also served as a member of the National Security Advisory Board of the Government of India; professor of South Asian Economies and the Chairman of the Centre for South, Central, South East Asia and South West Pacific Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; and Chief Economic Adviser in the Government of Sikkim with cabinet minister rank for seven years since 2000. His most recent work is the book Human Security in India: Discourse, Practices and Policy Implications published by University Press Limited, Dhaka, in 2010. Professor Lama also wrote the first Human Development Report of Sikkim in 2001 and the first Economic Survey of Sikkim in 2007. 

Ann Lee
Head of iris PR; Artistic Director of Kuali Works / Malaysia

Ms. Lee is a writer, editor, director, lecturer, and co-founder of Kuali Works theatre, television and publishing. She has written/co-written several acclaimed and award-winning plays, and performed at such venues at the Asian Monodrama Festival and the New York International Fringe Festival. She has worked closely with arts practitioners, organizations and sponsors in Southeast Asia to facilitate a broad arts practice and appreciation. She also writes short stories and essays as published in 8 March: The Day Malaysia Woke Up (Marshall Cavendish) and Sex, Stage & State (Kuali Works). A career in advertising and strategic communications has seen her write campaigns for products and issues ranging from shampoo and shoes to the environment and South Africa’s first democratic elections. She is also an immediate past trustee of the Asia Pacific Council of AIDS Service Organisations (APCASO). 

Anek Nakabutara
Executive Director, Social Fund Office / Thailand

Mr. Anek is an experienced expert in rural planning and development. As a former UNDP officer, he was instrumental in establishing the Social Fund Office. Its chief objective is to administer social investment funds from the World Bank in order to mitigate various social problems in Thailand. His long-time dedicated efforts to improve Thai society are highly recognized. Due to his contribution, he was nominated as a representative to America from Southeast Asian countries in 1996. 

Ryu Jeong Soon
Co-representative, Korea Research & Consulting Institute on Poverty / Korea

Educated as a fashion designer at Seoul National University (B.A.), Dr. Ryu received her MBA in the Graduate School of Fairleigh Dickinson University, USA. She also has an M.A. and Ph.D. from Dongkuk University in the department of Consumer Economy. She has worked as a lecturer at Kyong hee University and Dongkuk University as well as a Social Welfare Committee member in Peoples Solidarity of Participatory Democracy. She has written columns in Peace News, Welfare News, and Everyday Labor News. She also founded the Korea Research and Consulting Institute on Poverty and worked as its president for 10 years and is now working as a co-representative. 

Kazuyuki Shimada
Head, Public Relations Office, Kwansei Gakuin Education Foundation / Japan

Before assuming his current position, Mr. Shimada was a journalist for the Asahi Shimbun, one of the major daily newspapers in Japan, where he was chiefly concerned with regional security cooperation in Asia. While a correspondent in Washington and London, he wrote many articles, focusing especially upon disarmament and international security. He has also served as Bureau Chief of the Bangkok-based Asian General Bureau from 1996, and was appointed an editorial writer in the Tokyo headquarters in April 1998. His penetrating analysis of Japanese diplomacy was widely respected by general readers in Japan. 

Saree Aongsomwang
Consumer Advocate; Secretary General of the Foundation for Consumers / Thailand

Ms. Aongsomwang is a leading consumer activist in Thailand, who is widely acknowledged by the Thai public as a lady fighter who will always stand side by side with all Thai consumers in every situation. For the past decades, she has been working continuously to increase the power of consumer rights in Thailand, and to create awareness of consumer rights in all Thai citizens with the slogan: [One is infinitely greater than zero.] Throughout her career, she has accomplished many aims which bolster the consumer movement in Thailand, such as ending the privatization of the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT), and the accomplishment together with networks in pushing legislation of the universal coverage of health care services law. Currently she is also a Council Member of Consumers International. 

Urvashi Butalia
Publisher, Zubaan Books / India

Ms. Butalia is co-founder of India’s first feminist publishing house, Kali for Women, and now runs Zubaan, an imprint of Kali. She has been active in the women’s movement in India for over three decades, and is also an independent researcher and writer. She writes for newspapers and magazines and has also written several books, including an award-winning history of the partition of India, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India (winner of the Oral History Book Association Award 2001 and the Nikkei Asia Award for Culture 2003). She was recently awarded the Padmashree, one of the Indian government’s highest civilian honours. 

