Ahrar Ahmad is Professor Emeritus, Black Hills State University, Spearfish, South Dakota, where he had taught Political Science for almost 25 years.  He is currently associated with the Gyantapas Abdur Razzaq Foundation in Dhaka.  He had been a Senior Fulbright Scholar.  He had received several teaching and research awards including Professor of the Year Award conferred both by the university where he had taught, and by the Carnegie Foundation (CASE Award) for the entire state of South Dakota.

He has earned a Ph.D. in Political Science, from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, USA. He also has M.A. degrees from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and the University of Waterloo, Canada.

He has published more than 50 articles in peer reviewed journals, as book chapters and encyclopedia entries, presented at least 30 papers in professional conferences, made more than 100 invited presentations to various groups and organizations locally, regionally and nationally in the US and Bangladesh, and edited 4 books on Bangladesh.

Mirza M Hassan is currently the Senior Research Fellow at BRAC Institute of Governance and Development, BRAC University. His research focuses on political economy of governance both at the national and local levels, sectoral governance, politics of development, social accountability, political economy of trade unions, state-society relations, and justice sector. His recent publications include: ‘Moral and Political Economy of Pandemic Management in Bangladesh: Weak States and Strong Societies’ (co-author), World Development, 2020; ‘Violence and the breakdown of the political settlement: an uncertain future for Bangladesh?’ (co-author), Conflict, Security & Development, 17:3, 205-223, 2018; ‘The Political Economy of Domestic Tax Reform in Bangladesh: Political Settlements, Informal Institutions and the Negotiation of Reform’ (co-author)., The Journal of Development Studies; Special Issue on Tax Reform, Journal of Development Studies, 2017; “Navigating the Deals World: The Politics of Economic Growth in Bangladesh”, in Lant, Pritchett et. al. (eds) Deals and Development, Oxford University Press, UK (co- author) 2019; “Politics of Learning Reforms in Bangladesh”, in Sam Hickey et al (eds) The Politics of Education in Developing Countries, Oxford University Press, UK, (co-author). As a development consultant he has worked for the World Bank, UNDP, DFID/FCDO, The Asia Foundation, OECD, IFC, SIDA, and many other national and international consulting firms. He was an honorary academic fellow of IDPM, University of Manchester, UK.

Naomi Hossain is a political sociologist who researches the politics of development, with a focus on understanding how people living with poverty and precarity get the public services they need. She has researched extensively across Bangladesh, as well as managing large international studies spanning another 20 countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. Her work increasingly focuses on accountability for disasters and crises, such as food and energy price shocks, ‘natural’ disasters, and industrial accidents, and on the role of protest in holding public authorities to account. She acts as an advisor to multilateral agencies, governments, NGOs and research institutions. Since 2019, a Research Professor at the Accountability Research Center at the School of International Service, she also holds a position as Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, and is a former employee of BRAC in Bangladesh.

Ali Riaz is a Distinguished Professor of political science at Illinois State University, USA, a Nonresident Senior Fellow of Atlantic Council, and the President of the American Institute of Bangladesh Studies.  He held various positions at ISU, including the chair of the Department of Politics and Government (2007- 2017), and the Thomas E Eimermann Professorship (2018-2020). Riaz previously taught at universities in Bangladesh, England, and South Carolina, USA, worked as a Broadcast Journalist at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in London, and served as a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at Washington D.C. His primary area of interests are South Asian politics, democratization, violent extremism, political Islam, and Bangladeshi politics. Dr. Riaz’s recent publications include Voting in A Hybrid Regime: Understanding 2018 Bangladeshi Election (2019), Bangladesh: A Political History since Independence (2016) and an edited volume Religion and Politics in South Asia (2021).  He has also coedited Political Violence in South Asia (2018) and Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Bangladesh (2016). Riaz has several books in Bengali to his credit including Nikhoj Gonotontro (2021).

Wahiduddin Mahmud (Ph. D. in economics, Cambridge University) retired as Professor of Economics at the University of Dhaka. He has led many government committees and commissions in Bangladesh and was a member of the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh in charge of the Ministry of Finance and Planning. He is a Senior Country Advisor of the International Growth Centre at LSE and is on the Board of Global Development Network (GDN). He has served as a member of the UN Committee for Development Policy (UN CDP) and Chairman of South Asia Network of Economic Research Institutes (SANEI). He is a founder and former chairman of PKSF, Bangladesh’s apex institution for funding the microcredit programs of NGOs. He has held visiting/research/teaching appointments at Cambridge University, IDS at Sussex University, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the World Bank, among others. His authored and edited books include Adjustment and Beyond: the Reform Experience in South Asia (Palgrave-Macmillan for the International Economic Association), Handbook on the South Asian Economies (Edward Elgar), The Theory and Practice of Microcredit (Routledge), Seasonality of Hunger and Public Policies: Evidence from Northeast Bangladesh (World Bank Publications) and Markets, Morals and Development: Rethinking Economics form the Development Country Perspective (Routledge).

