Craig Etcheson is a Visiting Scientist at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. From 2006 to 2012, he was chief of investigations for the Office of Co-Prosecutors at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. He has a PhD in International Relations from the University of Southern California. His books on Cambodia include The Rise and Demise of Democratic Kampuchea (1984), After the Killing Fields: Lessons from the Cambodian Genocide (2005), and Extraordinary Justice: Law, Politics, and the Khmer Rouge Tribunals (2019).
S.R. Long, born in Singapore and raised as a Malaysian citizen, studied and lived in England and France throughout his primary school years before returning to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to complete his secondary schooling. In 1984, Long obtained a Bachelor of Science (Economics) honors degree, majoring in International Economics & Development at the London School of Economics & Political Science. He started his career in auditing at PriceWaterhouse Kuala Lumpur before venturing briefly into business journalism for two years, first at the Star daily newspaper in Malaysia and then at the Business Times of Singapore. Between 1989 to 1998, he worked as a senior equity analyst with various international investment banks ranging from OCBC Singapore to Deutsche Morgan Grenfell in Kuala Lumpur. After the Asian Financial Crisis, Long went back to journalism as the chief editor of Smart Investor, one of the leading financial magazines in Malaysia. During his five years at Smart Investor, he wrote cover stories on economics and investment topics including interviews with Nobel Prize Economics laureates Robert Mundell and Joseph Stiglitz in one issue on an Asian common currency regime. Long returned to the research line in 2003 with his current position as head of economics research at Public Mutual Bhd. Backed by a team of analysts, he oversees the macroeconomic research on the United States, China, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Julie Banerjee Mehta holds M.A. and PhD degrees in English Literature and South Asian Studies from the University of Toronto. Her Master’s thesis entitled “Being Gaijin and Being Female in the Sakoku Culture of Japan” explores the Japanese works by Meira Chand, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Pico Iyer. Julie was born in Calcutta and educated at Irish convents—Loreto House and Loreto College—and then at Jadavpur University Calcutta, where she received her first Master’s degree in English Literature. She worked as a literary reviewer and features editor in Australia, Singapore, and Bangkok. A specialist in Postcolonial and World Literatures, she conceptualized and taught the Chancellor Emerita Vivienne Poy-endowed course on Asian Literatures and Cultures in Canada for nearly a decade in the Canadian Studies Program, and in the Department of English at the University of Toronto, and received several prestigious fellowships. Her translation of Tagore’s play Dak Ghar/Post Office was performed by Pleiades Theatre, Toronto, in 2010 to critical acclaim and earned her the title of “One of Sixteen most Influential South Asians in Canada.” She is the author of Dance of Life: The Mythology, History, and Politics of Cambodian Culture, and the best-selling biography of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen (with Harish Mehta). Her major publications are “Toronto’s Multicultured Tongues: Stories of South Asian Cuisines,” in Edible Histories, Cultural Politics: Towards a Canadian Food History, University of Toronto Press, 2012; “Hybrid Brown Gaijin is a ‘Distinguished Alien’ in Sakoku Japan” in Narrating Race: Asia, (Trans)Nationalism, Social Change, Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2011; “Ondaatje’s Impertinent Voices: Tracking Family Ties to Remember History,” in Australasia-Asia: Change, Conflict and Convergence, Swan-Longmans, 2010; “Reconfiguring the Feminine: The Real, Reel, and Riel Life of Neang Seda (Sita) in the Khmer Ramayana,” in The International Ramayana Collection, National Heritage Board, Singapore, 2010; “Being Gaijin and Being Female in the Sakoku Culture of Japan: Cultural Exile in Meira Chand’s The Gossamer Fly,” in Writing Asia: The Literatures in Englishes, Volume 1: From the Inside, Singapore: Ethos Books, 2007; and “The Ramayana in Thai and Khmer Culture,” in Ramayana Revisited, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Raka Mukherjee is an aspiring research scholar with an M.A. in English Literature from Loreto College affiliated to the University of Calcutta. Her interests are Post-colonial Literature, Feminist Literary Studies, Gender Studies, Psychoanalysis, and World Literatures. She also has an interest in Film Studies and theatre, enjoys writing, directing and acting for the stage as well as shooting short films. Her paper, “Iceberg of Innocence: Freudian Psychoanalysis in Golding’s Lord of the Flies with Characters as a Collective Conscious,” was published in Arts Saké, the postgraduate Journal of Loreto College. Her poetry has been published in the online Anthology, Figures of Thought: Collegiate Voices Across Spaces, by the online bilingual Setu magazine, and in the anthology book, Purely Platonic by The Writer Order. She is presently working as a copy editor on the Rising Asia Journal and she plans to pursue a PhD in postcolonial feminism and gender studies, publish academic papers, and write fictional books.
Gurjit Singh retired as the Indian ambassador to Germany. He has served as ambassador to Indonesia, ASEAN, Timor-Leste, Ethiopia and The Republic of Djibouti. Currently, he is an Honorary Professor of International Relations Studies at the Indian Institute of Technology, Indore. He holds a Bachelors’ degree in politics from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata, and a post-graduate degree in International Studies from the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. A 1980 batch officer of the Indian Foreign Service, he started his career in diplomacy with a posting in Japan and has since been posted in Sri Lanka, Kenya and Italy. Ambassador Singh has authored five books, The Abalone Factor on India-Japan business relations; The Injera and the Paratha on India and Ethiopia; Masala Bumbu and a comic book, Travels through Time, both on the India-Indonesia relationship; and Opportunity Beckons: Adding Momentum to the Indo-German Partnership. He is the Consulting Editor of Rising Asia Journal and a member of the Rising Asia Foundation’s advisory board.
Pak Nung Wong is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Politics and International Relations in the Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies at University of Bath, United Kingdom. He has a D.Phil in social and cultural anthropology from St. Antony’s College, Oxford. His books include Techno-Geopolitics: US-China Tech War and the Practice of Digital Statecraft (Routledge, 2022); Logic of the Powers: Towards an Impact-driven Practice of Futurist Statecraft (Routledge, 2022); Destined Statecraft: Eurasian Small Power Politics and Strategic Cultures in Geopolitical Shifts (Springer Nature, 2018); Discerning the Powers in Post-Colonial Africa and Asia: A Treatise of Christian Statecraft (Springer Nature, 2016); and Post-Colonial Statecraft in South East Asia: Sovereignty, State-Building and the Chinese in the Philippines (I. B. Tauris, 2013). He is the editor-in-chief of Bandung: Journal of the Global South.
Yuen Pau Woo was appointed to the Senate of Canada in November 2016 and sits as an independent representing British Columbia. Since 2017, he has been Facilitator of the Independent Senators Group, the largest parliamentary caucus in Canada’s Upper House. Senator Woo has worked on public policy issues concerning Canada’s relations with Asian countries for more than thirty years. From 2005-2014, he was President and CEO of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, and on the Standing Committee of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Committee (PECC). He is Senior Fellow at Simon Fraser University’s Graduate School of Business, and at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. He is a member of the Trilateral Commission and on the boards of the Canadian Ditchley Foundation and the Vancouver Academy of Music. He also serves on the Advisory Boards of the Mosaic Institute, the Vancouver Chinatown Foundation, and the York Centre for Asian Research. Senator Woo is a native of Malaysia and has previously worked for the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation. Senator Woo studied at Wheaton College, the University of Cambridge, and the University of London. His publications have appeared in Asian Economic Papers, International Journal, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research, and China Economic Journal, among others. He was the founding chair of PECC's flagship State of the Region report.
