Afia Salam
Afia Salam is a journalist with four decades of experience in print, electronic and web. She holds a Masters in Geography and is a LEAD, FNF’s International Academy of Leadership & Australia Awards Fellow, member of PUAN, IUCN Commission on Education & Communications and Commission on Economic & Social Policy. She is also a member of Pakistan’s national coordinating body for Marine Protected Areas. She highlights issues related to environment and climate change through her writings, does advocacy through seminars and moderates panel discussions and round tables. She is also a development practitioner, elected President of Baanhn Beli and Chair Board of Trustees Indus Earth Trust. She is currently a member of the Prime Minister’s advisory body, National Climate Change Council, Pakistan. She can be reached on Twitter @afiasalam
Ammu Joseph
Ammu Joseph is an independent journalist and author based in Bangalore, India. Among her publications are six books: two on gender & media (Whose News? The Media and Women’s Issues and Making News: Women in Journalism), three on gender & Indian literature, and one a collection of women’s writings (Terror, Counter-Terror: Women Speak Out). She has contributed to many other books and publications, both Indian and international (including several UNESCO initiatives). She was South Asia coordinator for the IWMF’s Global Research on Women in the News Media and has been involved with the Global Media Monitoring Project in India since 2010. She has served on the visiting faculty of several institutions of media education and is a founder-member of the Network of Women in Media, India. With degrees in English Literature (Madras University) and Public Communications (Syracuse University), she began her career with Eve’s Weekly, in Mumbai in 1977. In her last full-time job within the press, she was editor of the Sunday magazine of The Indian Post, Mumbai.
Ayesha Kabir
Ayesha Kabir is Head of English Web at Bangladesh’s highest circulated newspaper Prothom Alo. She has had over 20 years of experience in journalism. Her main focus of interest is politics and security, particularly that of Bangladesh and South Asia. Her professional career has taken her to Nepal, Pakistan, India, Hong Kong, UK, Switzerland, the Netherlands and many other countries, reporting on current affairs, attending international conferences and networking. Having done her Bachelors and Masters degrees in English from Dhaka University, Ayesha Kabir has worked for the weekly Dhaka Courier as assistant editor, PROBE News Weekly as associate editor and has also freelanced for an extended stint. Given the present national, regional and global circumstances, Ms Kabir has also been focussing on the emergence of extremism, radicalisation, terrorism and militancy, particularly in the context of Bangladesh.
Kanak Mani Dixit
Writer and journalist Kanak Mani Dixit is a vocal Southasia regionalist and visionary. He is a civil rights and democracy activist besides being a campaigner for open urban spaces in his native Nepal. He is also active in the conservation of built heritage. He helped revive Nepal’s only public bus company, introducing the concept of public transportation to the Valley. A long-time trekker, he also writes on travel related themes. Having narrowly surviving a fall while trekking in 2001, he helped start the Spinal Injury Rehabilitation Centre. Believing the power of non-fiction film, he started and heads the Film South Asia Festival of Documentaries. Kanak translates and authors political commentaries, and is also a popular author of children’s books. He received the Prince Claus Award of the Netherlands in 2009. He heads the main archives of the Nepali language, the Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya and his own writings are archived at www.kanakmanidixit.com
Kathy Gannon
Kathy Gannon covered Afghanistan and Pakistan for 35 years, including as chief correspondent and later news director of The Associated Press, based in Islamabad. She has also covered the 2006 war in south Lebanon, the Iraq war, the Central Asian States, and Azerbaijan. A Canadian citizen living in Pakistan, Gannon was the only Western journalist allowed in Kabul by the Taliban in the weeks preceding the 2001 US-British offensive in Afghanistan. She was the 2022 fall semester Joan Shorenstein Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Namrata Sharma
Namrata Sharma is a freelance journalist in Nepal. Her writings have been published nationally and internationally, and she has over 30 years of work experience in journalism and women’s rights in Nepal, UK, Kenya, India and Afghanistan. She has spearheaded campaigns to abolish violence against women, and also works on areas related to sustainable development, microfinance, decentralization, life skills training, and gender equality. She is former President of Center for Investigative Journalism (CIJ), Nepal, former Editor of the quarterly magazine Nariswor, and the weekly English newspaper The Independent. She has presented papers in various international events around in Asia, North America, Europe and Africa, besides hosting international workshops, trainings and seminars on microfinance. She founded the Centre for Micro-Finance in Nepal and was the first Director of the Indian School of Microfinance for Women, Ahmedabad, India. She sits on the board of several organisations in Nepal, and India, and was the Asia Regional coordinator for a global Action Research project on Impact Assessment of Micro-Finance Institutions (MFIs) anchored by IDS, Sussex University; and HIV/AIDs and Microfinance anchored by UNDP. A former Visiting Research Fellow with The University of Bath conducting research with Dr. Susan Johnson on the management and governance challenges in user owned microfinance groups in Kenya. Namrata has headed the Knowledge Management and Training department of MicroSave India.
Raza Ahmad Rumi
Raza Ahmad Rumi is former director, Park Center for Independent Media, Ithaca College and visiting faculty at Cornell Institute for Public Affairs. He is editor, The Friday Times and founder of NayaDaur Media. He is a member of the think tank Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, Georgetown University; and a nonresident fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs. He was a fellow at the New America Foundation, United States Institute of Peace and the National Endowment for Democracy. He has authored several books including Delhi by Heart: Impressions of a Pakistani Traveller, The Fractious Path: Pakistan’s Democratic Transition, Identity, Faith and Conflict and Being Pakistani: Society Culture and the Arts. He co-edited a volume of essays entitled Rethinking Pakistan, Anthem Press, September 2020.
Richard McGill Murphy
Richard McGill Murphy is a journalist and publisher who has produced award-winning coverage of business, technology and international affairs. He has deep experience working in South Asia as a foreign correspondent, documentarian and ethnographer. Murphy studied literature at Harvard College and started his journalism career in Afghanistan. He earned a doctorate in social anthropology from Oxford University based on fieldwork in Lahore, Pakistan, where he was a Fulbright Scholar.
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