Professor Mustafizur Rahman is an economist by training. He is currently serving as Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), Dhaka, Bangladesh. Earlier Dr. Rahman had taught as a Professor in the University of Dhaka. He was Visiting Fellow at Oxford University, UK and Senior Fulbright Fellow at Yale University, USA. His areas of research include WTO and interests of the LDCs; addressing Bangladesh’s LDC graduation challenges; South-South Cooperation, regional cooperation and economic integration in Southern Asia; fiscal-monetary policies and macroeconomic performance of Bangladesh; challenges of SDGs implementation. He has published widely in Bangladesh and abroad. Professor Rahman has served as member of a number of national bodies set up by the Government of Bangladesh including WTO Advisory Committee, Regulatory Reforms Commission and Core Committee on Connectivity. He was a member of Panel of Economists for the Sixth and the Seventh Five Year Plan of Bangladesh, the Second Perspective Plan of Bangladesh (2021-2041) and member of the Advisory Committee of Human Development Report 2020. Professor Rahman is member of Dhaka University Senate and Board of Trustees of the BRAC University.

Syed Akhtar Mahmood is an economist. He was Lead Private Sector Specialist in the World Bank Group, where he worked for three decades on privatization, state enterprise reforms, investment climate, competitiveness, and more broadly private sector development, in various parts of the world. His professional interests also include policy capture, political economy, and the mechanisms of policy reforms. From 2007 to 2010, he was stationed in Dhaka with the International Finance Corporation where he managed the World Bank Group’s largest country program on investment climate.

Dr. Mahmood studied, and later taught, economics at Dhaka University in the late seventies and early eighties. He obtained a D.Phil. in Economics from the University of Oxford in 1989 for his work on public manufacturing enterprises in Bangladesh and was a visiting fellow at Yale University from 1988 to 1990. His publications include The Political Economy of Development Policy Change (co-authored with Gustav Ranis), published by Blackwell in 1991, and Privilege-Resistant Policy Making in the Middle East (co-authored with Meriem Ait Ali Slimane), published by the World Bank in 2018.  He writes a fortnightly column, Patterns and Trends, in Dhaka Tribune. He currently lives in Maryland, USA.  

K A S Murshid, PhD (Cambridge) is a development economist and former Director-General, Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies – BIDS (2015-21). He has published widely in well-known journals and is the author/editor of several books and research monographs on topics relating to agricultural markets, nutritional standards, and mobile financial services. Recent journal publications have been on youth unemployment, adolescent violence, and socio-economic impact of COVID. His latest books are Readings in Bangladesh Development, 1972-20 (eds) (BIDS), and The Odds Revisited – Political Economy of Development of Bangladesh (forthcoming from CUP). Dr. Murshid has extensive consultancy experience in other countries of the region including Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Indonesia. He served as head of research at the Cambodia Development Resource Institute, Phnom Penh for several years. He is also a regular media commentator on development issues.

Professor Selim Raihan is Professor at the Department of Economics, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh and the Executive Director of the South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (SANEM). He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Manchester, UK.

Professor Raihan is the Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, UK. He is the alumni of the Harvard University’s program on “Cutting Edge of Development Thinking”. He possesses vast expertise in empirical research on international trade, economic growth, poverty, labour market, macroeconomic policies, political economy, and climate change issues. He has worked quite extensively on applied economics, especially assessing impacts of trade and economic policies, using country-specific and global Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models, and micro and macro-econometric modelling and estimation techniques. He has a long experience in teaching international trade, economic modelling, quantitative economics, econometrics, development economics, and poverty dynamics. He has more than 15 years of experience in conducting international and national training programmes on economic modelling in various countries, including Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Mongolia, Senegal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. He has published several journal articles, books, book chapters and working papers.

Professor Raihan is the editor of Thinking Aloud – a monthly digest from SANEM. He regularly writes columns in leading English and Bengali dailies in Bangladesh. He contributed extensively to the preparation of the Sixth and Seventh Five-year National Plans of Bangladesh. He led a research team to prepare the “SDG Financing Strategy: Bangladesh Perspective” -a flagship publication of the Planning Commission of Bangladesh. He has worked for several national and international organizations including the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, UNDP, UNESCAP, UNCTAD, IFPRI, the Commonwealth Secretariat, FAO, European Commission, ILO, IDRC, DFID, etc. He has led and has also been a member of a number of regional and international research projects on trade and regional integration issues. Also, he has been working on the political economy analysis of economic issues. The most recent ones are the studies on Bangladesh Institutional Diagnostic, which are prepared under his leadership and supervision, for the DFID, UK.

Emeritus Professor of International Development, University of Bath, UK where he was: Founder Director, Institute for International Policy Analysis; Head of Department of Economics and International Development; Dean of Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences; University Research Adviser. Also Ex-Chair of Board of INTRAC, Oxford, and ex-President of the UK Development Studies Association. Visiting Fellow at SDPI, Islmabad, Pakistan. Advisory and research positions with UK DIFD-FCDO, Ford Foundation, World Bank, ILO, Aga Khan Foundation (AKRSP and RSPN), UN (Economic and Social Affairs Division), OXFAM, Save the Children, SIDA, CIDA, IDRC, The Netherlands and Norway, Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund.