Faruk
Lecturer, Gadjah Mada University / Indonesia

Dr. Faruk is a scholar who is interested in recent international issues of theoretical and practical questions of culture. He is also a renowned literary critic on contemporary Indonesian literature, and has written many articles on literature and culture in general; he has been published in journals of culture, the arts, and literature. He is also interested in theater productions which show dramatists’ perceptions of the most recent issues in society, as he believes that the arts should reflect the experiences of artists, individually as well as societally. 

Michiya Kumaoka
Professor, Japan Institute of the Moving Image / Japan

Mr. Kumaoka is one of the founding members of the Japan International Volunteer Center (JVC), which was founded in Bangkok in 1980 in order to extend assistance to refugees from Indo-China. Through the activities of JVC, he worked in numerous relief activities as well as rural development and environmental protection for 26 years, mostly in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and several countries in Africa. Between 1995 and 2006, he served as President /Executive Director of JVC. He also served as Vice President for JANIC, a coordination body of Japanese NGOs. Currently he is a Visiting Professor at the University of Tokyo, Refugee Examination Councilor (adviser to the Justice Minister), Adviser to JVC, and Co-Representative of the People’s Forum on Cambodia, Japan. His books include Cambodia Frontline (Iwanami Publishing, 1993). 

Park Won Soon
1956-2020 / Korea

Mr. Park came to be known as a human rights lawyer through his involvement in legal support activities for political prisoners, and he made a great contribution to the democratization movement in Korea in the 1980s. In 1994, he participated in the formation of the People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD), which advocates social justice by monitoring power abuse or corruption, presents alternative policies, and encourages the social participation of the people. For the nationwide campaign for a fair and just general election in 2000, he acted as a representative of the [Citizens’ Alliance for the 2000 General Election (CAGE),] and led the movement successfully by bringing down 70 percent of those listed as unfit candidates not to be elected. Mr. Park was elected the Mayor of Seoul in 2011 and served until 2020. 

Sanitsuda Ekachai
Assistant Editor, Bangkok Post / Thailand

Following her parents’ footsteps, who were highly respected journalists, Ms. Ekachai’s pioneering and perceptive stories on rural development, women’s issues, and Thai Buddhism have triggered a movement of civic journalism in Thailand. Her works challenge the readers, as well as other media, to be more sensitive to cultural dilemmas, social inequalities, and the plight of the poor. She joined the Bangkok Post as a feature writer. 

Cho Hong-Sup
Environment Correspondent, The Hankyoreh Media Company / Korea

Mr. Cho Hong-Sup is an environment journalist who has been writing articles and columns for more than 20 years. Major areas he covers are ecological conservation, nuclear energy, environmental movements, climate change, and natural history. Currently operates an ecology and environment webzine: mulbaramsoop. http://ecotopia.hani.co.kr/  

Masaaki Ohashi
Chairperson, Japan NGO Center for International Cooperation (JANIC) / Japan

Professor Ohashi worked with Shapla Neer: Citizens’ Committee in Japan for Overseas Support. He also spent two and a half years in Dhaka as the Director of Shapla Neer’s operations in Bangladesh, and acted as Secretary General (1982-1987). He became Deputy Head of Delegation and Development Delegate in Bangladesh for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (1990-93). He has participated in the Kosovo refugee relief operation in Albania as a delegate of the International Federation of Red Cross and Crescent Societies. He is also Professor of Development Studies at Keisen University. Currently as a chairperson of JANIC, he is involved in the relief effort for the victims of the March 11 earthquake and the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant accident. 

Teo Soh Lung
Lawyer / Singapore

Ms. Teo is one of the founders of the Singapore Law Society’s Criminal Legal Aid Scheme, a program designed to give assistance to people who cannot afford legal representation. Her extra-professional activities include engagement in community activities focusing on welfare and labor issues. She was involved in a center that helped foreign workers and ex-offenders in Singapore. 

