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.