After fieldwork in Africa in the late 60s (from IDS, Sussex), conducted extensive research on aspects of poverty, governance and civil society in North India, Bangladesh and Pakistan over 4 decades, with additional work in Nepal, Afghanistan, Thailand, Venezuela and Peru. Co-directed the ‘Comparative Welfare Regimes’ research programme at Bath. Currently focussed upon insecurity, welfare regimes, well-being and strategies of de-clientelisation (thus linking the security and liberty themes), governance and civil society, and extreme poverty and resilience.

Associated with GoB (esp LGRDC, Agriculture and Planning Commission), think tanks (e.g. BIGD and BIDS) and civil society (e.g. Proshika, BRAC and MJF) in Bangladesh since 1974 (initially at BARD, Cumilla) through ethnographic and interdisciplinary research, action-research, policy advice and strategic planning, linking the analyses of agrarian change and poverty to issues of governance and rights. He promotes understanding of political economy through the analysis of deep structures. Currently publishes on informal security regimes, Faustian Bargains, extreme poverty and resilience. Forthcoming auto-biography on 48 years association with Bangladesh: The Journey of a ‘Bengal’ Civilian (UPL 2022).

Binayak Sen is currently the Director General of BIDS. Previously, he served as a Research Director at the BIDS (2010-2021), Senior Research Fellow at the IFPRI (2016-18), and Senior Economist at the World Bank (2004-2009). His main areas of research interest are poverty, inequality, and human development. He has published over 70 research papers in peer reviewed journals and monographs, including World Development, Asian Development Review, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Economic and Political Weekly, and Bangladesh Development studies. He served as the member of various committees and commissions, including GDP Rebasing Committee (2021), Pay and Services Commission (2015), and Public Expenditure Review Commission (2003). Binayak also contributes a regular weekly column to Daily Somokal on contemporary literary, social and development issues (2019-21). Links to most of his writings can be found in his professional website binayaksenbd.com, and he can be contacted at binayak71@yahoo.com.

Dr. M.M. Akash is a professor of the Department of Economics, Dhaka University. He has been teaching there since 1982. He had done his PHD in the field of Agricultural Economics from the social Science Division of the International Rice Research Institute, Philippines and Dhaka University jointly. His special area of interest is political economy of development, agriculture and governance.

He had served in different capacities to many national bodies. At present he is the chairman of the Bureau of Economic Research, chairman of the economics department, Dhaka University, he is a member of the advisory board for the current five year plan of Bangladesh, he is also a member of the eminent person group (EPG) formed by the Ministry of Finance-ERD,  and he is now a senior fellow of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS). He is also a member of the editorial board of the NDC journal, Bangladesh.

He was a member of the “Task Force” on “The Role of the Political Parties in The Process of Development”, commissioned by the planning advisor Prof. Rehman Sobhan of the interim government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh led by President Justice Shahabuddin Ahmed in 1990. He had also served as an academic adviser to the National Defense College (NDC) for two terms before. He has been nominated to be a representative from the Academic Circle in the board of directors of the Micro Credit Regulatory Authority by the current government. He has been nominated by his Excellency the Chancellor (The President of the People’s republic of Bangladesh) as an expert member of the selection board of the Professors and Associated Professors of the National University on April, 2015. He was also nominated as a panel member for editing the textbooks at SSC level in Bangladesh in 20017-18.

He has written extensively in both Bengali and English on subjects like, political economy, poverty, agriculture, governance and microfinance.

Combining degrees in Economics and Political Sociology, Hossain Zillur Rahman is Founder-Chair of Dhaka-based Power and Participation Research Centre (PPRC). He was a member of the Independent South Asian Commission on Poverty Alleviation and has been a leading researcher and policy voice on poverty, social protection, urbanization, governance and political development. Dr. Rahman was Advisor (Cabinet Minister) for Ministries of Commerce and Education in the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh (2007-08). Since 2019, he has been Chairperson, BRAC Bangladesh.

Iftekharuzzaman, (Iftekhar Zaman) PhD in Economics, is the Executive Director of Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB). Before joining TIB in September 2004, he was Executive Director of Bangladesh Freedom Foundation (1991-2004), Executive Director of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies, Colombo, Sri Lanka (1995-99), Senior Research Fellow and Research Director of the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (1982-95).

He studied in the University of Dhaka, Academy of Economics, Wroclaw, Poland and Central School of Planning and Statistics in Warsaw. He had his post-doctoral fellowship in International Relations Department of University of Tokyo.