Ayu Utami
Novelist; Journalist; Editor, Kalam / Indonesia

In addition to being one of the editors of Kalam, Ms. Utami is a novelist and a political activist. While working as a reporter for the newsweekly Forum Keadilan (Forum for Justice), she joined other journalists to establish the underground Alliance of Independent Journalists (AIJ) in 1994. Soon after she began work with the Institute for the Study of Free Flow of Information (ISAI).
Publications include a booklet on the Soeharto family’s wealth. Her first novel, Saman, was named the Best Novel of the Year (1998) by the Jakarta Arts Council. She is a prolific writer of essays on popular culture, language and literature. 

Marites Danguilan Vitug
Freelance Journalist / Philippines

Ms. Vitug writes for the Philippines Center for Investigative Journalism, Newsweek, and World Paper. Publications include Under the Crescent Moon: Rebellion in Mindanao (2000), Jalan-Jalan: A Journey through Eaga (1998), and Power from the Forest (1993). She also co-authored several other books including “Highway Robbery” in Pork and Other Perks: Corruption and Governance in the Philippines (1998) and “The Politics of Logging in the Philippines” in The Politics of Environment in Southeast Asia (1998). 

Janadas Devan
Director, Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore / Singapore

Mr. Devan has published various papers in academic journals, newspapers, and magazines. He has also written a series of essays on key moments in the history of modern Asia. At the time of the participation in the ALFP, he was working on a book, Model Nation: An Anatomy of a Rational State, a study of how the [founding] narratives of history in the postcolonial state enable specific social and political formations within the state. He has taught at various universities in Singapore and the United States, including Brown University. 

Liu Xin
Associate Professor, Dept. of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley / China

Dr. Liu has carried out extensive anthropological fieldwork in isolated villages in rural China.His publications include [Space, Mobility and Flexibility: Chinese Villagers and Scholars Negotiate Power at Home and Abroad] in Ungrounded Empires: the Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism (1997); and [Yao: The Practice of Everyday Space in Northern Rural Shanxi] in Landscape, Culture, and Power in Chinese Society (1998). 

Sylvia L. Mayuga
Writer & Columnist; Chairman, Green Alliance for Mt. Banahaw / Philippines

Ms. Mayuga has been extensively involved in organizing communities for sustainable development, and co-founded with fellow eco-activists the NGO group Green Alliance. Received various awards such as the National Book Award (1982, 1983) and the Focus Award for Best Essay of the Year (1973). Publications include Journey to the Center (a monograph on Philippine art and ritual), Earth, Fire and Water (a compilation of essays on art, culture and the environment), and Paraiso (a poetic history of Mt. Banahaw). 

Suwanna Satha-Anand
Professor, Philosophy Department Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University / Thailand

Professor Satha-Anand is the first and the only recipient of the Gold Medal for academic excellence in Philosophy from Chulalongkorn University since the establishment of the Philosophy Department. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Buddhist Philosophy from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, with a Joint Doctoral Research Intern Grant from the East-West Center. She is currently teaching Buddhist and Chinese Philosophy. She has served as Chair of the Philosophy Department, Associate Dean for Research of the Faculty of Arts, and President of the Philosophy and Religion Society of Thailand. Her research interests are in the fields of Buddhism and women, religion and ethics and new readings of Confucius’ philosophy. Her research papers have been published in Thai, English, Korean, and are going to appear in French, Chinese, and Arabic. Since 2004, she has served as Director of the Humanities Research Forum, Thailand Research Fund. 

Endo Suanda
Chairman, Society for Indonesian Performing Arts; Lecturer, Indonesian College of the Arts, Bandung / Indonesia

Mr. Suanda has performed as a dancer, musician, choreographer, and puppeteer in Indonesia and abroad. He has also taught and organized performances at various universities in Indonesia and abroad. Published articles focus particularly on the performing arts in a socio-political context. His research as a ethnomusicologist has been focused on the shadow puppet theater of Cirebon. 

