Saranya Antony A is an Assistant Professor at Government College of Arts and Science, Androth Island, Lakshadweep, an institution affiliated to Pondicherry University. Her doctoral research was on “Higher Educational Reforms and Transformation of Public Universities in Lithuania and India in the Neoliberal era” at the Centre for Russian and Central Asian Studies (CRCAS), School of International Relations Studies (SIS), Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. She has studied in the Department of Education Sciences, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Kaunas Technological University in Lithuania for one semester under the Erasmus +Learning Mobility Fellowship in 2018. She completed her MPhil in 2016 from CRCAS, SIS, JNU. The topic of her dissertation was “Representation of Russia in the Baltic Media over Ukraine Crisis of 2014.” She did her M.A. in Politics (international studies) from SIS, JNU. Her publications are, “The Singing Revolution, Independence and Democratic Transformation in Baltic States: Nationalism, Identity and Culture,” in Nation Building in Baltic States History, Memory and Identity (New Delhi: Adroit Publishers, 2018); “Mapping of Neoliberal Reforms and Students’ Resistance Movement in Indian Public Universities Since 2014,” in Sketches on Developing India: A Socio-Economic Perspective (Kerala: Academic Publication Wing, 2019); “National Education Policy 2020, Reforms in Higher Education and Public Universities in India: Promises, Practices and Problems,” Journal of Parliamentary Studies, Volume 11, Issue 1 & 2, January-December 2019; and “Escalation of Ukraine Crisis and Russia-West Geopolitical Rivalry: Implications for Regional Stability, Security, and Peace, The IUP Journal of International Relations, Volume 16, No. 1, 2022.
Ritish Dutta is an independent researcher with a postgraduate degree (M.A.) in English (First Class) from the Department of English Language and Literature, University of Calcutta. His specializations include Modern European Literature, Modernism and Postmodernism, and Postcolonial Literature. He has presented a research paper titled, “The Location of Desire: Psychosis and the Body in Luigi Pirandello's Dramaturgy,” in the Three-Day International Conference on Redefining Theories of Communication: 21st Century Perspectives in Language and Literature, organized by SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Ramapuram, Chennai. His article entitled, “The Poetics of Postcolonial Identity in Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines,” is due for publication in a critical anthology published by Book Age Publications, New Delhi. His research interests are psychoanalysis, postcolonialism, and gender politics in literature.
Asad Latif is an editorial writer for The Straits Times, Singapore. He is the Co-General Editor of the 50-volume Singapore Chronicles series, and the author of several books, including Between Rising Powers: China, Singapore and India (2007), Three Sides in Search of a Triangle: Singapore-America-India Relations (2008), India in the Making of Singapore (2008), and Lim Kim San: A Builder of Singapore (2009). He graduated with Honours in English from Presidency College in Kolkata, was a Chevening Scholar in History at Cambridge, and was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Harvard. He served on the editorial committee of the Cambridge Review of International Affairs and was a member of the president’s committee of the Cambridge Union Society, the university debating club.
Vinod Kumar Pillai is an independent scholar with interest in literary fiction, development studies, and popular science. He regularly reviews books for Rising Asia Journal. He is 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 graduated in Agricultural Sciences, and worked for over thirty years in banking, specializing in industrial credit, training, behavioral science, and counseling. Besides literary fiction, development studies, popular science and training, he devotes time to Cinema, Jyotish, podcasting, and stock photography. He is an occasional cook and lives in Hyderabad, India, with his wife and son.
Aisheedyuti Roy holds a postgraduate degree in History from the University of Delhi (2021). She completed her Bachelors in History from Loreto College, University of Calcutta in 2019. She has worked previously as a teacher at Maharashtra Public School, Aurangabad which was instrumental in adding to her professional growth and increasing her understanding of the education sector. At present, she is engrossed in the process of pursuing a Bachelors in Education. Her academic interests are social and political history, international relations, cultural exchanges, cinema, anime and manga studies, and the study of globalization and its effects in the modern world. She is currently working on a paper which is an in-depth analysis of the relationship between India and Japan through the colonial lens.
Salikyu Sangtam is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the North East Christian University in Dimapur, India. He teaches international relations theory (IRT), Chinese strategic traditions, and political theory. His research focuses on Chinese thought, and non-western IRT and political theory. He has published papers (“Timeless Stratagem” in Comparative Strategy), and presented papers on Chinese strategic thought in international conferences. He has served as a resource person on numerous invited occasions delivering lectures (on political psychology, Indian Constitution, Ambedkar, Tourism, and non-western political theory) and in academic workshops. He was also invited to serve as a panelist on “Nagaland Special Development Zone” at the Business Summit at Nagaland International Trade Expo (NITEX) in November 2017.
Nicole Smith completed her M.A. in Sociology with a Double Degree from Bielefeld University in Bielefeld, Germany, and Bologna University in Bologna, Italy in September 2021, and a B.A. from McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada in 2013. Her background is in mental health and addiction. She is interested primarily in interpersonal relationships as well as social inequality and social justice. She has written papers on migrant ethics of care in home healthcare, consequences of misperceptions of social inequality, as well as the potential role of genetics in addressing educational inequality and pedagogical advancement. Her Master’s thesis explored the use of trauma-informed care by social services assisting people experiencing homelessness during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the future she plans on pursuing her PhD potentially in Anthropology with a keen interest on executing an ethnography on culture-based interventions employed in addiction treatment for Indigenous populations in Canada.
Toh Han Shih holds a B.S. in Physics from the California Institute of Technology, and a doctorate in Physics from Oxford University. He also has a Master’s in Southeast Asian Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and has completed a part-time Master’s in Economics at Hong Kong University. Han Shih is a Singapore-born writer resident in Hong Kong with twenty years of experience reporting on business and economics related to China, including ten years as a reporter with the South China Morning Post. In December 2016, he published the book, Is China an Empire? From 2007 to 2008, he worked at Kroll, and in the late 1990s, he was a reporter at the Business Times in Singapore. He was also a senior correspondent of MLEX, a regulatory risk news agency, and senior reporter of Finance Asia, a financial trade publication. He is currently chief analyst of Headland Intelligence, a Hong Kong risk consultancy.