Iftekhar was elected to the International Board of Directors of Transparency International in 2008. He was re-elected in 2012 to the TI Board for a second and in 2015 for the third term. Among his other honorary involvements are: Chairperson of Bangladesh Freedom Foundation, Member of the International Commission on Chittagong Hill Tracts and a Member of the International Research Committee of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies. He served as the Chair of the International Committee of the Washington DC-based Council on Foundations (2003-4).

Main areas of his interest and expertise are governance, anti-corruption, people’s engagement and social accountability. He can be contacted by: edtib@ti-bangladesh.org

Bina Agarwal is Professor of Development Economics and Environment at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, UK, and was earlier Director and Professor at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi. She has been President of the International Society for Ecological Economics; President of the International Association for Feminist Economics; and Vice-President of the International Economic Association. She has held distinguished positions at the Universities of Cambridge, Harvard, Princeton, Minnesota and Michigan, and served on advisory boards of several international organisations.

Agarwal pioneered the issue of women’s land rights in her award-winning book: A Field of One’s Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia (Cambridge University Press, 1994). Her 86 academic papers and 13 books also include, Gender and Green Governance (OUP, 2010) and Gender Challenges (OUP, 2016), a three volume compendium of her selected papers. Combining academic excellence with policy advocacy, in 2005 she also led a successful civil society campaign for amending India’s Hindu Inheritance law, to make it gender equal.

Bina Agarwal’s work has garnered many honours, including a Padma Shri from the President of India; several book awards; the Leontief Prize “for advancing the frontiers of economic thought”; the Louis Malassis International Scientist Prize for “an outstanding career in agricultural development”; and the International Balzan Prize, “for challenging established premises in economics and the social sciences by using an innovative gender perspective.”

Dr. Selim Jahan is an economist, a teacher and a writer. He has retired three years ago as the Director of the Human Development Report Office, UNDP. In that capacity, he has served as the Lead Author of the Human Development Report, the flagship publication of the UN. Before assuming that position in 2014, he worked as the Director of the Poverty Reduction Division of UNDP from 2008 to 2014 and was the lead of the organization’s work of the MDGs and the SDGs.

Before joining the United Nations in 1992, he taught economics in the Department of Economics, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh for about 25 years.  He has served as an advisor and a consultant to Bangladesh Planning Commission, World Bank, International Labour Office, the Commonwealth Secretariat as well as other national and international organizations.  He has been a Visiting Fellow at McGill University, Montreal, Canada and School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, USA. He was the General Secretary of the Bangladesh Economic Association in 1991-92.

Dr. Selim Jahan is the author of twelve books and about 150 articles in academic journals. Some of his academic books are Overcoming Human Poverty, Freedom for Choice and Development and Deprivation.

Sohela Nazneen, is a feminist political economist, leading Institute of Development Studies (IDS)’ work on gender, politics and governance. Her main area of research is feminist movements, gender and informal institutions, women’s empowerment and leadership, and violence against women in South Asia and sub Saharan Africa. She has published widely on these issues including in World Development, Contemporary South Asia, Women’s Studies International Forum. Her recent publication includes a book- Negotiating Gender Equity in the Global South: The Politics of Domestic violence Policy (Routledge, 2019);  and a guest edited special double issue of Gender and Development journal (vol 29, issues 2 and 3) on Feminist Protests and Politics in a World of Crisis. She convenes IDS’ flagship MA Gender and Development programme.

Sohela is the lead researcher on a number of projects at IDS related to gender backlash, and the Programme Lead for CLEAR that focuses on social and political impact of Covid-19 in Bangladesh. Sohela has also worked as a consultant for FAO, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, UNDP, SDC, Irish Aid and other development agencies designing interventions and providing policy advise.

Elora Shehabuddin is Professor of Transnational Asian Studies and Core Faculty in the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Rice University. She received her A.B. in social studies from Harvard University and Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University. She is the author of Sisters in the Mirror: A History of Muslim Women and the Global Politics of Feminism (University of California Press, 2021), Reshaping the Holy: Democracy, Development, and Muslim Women in Bangladesh (Columbia University Press, 2008), and Empowering Rural Women: The Impact of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh (Grameen Bank, 1992). She has published articles in Meridians, Economic & Political Weekly, Modern Asian Studies, Signs, Journal of Women’s History, Südasien-Chronik, Journal of Bangladesh Studies, and Asian Survey, as well as chapters in numerous edited volumes. She co-edited a special issue of Feminist Economics on “Gender and Economics in Muslim Communities.” She has received many fellowships, including from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Carnegie Corporation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the American Association of University Women, the Social Science Research Council, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the US Institute of Peace. Professor Shehabuddin currently serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Bangladesh Studies, as an Associate Editor of the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures (Brill), on the Advisory Committee of the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School, and as an elected member (and current chair) of the South Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies.

Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya, a macroeconomist and public policy analyst, is a Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) – a globally reputed think-tank in Bangladesh – where he had been earlier its first Executive Director. He is a member of United Nations Committee for Development Policy (CDP) and also the Chair of two global initiatives, viz. LDC Monitor and Southern Voice. He is a Non-Resident Fellow at Centre for Global Development (CGD). He was the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the WTO, UN Office, and other international organisations in Geneva and Vienna. He was the Special Adviser on LDCs to the Secretary General, UNCTAD and Chair of the UNCTAD Board. Earlier, he had been a Senior Research Fellow at Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS). He holds a PhD in Economics from Plekhanov National Planning Institute, Moscow and had been a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford.

David Lewis is Professor of Anthropology and Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He is author of several books including ‘Bangladesh: Politics, Economy and Civil Society’ (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

Iftikhar Dadi is John H. Burris Professor and Chair of the Department of History of Art, Director of the South Asia Program, and board member of the Institute for Comparative Modernities at Cornell University. He researches modern and contemporary art from a transnational perspective, with an emphasis on methodology and intellectual history, and a focus on South and West Asia. Another research interest examines the film, media, and popular cultures of South Asia, seeking to understand how emergent publics forge new avenues for civic participation. He has authored The Lahore Effect: Cinema Between Realism and Fable (forthcoming), Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia (2010), and edited Anwar Jalal Shemza (2015). He has co-edited Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space (2012); and Unpacking Europe: Towards a Critical Reading (2001). Dadi is an advisor to Asia Art Archive and serves on the editorial and advisory boards of Archives of Asian Art and Bio-Scope: South Asian Screen Studies and was member of the editorial board of Art Journal (2007-11). He received his PhD from Cornell University. As an artist he collaborates with Elizabeth Dadi. Their work investigates the productive capacities of urban informalities in the Global South, and the mass culture of postindustrial societies.

Fakrul Alam is Director, Sheikh Mujib Research Institute for Peace and Liberty and was UGC Professor, Department of English, University of Dhaka.  He received the Bangla Academy Puroshkar (Literature Award) for Translation in 2013. His publications include Bharati Mukherjee (Boston, Twayne Publishers, 1995); Jibanananda Das: Selected Poems (UPL, 1999); South Asian Writers in English (Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2006); Imperial Entanglements and Literature in English (writer’s ink: Dhaka, 2007); and The Essential Tagore (Harvard UP, 2011; with Radha Chakravarty). Other works include translations of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s Unfinished Memoirs (Dhaka: UPL, New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2012) and Prison Diaries (Dhaka: Bangla Academy, 2016), and Ocean of Sorrow, a translation of the late nineteenth century Bengali epic narrative, Bishad Sindhu (Dhaka: Bangla Academy, 2017). Among his most recent publications are the collection of essays Once More into the Past, (Dhaka: Daily Star Books, 2020), a translation of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s New China (Dhaka: Bangla Academy, 2021) and Reading Literature in English and English Studies in Bangladesh: Postcolonial Perspectives (Dhaka: writers.ink: 2021). Forthcoming works include a selection of translations of Rabindranath’s song-lyrics from Tagore’s Gitabitan.

Dr Azfar Hussain is currently Interim Director of the Graduate Program in Social Innovation and  Associate Professor of Integrative, Religious, and Intercultural Studies at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. He is also Vice-President of the Global Center for Advanced Studies (GCAS) based in New York and GCAS Professor of English, World Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies. He taught English, world literature, ethnic studies, and cultural studies at Washington State University, Bowling Green State University, and Oklahoma State University in the US; while, in Bangladesh, he taught English at Jahangirnagar University and North South University. He also taught as Summer Distinguished Professor of English and Humanities at the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh. In addition to authoring/editing several books, Dr. Hussain has published—in both English and Bengali—hundreds of academic, popular, and creative pieces, including translations from several non-western languages, and written on a wide range of topics from Native American poetics to critiques of postmodern–poststructuralist–postcolonial theory to Marxist political economy to “third-world” literatures to imperialism to theories and practices of interdisciplinarity. His latest book in Bengali called Darshanakkhyan (Philosophical Narratives) is an interdisciplinary intervention in the fields of contemporary politics, culture, literature, and philosophy.

Kazi Khaleed Ashraf is an architect, urbanist and architectural historian, and currently directs the Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes and Settlement. He has taught history and theory, and urban design at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in the USA from 2002 to 2015, as well as the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University and Pratt Institute. He received his Masters from MIT and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania.

Ashraf has published widely on architecture in India and Bangladesh, as well as critical writings on urbanism, landscape and architectural theories. His publications include: The Hermit’s Hut: Architecture and Asceticism in India (2013); Designing Dhaka: A Manifesto for a Better City (2012); An Architect in Bangladesh: Conversations with Muzharul Islam (2014); special issue of Architectural Design “Made in India” (2007) that received the Pierre Vago Journalism Award from the International Committee of Architectural Critics; Pundranagar to Sherebanglanagar: Architecture in Bangladesh (with Saif Ul Haque and Raziul Ahsan, 1997),and, Louis Kahn’s National Capital in Bangladesh (1994). His articles and essays have appeared in the Architectural Review, Architectural Design, Journal of Architectural Education, RES, MIMAR and Economic and Political Weekly, and other publications. The exhibition, “An Architecture of Independence: The Making of Modern South Asia,” on four modernist architects from South Asia, was curated by Ashraf and James Belluardo for The Architectural League of New York in 1997.

