Dino Patti Djalal, the Founder of the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia (FPCI), has served Indonesia as a career diplomat and ambassador. Dr. Dino is a best-selling author, academic, youth activist, and leader of the Indonesian diasporic community. He earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from Carleton University in Ottawa, a Master’s Degree in Political Science from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, and a PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science. In 2004, when the Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, began his term, Dr. Dino was appointed as Special Staff/Spokesperson of the President for International Affairs. From 2010 to 2013, Dr. Dino served as Indonesia’s Ambassador to the United States. In June 2014, he was appointed as Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs, until October that year. Since its founding, the FPCI has become the largest foreign policy group in Indonesia, with over 100,000 people in the FPCI network.
Koushik Goswami teaches English at Malda College, West Bengal. He is currently pursuing a PhD at the Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Earlier, he completed his MPhil in English from the University of Burdwan. He received a JU-RUSA doctoral fellowship and was a Humanities Visiting Scholar at Exeter University, United Kingdom. He was invited by the College of Humanities, Exeter University, and the University of East Anglia to deliver talks on his PhD topic and for academic discussion. His articles and interviews have also been published in national and international journals such as World Literature Today, The Temz Review, Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities and Muse India. Some of his recently published articles are: “Cool Texts, Cold Wars: Singapore and Tibet in Historical Fiction of Small States,” in The Calcutta Journal of Global Affairs; “The Politics of Fencing and Exchanges of Enclaves: A Study of the Indo-Bangladesh Border,” in Border, Globalization and Identity, Cambridge Scholars Publishing; “Violence as Spectacle: Manjula Padmanabhan’s Treatment of Ethical Responsibility in Lights Out,” in Apperception, Visva-Bharati; and “Nation and Diaspora in Manjushree Thapa’s Select Stories,” in Borders and Border Crossing: Reading Partition, Reading Diaspora, University of Burdwan Press. He has presented research papers at international and national level seminars. His areas of interest are South Asian Literature, Diaspora Studies, Cultural Studies and Postcolonial Literature.
Prasanta Mahanta is currently teaching in the capacity of an Assistant Professor (ad-hoc) at Mahapurusha Srimanta Sankaradeva Viswavidyalaya, Nagaon, Assam in the Department of English. He completed his Master’s degree in English from The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad in 2018. He has authored a novel christened Love-Not Out-Peace (Notion Press, 2013), and has co-authored a book, Concepts in Language and Linguistics Simplified (2022). He has published a paper titled The Changing Face of Hindi Horror Cinema: From the Ramsays to the Bhatts (2022) in Creatcrit, a biannual peer-reviewed journal. His areas of interests are visual culture, subaltern studies, language studies, and Indian English literature. He intends to pursue his doctoral thesis in film studies and wants to take up teaching as a full-time profession.
Harish C. Mehta has taught History at McMaster University, University of Toronto, and Trent University in Canada, courses such as the Vietnam Wars, U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1898, World History up to 1800, World History from 1800 to the Present, History of Southeast Asia, and Human Rights in History. He obtained a PhD degree from McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada in the history of American foreign relations and Vietnam, with specializations in the twentieth-century history of China, and Christian-Muslim Encounters in the Early Modern World (Ottoman Empire). He did graduate studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill after a Bachelors’ degree from the University of Lucknow, and a post-graduate diploma from St. Xavier’s College, Bombay. He is the author of Cambodia Silenced: The Press Under Six Regimes (White Lotus, Bangkok and Cheney, 1997); Warrior Prince: Norodom Ranariddh, Son of King Sihanouk of Cambodia (Graham Brash, Singapore, 2001); Strongman: The Extraordinary Life of Hun Sen (Marshall Cavendish, Singapore, 2013); and People’s Diplomacy of Vietnam: Soft Power in the Resistance War, 1965-1972 (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2019). His articles on Vietnamese diplomacy have appeared in the academic journals International History Review, Diplomatic History, Peace and Change, The Historian, and History Compass, and his review articles have appeared in H-Diplo. His major awards are: (a) the Samuel Flagg Bemis research award (twice) from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, (b) the “Asian Print Media Write Award” in 1997 by the Asian Media Information and Communication Center, Singapore for his research paper entitled “The Chilling Fields: Cambodia’s Press Under Six Regimes” that was published in Media Asia, (c) the “Freedom Forum Fellowship” awarded in 1995 by the Freedom Forum of Washington, DC, and (d) the Mitsubishi-Press Foundation of Asia “Journalist of the Year Prize” awarded in 1989 for excellence in reporting economic and political developments in Southeast Asia.
Vinod Kumar Pillai is an independent scholar with interest in literary fiction, development studies, and popular science. He graduated in Agricultural Sciences, and worked for over thirty years in banking, specializing in industrial credit, training, behavioral science, and counselling. He has been a consultant trainer for over eight years, training employees in the banking and financial services sector. He delivers training, designs and develops training content, and contributes as a domain expert in developing content for e-learning and bank manuals. He has also worked for three years as a trainer at a bank training center, training employees of the bank in banking and soft skills. Besides literary fiction, development studies, popular science and training, he also devotes time to Cinema, Jyotish, podcasting, and stock photography. He is an occasional cook and lives in Hyderabad, India with his wife and son.
