Anjoo Sharan Upadhyaya is the India Chair of the Central Department of Political Science at Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu. She is on deputation from Banaras Hindu University, where she is a Professor of Political Science. Prof Upadhyaya holds a PhD from Banaras Hindu University and a Master’s from Allahabad University. She has done post-doctoral research at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington DC; and The London School of Economics. She has published extensively both nationally and internationally on issues of self-determination, ethnicity, conflict, federalism, gender, and development. She has travelled and lectured extensively in the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia.

Anand Teltumbde is an activist, writer, and public intellectual engaged with the issues of class, caste, communalism, and political economy impacting masses of people. He has written eighteen books and numerous papers/articles which are widely translated in most Indian languages and published in all leading newspapers and journals. Among his recent books are The Persistence of Caste: India's Hidden Apartheid and the Khairlanji Murders (2011), Khairlanji: A Strange and Bitter Crop (2008), and Anti-Imperialism and Annihilation of Castes (2005). His thought-provoking column ‘Margin Speak’ in Economic and Political Weekly has been creating ripples in intellectual circles. He is currently a Professor of Management at IIT, Kharagpur.

Sara Shneiderman is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA. She is a socio-cultural anthropologist whose research addresses the relationships between political discourse, ritual practice, cultural performance and cross-border migration in producing contemporary ethnic identities in the Himalayan regions of Nepal, India and China (especially the Tibetan Autonomous Region). She is currently completing two book projects based on her ethnographic research with the Thangmi community, and has published several articles on the themes of Nepal’s Maoist movement and political consciousness; ethnic classification and affirmative action; ritual and religious practice; and gender, agency and identity. She is also a member of the British Academy partnership out of which this conference has grown.

Alpa Shah is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is the author of In the Shadows of the State: Indigenous Politics, Environmentalism and Insurgency in Jharkhand, India (2010). She is the editor of Windows into a Revolution: Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal (2012) with Judith Pettigrew. Drawing on more than a decade of ethnographic field research in central and eastern India, she has also written numerous articles on corruption, development, the state, labour migration, the Maoist movement and indigenous rights. She has also made documentaries for BBC Radio 4 and the World Service on her research. She is the Lead Investigator of the British Academy UK-South Asia Partnership Project on 'Inequality and Affirmative Action in South Asia: Current Experiences and Future Agendas in India…

N R Madhava Menon, MA, LLM, PhD, has completed five decades teaching law and is presently International Bar Association Chair of Continuing Legal Education at the National Law School, Bangalore and Chairman of Menon Institute of Legal Advocacy Training, Trivandrum. He was the founding Vice-Chancellor of two of the leading law schools in India and founding Director of National Judicial Academy. He was also the Chairman of a Committee set up by Government of India to prepare the legal framework for an Equal Opportunity Commission.

Mara Malagodi is a Senior Teaching Fellow at SOAS, where she completed her BA in Nepali & Politics, MA in South Asian Area Studies and PhD with the thesis 'Constitutional Nationalism and Legal Exclusion in Nepal' (1990-2007), now forthcoming in the Law Series of OUP India. She is a student member of the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, which is supporting her training as a Barrister through the Blackstone Entry Exhibition and Quatercentenary Scholarship. She has just been awarded a three-year British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship, which she will be taking up at the LSE Law Department from October 2012.

Glenn C Loury is the Merton Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University. He holds a BA in Mathematics (Northwestern University) and a PhD in Economics (MIT). He has lectured on issues of race, ethnicity and inequality throughout the world. Prof. Loury, a member of the US Council on Foreign Relations and a past Vice President of the American Economics Association, has been elected a Fellow of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Econometric Society. Prof Loury's books include Race, Incarceration and American Values (2008); Ethnicity, Social Mobility and Public Policy: Comparing the US and the UK (2005); The Anatomy of Racial Inequality (2002); and One by One, From the Inside Out: Essays and Reviews on Race…

Mahendra Lawoti is a Professor of Political Science at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo; an Associate Fellow of the Asia Society; and a columnist for The Kathmandu Post.  He studies democratization and ethnic politics in South Asia and has published nine books, including The Maoist Insurgency in Nepal (2009); Contentious Politics and Democratization in Nepal (2007); Towards a Democratic Nepal (2005); and the forthcoming Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict in Nepal. Additionally, he has also published numerous journal articles, book chapters, and opinion pieces.

Yam Bahadur Kisan is an author, researcher, lawyer and human rights activist. He has attained Master’s Degree in Political Science and Bachelor’s Degree in Law. He is presently a part-time Lecturer in the MPhil program under the office of the Dean of education in Tribhuvan University, Nepal. From June 2007 to July 2009, he was a Commissioner with the National Dalit Commission, Government of Nepal. Mr Kisan has published several books and articles on Dalits, federalism, electoral system, legal reforms, social exclusion/inclusion, affirmative action, and social movements. His recent books are on The Nepali Dalit Social Movement (2005) and Dalit Ra Sakaratmak Upaya (Dalits and Affirmative Action) (in Nepali) (2010). 

Susan Hangen is Associate Professor of Anthropology and International Studies at Ramapo College, New Jersey, USA. She is the author of Creating a New Nepal: The Ethnic Dimension (2007), The Rise of Ethnic Politics in Nepal: Democracy in the Margins (2010) and co-editor of Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict in Nepal (2012) (with Mahendra Lawoti). Her current research project examines transnational politics in the Nepali diaspora. She is also Chair of the Board of Adhikaar for Human Rights and Social Justice in New York City.