Fahad Shah is a journalist and editor who mainly focuses on human rights, politics, economy and social issues in South Asia. In 2011, he founded The Kashmir Walla, an independent digital media outlet known for its fearless reporting on politics, culture, and human rights in the region. Shah has been published in over three dozen international publications, including The Atlantic, Christian Science Monitor, Time, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, South China Morning Post, The Nation, Spiegel, The Guardian, and Al Jazeera. He has also produced documentaries and news videos for Channel4, Al Jazeera, TRT World, Business Insider, and SCMP Films. A recipient of the prestigious Human Rights Press Award in 2021, his work has also been supported by grants from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and the National Geographic Society. Beyond journalism, Shah has contributed to academic circles, serving as a researcher and consultant on Kashmiri affairs for international think tanks. 

Thin Lei Win is an award-winning Europe-based multimedia investigative journalist specialising in food and climate issues. She is Lead Reporter for the Food Systems Newsroom of Lighthouse Reports, a collaborative journalism outlet focusing on public interest investigations, curates her own newsletter Thin Ink and hosts The Index, a podcast based on the Global Organised Crime Index.  Born and raised in Myanmar, Thin is also the co-founder of The Kite Tales, a unique preservation project chronicling the lives and histories of ordinary people across Myanmar and which has been supporting Myanmar storytellers since the military seized power in February 2021. Her extensive global experience includes nearly 13 years as an international correspondent for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the non-profit arm of the Thomson Reuters media company, and setting up Myanmar Now, an award-winning bilingual news agency, in the run-up to Myanmar's historic 2015 elections.  

Salil Tripathi is a board member of PEN International, where he has chaired its Writers in Prison Committee. He is also a trustee of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative and has been a researcher at Amnesty International. At the Institute for Human Rights and Business, he is a senior adviser, working on discrimination, technology, and conflict. He is also a senior associate at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainable Leadership. He is the author of four works of non-fiction: Offence: The Hindu Case about freedom of expression and Hindu nationalism; Detours: Songs of the Open Road, a collection of travel essays, and The Colonel Who Would Not Repent, an account of Bangladesh's war of independence and its aftermath. He recently co-edited, with Shilpa Gupta, a volume of writings by imprisoned poets, called For, In Your Tongue, I Cannot Fit. 

Geoffrey Robertson KC has had a distinguished career as a trial counsel and human rights advocate. He has been a United Nations war crimes judge, a counsel in many notable trials, has defended hundreds of people facing death sentences in the Caribbean and has won landmark ruling on civil liberty from the highest courts in Britain, Europe and the Commonwealth.  He is founder and joint head of Doughty Street Chambers, the largest human rights practice in Europe, a Master of the Middle Temple and a visiting professor at the New College of Humanities in London.

His books include Crimes Against Humanity, an inspiration for the global justice movement. Geoffrey’s many awards include a Freedom of Information award for his writing and broadcasting, the New York Bar Association’s Award for Distinction in International Laws and Affairs, and the Australian Humanitarian of the Year in 2014.  In 2018 he was awarded an Order of Australia for “his distinguished service to the law and legal profession as an international human rights lawyer and advocate for global civil liberties”.  

Dr Roja Fazaeli is Professor in Islamic Civilisations and a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin.  Roja has published widely on the subjects of Islamic feminisms, women religious authorities, woman’s rights in Iran and the relationship between human rights and religion.  She is currently the chairperson of the board of directors of the Immigrant Council of Ireland and a member of the board of directors of Front Line Defenders, Scholars at Risk Europe and Iran Academia. Roja has been the Scholars at Risk representative at Trinity College since 2009 and was previously on the boards of the Irish Refugee Council, Azadi Andisheh (the Association for Freedom of Thought) and Amnesty International Ireland.

Dr Jacqueline Dugard is a senior lecturer in the discipline of Human Rights at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights and the Department of Political Science, Columbia University.  Prior to this, Jackie was an Associate Professor in the School of Law at the University of the Witwatersrand, where she is now a Visiting Professor.  She was a co-founder and the first Executive Director of the non-governmental organisation, Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa and the founding first Director of the Gender Equality Office at Witwatersrand. She is a Global Fellow at the Centre on Law and Social Transformation (U of Bergen, Norway), an Associate Senior Researcher at the Chr. Michelsen Institute and an Affiliate at the Centre for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University’s School of Law.