Adnan Z Morshed is an architect, architectural historian, and professor at the School of Architecture and Planning, Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. He received his Ph.D. and Master’s in architecture from MIT. He currently serves as a Fulbright Specialist (2021-2025) and Executive Director of the Centre for Inclusive Architecture and Urbanism at BRAC University. He was a 2018 TEDxFoggyBottom speaker at George Washington University, Wyeth Fellow at CASVA (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC), and Verville Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution. Morshed is the author of multiple books, including Impossible Heights: Skyscrapers, Flight, and the Master Builder (University Minnesota Press, 2015). He has served on the Board of Directors of the Society of Architectural Historians; MIT’s US$4.5 million Global Architecture History Teaching Collaborative; and the editorial board of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians; and as a juror for the National Endowment for the Humanities grants. He received research grants from, among others, the Graham Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and MIT. His articles appeared in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Journal of Architectural Education, Journal of South Asian Studies, Thresholds (MIT), Constructs (Yale), New Geographies (Harvard), Architectural Design, and Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review. Adnan Morshed is also a practicing architect. His recent design work includes eight BRAC regional offices across Bangladesh.

Tanzim Wahab is a curator, researcher and lecturer. He is the Chief Curator at Bengal Foundation, Dhaka. In his work as a researcher and curator, he has been focused on themes of contextual modernism and contemporary art in South Asia, and possible correspondences between text and visual as a critical cultural production. He has headed several curatorial research projects and exhibitions, including Breaking Ground: Modern Art in Transition– featuring works of the modernist forerunners of Bengal- Gaganendranath Tagore, Jamini Roy, Zainul Abedin, Quamrul Hassan & S M Sultan and Subtext– a pseudo reading room inside gallery space examining the symbiosis of text-based-art and art-based-text. He has been awarded a curatorial grant by The Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA) and Korean Cultural Centre India (KCCI) in 2018 for a project titled (Dis) Place– an exhibition touching upon the thematic of displacement, and looking at the possibility of a post-historical space and function as a symbolic “act of discharge” on Bangladesh’s fractious histories and geographies (with Hadrien Diez). Tanzim was the Vice Principal of Pathshala South Asian Media Institute from 2013 to 2015. He was the co–curator of Chobi Mela Photography Festival, Dhaka at the editions of 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2019.

Dr Fahmida Khatun is currently the Executive Director of the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), a leading think tank in South Asia. She has accomplished her Bachelors and Masters in Economics from Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh. She did another Masters in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics and PhD in Economics from the University College London, UK. She did her Post-Doctoral research at the Earth Institute, Columbia University, USA. She was a Visiting Fellow at Christian Michelsen Institute, Norway, Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade, South Korea and Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy, India.

Dr Khatun’s areas of interest include macroeconomic policy and management, climate change and environmental economics, financial sector, international aid effectiveness, international trade and WTO issues, youth employment, gender issues, interests of Least Developed Countries, and Sustainable Development Goals. She has published extensively at home and abroad. She is a columnist to the Daily Star and contributor to the East Asia Forum.

She was a Director of the state-owned Janata Bank Limited during 2008-2011, and of the SME Foundation of Bangladesh during 2010-2013. She was a member of the Panel of Economists for the Eight Five Year Plan of Bangladesh Planning Commission.

Iftekhar Iqbal is at the Universiti Brunei Darussalam and studies environmental and intellectual history of Southern Asia and Bangladesh. Prior to joining UBD, he held appointments at the University of Dhaka, North South University, King’s College London and Humboldt University Berlin. He is recipient of fellowships with the British Academy, Aga Khan University (ISMC) London, Humboldt Foundation and Bangladesh National Archives. Iqbal’s The Bengal Delta. Ecology, State and Social Change 1840-1943 (Palgrave Macmillan 2010) received Bangladesh University Grants Commission Book Award and Honorable Mention from the inaugural Bernard S. Cohn Book Prize Committee of the Association for Asian Studies. Iqbal’ recent publications include University of Dhaka. Making Unmaking Remaking (Prothoma 2016), co-edited with Imtiaz Ahmed.  Iqbal is currently exploring the connected history of the Tibetan rivers. A list of Iftekhar Iqbal’s publications can be found at https://ubd.academia.edu/IftekharIqbal

Rizwanul Islam is former Special Adviser, Employment Sector, International Labour Office, Geneva, and has held various directorial positions at the ILO. Before joining the ILO, he was Associate Professor of Economics at Dhaka University. Currently, he holds visiting positions at several research institutes in Bangladesh and abroad.

Dr. Islam did his Ph.D. in Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science under the supervision of Professor (Nobel Laureate) Amartya Sen. He topped in all public examinations in Bangladesh – starting from the Secondary School Certificate up to Masters in Economics at Dhaka University and received Commonwealth Scholarship for doing his Ph.D. at the LSE.

