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.

Ashwini Deshpande is Professor of Economics at the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India. Her PhD and early publications have been on the international debt crisis of the 1980s. Subsequently, she has been working on the economics of discrimination and affirmative action issues, with a focus on caste and gender in India, as well as on aspects of the Chinese economy: role of FDI in the reform process, regional disparities, and gender discrimination.  She has published extensively in leading scholarly journals. She is the author of Grammar of Caste: economic discrimination in contemporary India (2011). She has co-edited Global Economic Crisis and the developing world (2012) with Keith Nurse; edited Capital without borders: challenges to development (2010); edited Globalization and Development: A Handbook of New Perspective (2007) and…

Debipriya Chatterjee is an Assistant Professor of Political Economy and Public Policy at the Department of Africology, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She completed her PhD in Economics from Brown University, where her dissertation explored the optimal design of ‘quota’-like affirmative action policies. Prior to joining Brown, she did her Master's in Quantitative Economics at Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, and her undergraduate from Presidency College, Kolkata. Her research interests lie in the area of inequality, especially inequality along racial, gender and caste lines, development economics and political economy in ethnically fragmented societies.

Neera Chandhoke is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Delhi. She is the author of  Contested Secessions: Rights, Democracy, Self-Determination and Kashmir  (2012);  The Conceits of Civil Society (2003); Beyond Secularism: The Rights of Religious Minorities (1999); and State And Civil Society: Explorations in Political Theory (1995). She has also co-edited Contemporary India (2009) with Praveen Priyadarshi; edited Mapping Histories (2000); edited Understanding The Post-Colonial World: Theory and Method (1996); and co-edited Grass-Root Politics and Social Transformation (1994) with Ashish Ghosh. Her forthcoming work is Protecting the Unprotected: Social Protection Policies in South Asia which she is co-editing with Sanjay Agrawala.

Khyam Bishwakarma is one of the winners of the Australian Leadership Award 2010, which made it possible for him to pursue a Master's in Development Studies from the University of Sydney, Australia. He has also graduated with a Masters' degree in English Literature from Tribhuvan University, Nepal. Currently he is working as a freelance development consultant that adds to his six-plus years' career in the field of community development and human rights. As a member of the artisan caste group who are marginalized and hence are begun to be termed Dalits, he wants to contribute to the development process of his community with scholarly ideas which is why his research interest lies in the issues related to caste, culture and development.

Ajay Gudavarthy is currently an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His areas of interests include political theory, human rights, and nature of civil society and contemporary political movements in India. He has recently completed editing a critical volume on Partha Chatterjee's concept of political society titled Reframing Democracy and Agency in India: Interrogating Political Society (Anthem Press, London, 2012). He was Charles Wallace visiting Fellow with the Centre for South Asia, SOAS, London in 2008, a visiting Fellow, Goldsmiths College, University of London, 2010, and with the Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law, University of Aberdeen, 2012. He is also a member of the British Academy partnership out of which this conference has grown.