Social Science Research Council

Dipak Gyawali is chair of the South Asia Regional Advisory Panel. He is a member of the Royal Nepal Academy of Science and one of the leading scholars of the environment, especially water, in South Asia. He is the editor of "Water Nepal" and the author of numerous articles and book chapters. His most recent publication is Water in Nepal (Himal: Kathmandu 2001), which is being republished by Zed Books, London.

Imtiaz Ahmed is a professor and chair of the department of international relations at Dhaka University. He also directs the Centre for Alternatives, Dhaka. He is the author of numerous books and articles on South Asian security, Indian foreign policy, refugees and the environment, and South Asians in Japan. He is the editor of two journals, "Theoretical Perspectives" and "Afro- Asian Dialogue", the latter is jointly published with Codesria, Dakar.

Sajeda Amin is a senior research associate at the Population Council, New York. She is the author of numerous publications in the field of demography, women studies, globalization and labour. Her present research is on garment workers in Bangladesh.

Partha Chatterjee is professor of political science at the Centre for the Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta and professor of anthropology at Columbia University, New York. He is director of CSSS, Calcutta, and a founding member of the subaltern studies collective. He is the author of numerous books and articles, most recently A Princely Impostor? (2002) published by Princeton University Press.

Hameeda Hossain has a Ph.D. in modern history from Oxford University and is currently director research of a leading legal aid and human rights organization, Ain-o-Salish Kendra (ASK) in Dhaka. She is editor of "Human Rights in Bangladesh" which is published by ASK every year. Aside from the publication of Cotton Weavers of Bengal The East India Company and Textile Production in Bengal 1750-1813, and No Better Options? Women Industrial Workers in Bangladesh, she has written a wide range of papers on Bangladesh's traditional forms of production, women's work and women's rights. She is an internationally known human rights activist and is currently on the Governing Board of BRAC University.

Saba Khattak is a senior fellow and executive director of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) in Islamabad, Pakistan. Dr. Khattak specializes in comparative politics and her research interests revolve around the political economy of development, feminist and political theory with special emphasis on state theory. She is the author of several articles and essays, most recently "Violence and Home: Afghan women's experience of displacement" in Understanding September 11 (The New Press, 2002); and, "Subcontracted work and gender issues: The case of Pakistan" in The Hidden Assembly Line: Gender Dynamics of Subcontracted Work in a Global Economy (New York: Kumarian Press, 2001).

Neloufer de Mel is Director of Studies, Faculty of Arts, and a senior lecturer at the Department of English, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. She is also a faculty member of the MA in Women's Studies program at the University of Colombo. Her research interests include gender, postcolonial literature, nationalism, militarism and popular culture. Her most recent book is Women and the Nation's Narrative: Gender and Nationalism in Twentieth Century Sri Lanka (Kali for Women, New Delhi, 2001). She is co-editor of the anthology Writing an Inheritance: Women's Writing in Sri Lanka 1860 - 1948 (WERC, Colombo, forthcoming).

M.S.S. Pandian was trained as an economic historian. His present interests include cultural studies, caste and nationalism, and globalization and Third World cities. He was a research fellow at the Madras Institute of Development Studies and has taught at the University of Wisconsin and George Washington University. Currently he is an Honorary Visiting Fellow, Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. He is a member of the subaltern studies editorial collective.

Jayadeva Uyangoda is professor of political science at Colombo University. He is a leading human rights activist and public intellectual in Sri Lanka. He is the founding editor of "Pravada" and the Social Scientists Association. He is the author of numerous articles and book chapters and the co-editor of Essays in Constitutional Reform (1994), and Matters of Violence, Reflections on Social and Political Violence in Sri Lanka (1997). He is presently working on a book to be titled Sri Lanka: Modernity, Social Change and Claims of Justice.

Willem van Schendel is professor of Asian history at the University of Amsterdam and senior research fellow at the International Institute of Social History. He is the author of a number of articles and books on rural Bangladesh and South Asia including Three Deltas : accumulation and poverty in rural Burma, Bengal and South India. His present research is on the relationship of borders and illicitness.