Dr. Islam specializes in development economics with particular focus on employment, poverty and income distribution and has published a number of journal articles and books in this field. His recent books include (i) Full and Productive Employment in Developing Economies: Towards the Sustainable Development Goals (Routledge, London, 2020), and (ii) Employment and Inclusive Development (jointly with Iyanatul Islam), Routledge, London, 2015. His books in Bengali include উন্নয়নের অর্থনীতি (ইউপিএল), উন্নয়ন ভাবনায় কর্মসংস্থান ও শ্রমবাজার (ইউপিএল), এবং করোনাঘাতে অর্থনীতি ও শ্রমবাজার (বাতিঘর) |

Dr Khondaker Golam Moazzem is industrial and labour economist by profession. He is currently the research director at the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD). His major area of interests include global value chain development, gender and development, world of work, decent employment, social dialogue, corporate accountability, private investment including FDI, SDGs, trade, connectivity, LDC graduation and development of industrial enterprises and entrepreneurship development. Dr Moazzem holds a PhD from the Kyoto University, Japan. He was a visiting fellow at the Centre for South East Asian Studies (CSEAS), Kyoto University.  He worked as a member of various committees at both the national and international levels. At present, he is a member of eminent persons – an advisory group formed under the External Affairs Division (ERD) of the Ministry of Planning, Government of Bangladesh. He is one of the panel of advisors of the apex business body of Bangladesh – Federation of Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI). Dr Moazzem has published numerous articles in international peer-reviewed journals and several book chapters and co-authored books published by CPD.

Professor Rehman Sobhan has served as a Professor of Economics, Dhaka University, Member, Bangladesh Planning Commission, Director General, Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, Visiting Fellow, Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford, Founder and Executive Chairman, Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), Executive Director, South Asia Centre for Policy Studies (SACEPS) and is currently Chairman, CPD. In 1991 he served as a member of the first caretaker government headed by President Shahabuddin Ahmed. He has held a number of important professional positions which include President, Bangladesh Economic Association, Member, U.N. Committee for Development Planning, Member, Governing Council of the U.N. University, Tokyo, Member of the Group of Emminent Persons appointed by the SAARC Heads of State to review the future of SAARC and Chairman of the Board of Grameen Bank.

Professor Sobhan was actively associated with the Bengali nationalist movement in the 1960s and the Bangladesh liberation struggle in 1971 where he was designated as Envoy Extraordinary in charge of economic affairs by the first Bangladesh government. He has been awarded the Shadinata Purushker, the nation’s highest civilian award and was the first recipient of the Bangladesh Bank Purushkar for services to economics.

He has published a large number of books, research monographs and articles published in professional journals, relating to the political economy of development, public enterprise and privatization, foreign aid, petropolitics, agrarian reform, regional cooperation in South Asia, democracy and governance. His most recent works include, Challenging the Injustice of Poverty: Agendas for Inclusive Development in South Asia (2010), his memoir, Untranquil Recollections: The Years of Fulfillment (2015), both published by Sage and From Two Economies to Two Nations: My Journey to Bangladesh (2016), published by Daily Star Books. Second volume of his memoir Untranquil Recollections: Nation Building in Post-Liberation Bangladesh (2021) published by Sage.

Professor Rounaq Jahan is a Distinguished Fellow of CPD. She was a Senior Research Scholar and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University (1990-2010) and a Professor of Political Science at Dhaka University (1970-1982). She headed the Women’s programs at UNAPDC (1982-84) and the ILO (1985-89). She was a Research Fellow at Harvard, Chicago and Boston universities and was the Rajni Kothari Professor at CSDS, Delhi, in 2010.

Professor Jahan received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University.

She is the author of Pakistan: Failure in National Integration, Columbia University Press, 1972; Women and Development: Perspectives from South and South East Asia (co-editor), BILIA 1979; Bangladesh Politics: Problems and Issues, UPL, 1980 and 2005; The Elusive Agenda: Mainstreaming Women in Development, Zed Books, 1995; Bangladesh: Promise and Performance (editor), Zed Books, 2000; Political Parties in Bangladesh: Challenges of Democratization, Prothoma 2015.

Professor Jahan is the Founder-President of Women for Women. She served on the Boards of the Population Council and International Council of the Asia Society, New York. At present, she is on the Boards of RIB and the CPD. She is on the Advisory Board of Human Rights Watch: Asia, New York, South Asia Program of Cornell University, Journal of Human Rights (U-Conn), Journal of Bangladesh Studies (BDI), Social Change (Sage, India), and Protichinta (Prothoma). She is the Chair of the Advisory Group of Bangladesh Health Watch.

Professor Jahan represented Bangladesh in the 32nd Session of the UN General Assembly in 1977 and participated in the drafting of CEDAW. She was awarded the Radcliffe Institute Graduate Society award of Harvard University in 2008.