Por Heong Hong is a Lecturer at the School of Social Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia. Por’s research interests lie at the convergence of postcolonial inquiries and cultural politics of issues pertaining to medicine, health and diseases, bodies, modernity, and nationalism. Her geographical focus is mainly Southeast Asia and East Asia. Over the past few years, she has collected oral histories of ordinary people who lived through the post-independence era and the political turmoil of 1960s in Malaysia. She also merges historical research with the study of memory politics and heritage politics. Over the past decade, she has published widely on the politics of healthcare in Malaysia, politics of memory, and politics of heritage in Malaysia. Her publications can be found in prestigious peer reviewed journals, including Modern Asian Studies, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, East Asia Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Kajian Malaysia, International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies, etc., and in edited books published by Oxford University Press, Palgrave, and Routledge. Her article will appear in an edited book published by Bangkok-based Silkworm Books. Details of her publications can be accessed via Heong Hong Por (0000-0001-8362-0202) (orcid.org). She can be reached at porheonghong@usm.my or porhh2020@gmail.com.
Binodkumar Singh is Guest Faculty at the Department of National Security Studies, Manipur University. Earlier, he was a Research Associate at the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi. He holds a PhD in the topic, “Indo-Bangladesh Relations: Their Impact on the Security of the North East,” from the Department of Defence and National Security Studies at Punjab University, Chandigarh. He has written more than 140 online articles in the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), a project of the Institute for Conflict Management, focusing on Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Pakistan. He has published four articles in refereed journals, and six chapters in edited books. His articles are: “Taliban vs Islamic State in Afghanistan—A Turf War,” Journal of Himalayan Research and Cultural Foundation; “Islamic Fundamentalism in Bangladesh,” Journal of Himalayan Research and Cultural Foundation; “Insurgency in North Eastern Region (NER) of India—The Role of Bangladesh,” Foreign Policy Research Centre Journal; and “Illegal Migration from Bangladesh—Its Impact on India’s Security,” Research Journal Social Sciences. His book chapters are: “Nepal’s Relations with India,” in Mohan Krishna Shrestha, Pramod Jaiswal and Mitra Bandhu Poudel (eds.), Nepal’s Foreign Policy and Emerging Global Trends (G.B. Books, New Delhi, 2020); “Insurgency in North East India,” in Pramod Jaiswal (ed.), Emerging Conflicts and Regional Security in South Asia (Adroit Publishers, New Delhi, 2019); “Dynamics of Nepal-India Relations,” in Pramod Jaiswal (ed.), Nepal and Great Powers (Synergy Books, New Delhi, 2019); “Migration and Gender in South Asia,” in Pramod Jaiswal (ed.), Migration and Human Security in South Asia (Adroit Publishers, New Delhi, 2018); “Indo–Bangladesh Relations: Scaling New Heights,” in Roshan Khanijo and Anurag Tripathi (eds.), India and its Emerging Foreign Policy Challenges (Vij Books, New Delhi, 2018); and “Dynamics of Nepal-Bangladesh Relations,” in Pramod Jaiswal (ed.), Revisiting Nepal’s Foreign Policy in Contemporary Global Power Structure (G.B. Books, New Delhi, 2017).
Md. Nasir Uddin, PhD, is an alumnus of the Institute of Bangladesh Studies, University of Rajshahi. He is on the editorial boards of Peace and Conflict Studies Journal, IGI Global Publication, Common Ground Research Networks, Journal on Excellence in College Teaching (JECT), International Journal of Social Science Studies (IJSSS), Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine, International Journal of Social Science Research (IJSSR), International Journal of Cyber Behavior, Psychology and Learning (IJCBPL), American Journal of Multidisciplinary Research and Innovation (AJMRI), and several other journals. He worked as a Scientific Committee Member of the 8th International Conference on Social Sciences (ICOSS 2021), organized by the International Institute of Knowledge Management (TIIKM), Sri Lanka. His research interests are in security studies, geopolitics, public health, and anthropology. His research gate id is https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Md-Uddin-139.
Carina Vo-Ta is a current undergraduate student studying Sociology at Tufts University. At Tufts, Carina is a copy editor for The Tufts Daily (the school newspaper) and The Palmier (a food-writing magazine), and she is involved in the Tufts Pre-Law Society. Carina is also involved in the Tufts’ Vietnamese Students Club, and she is a mentee in the Asian American Center’s Peer Leader Program. She hopes to attend law school down the line and go into immigration law. As a second-generation Vietnamese-American, Carina is particularly interested in exploring systemic inequalities and learning more about the immigrant experience. In high school, Carina served in her high school’s leadership team in the Associated Student Body and helped organize her high school’s Link Cru, a program that seeks to help incoming freshmen acclimate to the new experiences and challenges of high school.