Bidisha Mamata is a broadcaster, journalist and multimedia artist. She specialises in international human rights, social justice and the arts and offers political analysis, arts critique and cultural diplomacy tying these interests together. She writes for the main UK broadsheets and presents and is a regular comentator for BBC TV and radio, ITN, CNN, ViacomCBS and Sky News. Her fifth book,  Asylum and Exile: Hidden Voices of London (2015), is based on her outreach work in UK prisons, refugee charities and detention centres. Her first 2018 short film, An Impossible Poison,  has been highly acclaimed and selected for numerous international film festivals. Her 2020 film series, Aurora, is in development. She is presentator for the Hello Happiness audio series for Wellcome Collection, all about mental and physical health. 

Avril Benoît is the executive director of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières in the US, based in New York City. She has worked with the international medical humanitarian organization since 2006 in various operational management and executive leadership roles, most recently as the director of communications and development at MSF’s operational centre in Geneva. Throughout her career with MSF, Avril has contributed to major movement-wide initiatives, including the global mobilization to end attacks on hospitals and health workers. She also has worked as a country director and project coordinator for MSF, leading operations to provide aid to refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants in Mauritania, South Sudan, and South Africa. Prior to joining MS, Avril had a distinguished 20-year career as an award-winning journalist and broadcaster in Canada.

Befekadu Hailu Techane is a civil society leader, author and an advocate for human rights democracy in Ethiopia. He is co-founder and Executive Director at the Centre for Advancement of Rights and Democracy (CARD), an Ethiopian civil society organisation. He was a co-founder of the renowned Zone 9 Blogging and Activism Collective, served as an editor and opinion writer for many local print media outlets and is a weekly contributor to Deutsche Welle (Amharic Service).  He was imprisoned in Ethiopia for his human rights activism in 2014 and again in 2016 but acquitted both times. Befekadu’s work has been recognised through several human rights awards including a PEN Pinter Prize for International Writer of Courage, a Sakharov Fellowship from the European Parliament and a Freedom Fellowship from the Human Rights Foundation.

Adrienne Loftus Parkins is an international literary consultant and founder/former director of the Asia House Festival of Asian Literature. In her current roles as Advisor to Bangkok Edge, a co-founder of M Fest–Festival of Muslim Cultures & Ideas and as a member of the steering committee of the international DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, she has the opportunity promote literature as a tool of cultural understanding across many countries. Adrienne co-founded Anamika, a women’s educational group in India, headed the National Museums’ public lecture programme in Singapore and worked with the Pan Asian Women’s Association to promote Asian women writers. In 2019 Adrienne was a Moore Prize Judge. 

Minh Bui Jones was the founder and editor of Mekong Review, a quarterly English-language magazine of arts, literature, culture, politics, the environment and society in Asia. Bui Jones is a Vietnamese-Australian journalist who has worked for SBS-TV, the Sydney Morning Herald and Asia Times Online. He was the founder of The Diplomat and American Review. With the founding of Mekong Review in 2015, he has established himself as one of Asia’s leading literary publishers. 

Debbie Stothard is an active promoter of human rights in Burma where she developed the first ongoing women-specific training program for Burma. In 1996, she founded the Alternative Asean Network on Burma (Altsean-Burma). During her 32 year career, she has worked as a journalist, community education consultant, governmental advisor and trainer in Malaysia, Australia and Thailand. She has worked with UN and Asean institutions as well as several governments in Asia, North America and Europe. She became Deputy Secretary-General of the FIDH in November 2010. Between 2010 and 2013, she represented FIDH on missions or at conferences in Belgium, Brazil, Burma, France, India, Malaysia, Maldives, Peru, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, and the United States. She was elected secretary general of FIDH in May 2013.