Diana Wong
Visiting Fellow, Institute of Malaysian & International Studies, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia / Malaysia

Ms. Wong has held positions as Lecturer, Faculty of Sociology, Universitaet Bielefeld (1980-85); Research Fellow, Center for Social Science Research, Universitaet Erlangen-Nuernberg (1985-87, 1989-92); and Deputy Director, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore (1995-1998). Publications include “Foreign Domestic Workers in Singapore” in Asia and Pacific Migration Journal, 5 (1) (1996), and “Post- and Pre-Modern Ambiguities” in SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, Vol. 10 No. 1 (1995). 

Kuo Pao Kun
1939-2002 / Singapore

As one of Singapore’s most dynamic dramatists, Mr. Kuo’s works were produced and performed at international festivals. His works and writings aroused serious and deep discussions on various problems and challenges facing Singapore and the Asian region. His play, partly conceptualized during his tenure as an ALFP fellow, was a major event at the Singapore Arts Festival in June 1998 and at the Chinese Theater Festival in Hong Kong in November 1998. 

Goenawan Mohamad
Founder of Tempo magazine; Poet; Playwright / Indonesia

Mr. Mohamad is a journalist, poet, art critic, and activist. He is famous as the founder and former editor-in-chief of Tempo magazine. He is well respected civil society in Indonesia as a champion and advocate of people’s rights. He has published several volumes of essays and poetry. He currently works as a steering committee member of Komunitas Salihara, the first private multidisciplinary arts center in Indonesia. 

Yoshinobu Ota
Professor, Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies, Kyushu University / Japan

Rethinking the relationships among culture, language and identity in terms of post vernacular theory: how do people reconceptualize such relationships when they can no longer assume these relationships as naturally given? Professor Ota is an anthropologist who has done extensive research in Yaeyama, Okinawa Prefecture; he has also carried out research on Mayan identity formation in Guatemala. 

Ishak Bin Shari
1948-2001 / Malaysia

Professor Ishak was one of the most respected economics professors in Malaysia. He served as president of the Malaysian Social Science Association (1990-94).

 

   

Laddawan Tantivitayapitak
Co-founder and Assistant Secretary, The PollWatch Foundation / Thailand

Ms. Laddawan started her career as a human rights worker in 1976 and has since been active in NGO advocacy campaigns. At PollWatch, she was responsible for planning, coordinating, administering, and reporting on general elections.

  

Arnold M. Azurin
Research Fellow, University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies / Philippines

As a pioneer in the area of Philippine studies, Mr. Azurin is one of the country’s most original thinkers on culture and nationhood. His book Re-inventing the Filipino Sense of Being and Becoming has been received enthusiastically by scholars and students, in and outside the Philippines. He has won the top prizes for essays and poetry volumes in the Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature. 

Ignas Kleden
Chairman, Indonesian Community for Democracy / Indonesia

Dr. Kleden is widely known and recognized as one of the most creative and prolific social thinkers in present-day Indonesia. He has been an editor/coordinator for social science books and journals for several years, and has translated theological books as well as writing on the socio-cultural problems of Indonesia. His publications include Masyara-kat dan Negara: Sebuah Persaalan (Society and the State: A Problematique, Magelang: Indonesia Tera, 2004). 

Kwok Kian-Woon
Associate Professor & Head, Division of Sociology at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University / Singapore

Dr. Kwok’s research interests relate to the historical and comparative understanding of modern social transformation and contemporary social change. He is actively involved in civil society and the public sector, including as honorary chairman, National Archives of Singapore; former president, Singapore Heritage Society; member of the National Heritage Board and the Singapore Art Museum Board; member of the Steering Committee on the National Art Gallery (and Chairman of its Museological Advisory Group); and co-chairman of the steering committee for the Singapore Biennale 2006. 

Wan A. Manan
Professor of Nutrition & Public Health, School of Health Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia / Malaysia

Dr.Wan Manan is currently involved with the Malaysian Academic Movement (MOVE). As the Chairman, he leads a pan-Malaysian academic reform movement, apart from his teaching and research work at the university.He is also carrying out research on physical activity and environmental enhancement for the next 3 years in Malaysia. 

Kasian Tejapira
Professor, Faculty of Political Science, Thammasat University / Thailand

Professor Tejapira is the author of numerous academic publications and a score of books in both Thai and English. He is also a noted columnist and was formerly a radical activist and guerrilla fighter in the jungle of northeastern Thailand.