Naila Kabeer is Joint Professor of Gender and International Development at the Departments of International Development and Gender Studies at the London School of Economics. She has had extensive experience in teaching, training and advisory work in the field of gender, poverty, livelihoods and citizenship. Much of her research is focused on South Asia, particularly Bangladesh. Her publications include ‘The power to choose: Bangladeshi women and labour market decisions in London and Dhaka’ (Verso Press); ‘Mainstreaming gender and social protection in the informal economy’ (Commonwealth Secretariat/Routledge) and ‘Beyond the weapons of the weak: organizing women in the informal economy’ (Zed Press), She recently co-edited a Special Issue of Feminist Economics on Feminist Economic Perspectives on Gender and Covid-19  (https://www.lse.ac.uk/Events/2021/02/202102181600/gender).  She is on the editorial board of Feminist Economics and of Development and Change and on the advisory group of the Better Works Program, ILO, Geneva.  She has worked with a range of non-governmental organizations, including BRAC (Bangladesh), PRADAN (India), OXFAM (UK), bilateral agencies, including DFID (UK), SIDA (Sweden) and NORAD (Norway) as well as multilateral organizations such as the World Bank, UN-Women and the ILO.

Nazrul Islam, currently the Chief of Development Research of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, is an eminent economist from Bangladesh. He received his Ph. D. and A. M. in economics from Harvard University and M. Sc (Econ)from Moscow State University. Before joining the United Nations, Islam taught economics at Dhaka University, Harvard University, Emory University, Kyushu University, and St. John’s University.

Through his research and publications, Islam has made his mark in several areas of economics, including empirics of growth, transition from planned to market-based economics, political economy, and sustainable development. He has authored twenty books and numerous articles in reputed international journals.

Bangladesh development issues have always been a core of Islam’s research agenda, with two books on the subject — On Bangladesh Development Strategy Issue (1984) and Development Problem of Bangladesh (1987) – appearing the 1980s. He followed up on them with several recent books, including Villages of Bangladesh: Past and Future (2011), Bangladesh of the Future (2012), Governance for Development: Political and Administrative Reforms in Bangladesh (2016), and Bangabandhu’s Dream and Bangladesh’s Villages (2017). Islam has also written extensively on the environmental sustainability issues of development in Bangladesh.

Prof. Saleemul Huq is the Director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) and Professor at the Independent University Bangladesh (IUB) as well as Associate of the International Institute on Environment and Development (IIED) in the United Kingdom as well as the Chair of the Expert Advisory Group for the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) and also Senior Adviser on Locally Led Adaptation with Global Centre on Adaptation (GCA) headquartered in the Netherlands.

He is an expert in adaptation to climate change in the most Vulnerable developing countries and has been a lead author of the third , fourth and fifth assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and he also advises the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). He has published hundreds of scientific as well as popular articles and was recognised as one of the top twenty global influencers on climate change policy in 2019 and top scientist from Bangladesh on climate change science.

Dr Fahmida Khatun is currently the Executive Director of the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), a leading think tank in South Asia. She has accomplished her Bachelors and Masters in Economics from Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh. She did another Masters in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics and PhD in Economics from the University College London, UK. She did her Post-Doctoral research at the Earth Institute, Columbia University, USA. She was a Visiting Fellow at Christian Michelsen Institute, Norway, Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade, South Korea and Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy, India.

Dr Khatun’s areas of interest include macroeconomic policy and management, climate change and environmental economics, financial sector, international aid effectiveness, international trade and WTO issues, youth employment, gender issues, interests of Least Developed Countries, and Sustainable Development Goals. She has published extensively at home and abroad. She is a columnist to the Daily Star and contributor to the East Asia Forum.

She was a Director of the state-owned Janata Bank Limited during 2008-2011, and of the SME Foundation of Bangladesh during 2010-2013. She was a member of the Panel of Economists for the Eight Five Year Plan of Bangladesh Planning Commission.

Iftikhar Dadi is John H. Burris Professor and Chair of the Department of History of Art, Director of the South Asia Program, and board member of the Institute for Comparative Modernities at Cornell University. He researches modern and contemporary art from a transnational perspective, with an emphasis on methodology and intellectual history, and a focus on South and West Asia. Another research interest examines the film, media, and popular cultures of South Asia, seeking to understand how emergent publics forge new avenues for civic participation. He has authored The Lahore Effect: Cinema Between Realism and Fable (forthcoming), Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia (2010), and edited Anwar Jalal Shemza (2015). He has co-edited Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space (2012); and Unpacking Europe: Towards a Critical Reading (2001). Dadi is an advisor to Asia Art Archive and serves on the editorial and advisory boards of Archives of Asian Art and Bio-Scope: South Asian Screen Studies and was member of the editorial board of Art Journal (2007-11). He received his PhD from Cornell University. As an artist he collaborates with Elizabeth Dadi. Their work investigates the productive capacities of urban informalities in the Global South, and the mass culture of postindustrial societies.