Jonathan Head is the long time South East Asia Correspondent for BBC News. He was formerly the BBC Indonesia Correspondent, South East Asia Correspondent, Tokyo Correspondent and Turkey Correspondent, with over 20 years' experience as a reporter, programme editor and producer for BBC radio and television. Jonathan won a Peabody Award in 2019 for his role on the BBC’s “Plight of Rohingya Refugees.” coverage of the Rohingya refugee crisis in Burma.

Djamila Ribeiro has a master's degree in Political Philosophy from the Federal University of São Paulo. She is the coordinator of the Sueli Carneiro editorial Seal and the Plural Feminisms Collection. She is the author of several books, including “Lugar de Fala” (Seal Sueli Carneiro / Pólen Livros), “Who's afraid of Black Feminism?” and “A Short anti-racist guide” (both by Companhia das Letras). She is also a guest professor in the journalism department at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP). A Columnist for Folha de S. Paulo newspaper and Elle magazine, Djamila became the Deputy Assistant of Human Rights for the city of  São Paulo in 2016. She was awarded the 2019 Prince Claus Award, granted by the Kingdom of the Netherlands and considered by the BBC one of the 100 most influential women in the world, the same year. 

Catherine Morris has been engaged in teaching, research, monitoring and advocacy on international human rights since 2004. She works in Canada and internationally in academic, community, non-profit, public and private sectors. She is the Executive Director of Lawyers' Rights Watch Canada and has represented LRWC at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva since 2011. She has been a leader in the field of conflict resolution since 1983 and is the founder of Peacemakers Trust, a Canadian non-profit organization for education and research in conflict resolution and peacebuilding.

Sam Zarifi became the Secretary General of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) in 2017. An Iranian-American lawyer, Zarifi joined the ICJin 2012 as Regional Director for the Asia & Pacific Region. Prior to joining the ICJ, he served as Amnesty International’s director for Asia and the Pacificfrom 2008 to 2012, and before that worked at Human Rights Watch from 2000.

Adrienne Loftus Parkins is the Founder and former Director of the Asia House Festival of Asian Literature, the only festival in the UK dedicated toAsian writing. Adrienne co-founded Anamika, a women’s educational group in India, has worked closely with the Pan Asian Women’s Association to promote Asian women writers, and is a cross-cultural consultant to businesses.

Phil Robertson is the Deputy Director of the Asia Division at Human Rights Watch. He previously worked as program manager of the UN Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking, for Chemonics International and for the International Organization for Migration.

Randy Boyagoda is a Canadian writer, intellectual and critic best known for his novels Governor of the Northern Province (2006) and Beggar's Feast (2011) and his biography of Richard John Neuhaus (2015). He is a member of the University of Toronto's English Department served as the President of PEN Canada from 2015-2017. His latest novel is Original Prin.

Carmen Boullosa has had established a reputation as one of Mexico’s most admired writers. Her work examines issues of feminism and gender roles within a Latin American context. She has won a number of awards for her works and has taught at universities such as Georgetown University, Columbia University and New York University (NYU), the City College of New York and Blaise Pascal University in Clermont Ferrand, France. She is now a professor at Macaulay Honors College.

George Fetherling is one of Canada’s most prolific person of letters, who has written or edited more than fifty books, including a dozen volumes of poetry, four book-length fictions, and a two-volume memoir. 

M. R. Narisa Chakrabongse is the founder and CEO of River Books and founder/director Bangkok Edge Ideas Festival. She has co-written several books on Thai history and is the founding president of the Green World Foundation, promoting awareness of environmental issues in schools. 

Dr. Ma Thida is a Burmese author, surgeon and former political prisoner. Her notable published works include The Sunflower, The Roadmap and Sanchaung, Insein, Harvard. She is the recipient of the Reebok Human Rights Award and the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award. Dr Ma was a fellow at Brown University and Harvard Universities. She is the president of PEN Myanmar. 

Christopher G. Moore, a Canadian novelist and essayist, is founder of the Foundation. Moore is the author of the award-winning Vincent Calvino series and a number of literary novels and non-fiction books. His books have been translated into 13 languages. In 1019, he Founded CCCL (Changing Climate, Changing Lives) which holds a film festival for the best short film showing the impact of climate change in Thailand.