Tulsi Ram Pandey is Assistant Professor at the Central Department of Sociology/Anthropology, Tribhuvan University. He is a PhD from Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi.  He teaches sociological theories, social development, and social movements to Masters and MPhil level students and supervises PhD scholars. He has researched and written extensively on social change and resource use and management at the community level. His publications include ‘Quest of a Federal State: Understanding Issues of Social Diversity and Differences’ in Ethnicity and Federalization: Proceedings of an International Seminar, Kathmandu:Central Department of Sociology/ Anthropology, Tribhuvan University and Social Inclusion Research Fund, SNV, 2012; ‘Social Change and Political Participation’ in Lok Raj Baral (ed.) Nepal: Quest for Participatory Democracy, 2006; ‘The Failure of Confidence Mechanisms: Reflections on the 1990s Social Change Movement in…

Uddhab Pyakurel is a PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and is lecturer at Kathmandu University, Nepal. He is also associated with Nepal Center for Contemporary Studies (NCCS). He contributes articles to journals and newspapers on poverty, people’s participation, social inclusion/exclusion, state restructuring, micro-credit, gender, conflict, identity, democracy, election, Indo-Nepal relations and other socio-political issues. He is the author of ‘Maoist Movement in Nepal: A Sociological Perspective’ (2007).  

Ram Bahadur Chhetri received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Hawaii, USA (1990) and is currently a Professor at the Central Department of Sociology/Anthropology, Tribhuvan University, where he also served as Head of Department (2003-2007). He was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Department of Anthropology, the University of Georgia (1997-1998) and a visiting faculty member at the Institute of Social Studies, The Netherlands (2005). He has provided professional services in the capacity of a social scientist, consultant, and team leader and team member in various socio-economic studies, evaluations, tasks related to preparation of project documents/management plans, and other types of studies to various national and international organizations (such as ICIMOD, Australian Forestry Project, DANIDA, GTZ, CARE Nepal, WWF, FAO and ACAP). He has several publications under his…

Mahendra P Lama is the Founding Vice-Chancellor of the Central University of Sikkim in India. Central to his intellectual pursuits is development and cooperation in South and South East Asia. While teaching economic cooperation and integration in South Asia and India’s Foreign Economic Policy, he does extensive research with distinct policy slants. Besides authoring and editing 15 books, he has extensively worked on the issues of human security, migration, refugees, trade, investment and energy cooperation in South Asia and has produced very widely acclaimed reports and studies. His most recent book is Human Security in India: Discourse, Practices and Policy Implications (2010). Till very recently, he was Professor of South Asian Economies and the Chairman of the Centre for South, Central, South East Asia and South West Pacific Studies, School…

Hilary Silver is Professor of Sociology and Urban Studies at Brown University and Director of the Urban Studies Program there. She is also Editor of City & Community, the urban sociology journal of the American Sociological Association, and Research Affiliate at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University. Her broad research focus is social exclusion, including urban poverty, homelessness, racial discrimination, immigrant integration, and long-term unemployment. Her book, Social Exclusion, will be published by Polity Press next year.    

Mukta Singh Tamang is a socio-cultural anthropologist and teaches at the Central Department of Sociology/Anthropology at Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu. His research interest includes indigeneity, history, memory, identity, social inclusion, equality and human rights in Nepal and the South Asian region. He is currently working on a book project on Tamang history and identity based on his ethnographic research and has published several articles on the themes of indigenous activism, democracy, diversity, Maoist movement, and state structuring. He received his PhD from Cornell University.  He is also a Visiting Fellow at Goldsmiths College, University of London and Jawaharlal Nehru University as a part of a joint research project on 'Social Inequality and Affirmative Action in South Asia'.

Marc Galanter, the John and Rylla Bosshard Professor of Law and South Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and LSE Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, studies litigation, lawyers, and legal culture. He is the author of a number of highly regarded and seminal studies of litigation and disputing in the United States (including ‘Why the ‘Haves’ Come Out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal Change’, one of the most-cited articles in the legal literature. His work includes pioneering studies on the impact of disputant capabilities in adjudication, the relation of public legal institutions to informal regulation, and patterns of litigation in the United States. Prof Galanter was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Delhi, a Fellow of the American Institute of…