Shree Baphna is a budding feminist researcher with a bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Photography from the University of Virginia. She has two years of research experience in access to medicines and gender equity in healthcare and is a recipient of the Fulbright Student Program Award. She plans to pursue a Master’s in Public Health and eventually a PhD in the same area. In her free time, Shree is an avid artist and loves to paint, draw, and spend time in dark rooms developing film photography.

Chantal Umuhoza is a Rwandan Feminist activist who founded SPECTRA, a space for feminist transformative change based in the same country. She holds a Masters of Arts in Human Rights, Gender and Conflict Studies from the International Institute of Social Studies/Erasmus University and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics. She has over 15 years of experience working with different civil society organisations on gender issues and over 10 years of experience doing Global and regional advocacy at the United Nations and African Union.

Marlise Richter has worked as a researcher and activist in health and human rights focused organizations for many years and in a number of different South African NGOs, such as Project Literacy, the AIDS Law Project, the Treatment Action Campaign and the Reproductive Health and HIV Research Unit and more recently served as the Head of Policy Development & Advocacy at Sonke Gender Justice. She currently serves as Senior Researcher at the Health Justice Initiative working on issues of health equity.

K. M. Gopakumar is a Senior Researcher and Legal Advisor at Third World Network (TWN) and based in New Delhi, India. TWN is an independent, not-for-profit organization that carries out policy research and advocacy on issues around trade and development, with a focus on third world countries. His work in TWN focuses on the global IP regime and its implication son on development.

Farida Shaheed, a sociologist by training and activist by choice, is the Executive Director of Shirkat Gah – Women’s Resource Centre, Pakistan’s first feminist organization. Ms. Shaheed is a founding member of the Women’s Action Forum (WAF) which led the resistance to the Pakistani martial law regime in the 1980s. Recipient of several national and international human rights awards, she was the UN’s first Independent Expert and Special Rapporteur for cultural rights from 2009 to 2015. Her UN reports include three on intellectual property laws from a human rights perspective and one on gender-equal cultural rights.

Kumudini Therese Samuel is a feminist activist and researcher from Sri Lanka. She heads DAWN’s Political Restructuring and Social Transformation analysis team. Kumi is a co-founder of the Women and Media Collective (Colombo, 1984). She participated on the campaign to realize CEDAW General Recommendation 30 on women in Conflict Prevention and has engaged in the review process to CEDAW, ICCPR, ICESCR, and the Universal Periodic Review. She is a member of several high-level working groups, including the UN Women’s Civil Society Advisory Group for Bhutan, the Maldives, India, and Sri Lanka. Kumi has published extensively on these themes, and her most recent book is Political Economy of Conflict and Violence Against Women (DAWN, 2020). Her current research focus is on post-conflict transitions and constitution-making.

Ms Chee Yoke Ling is the Director of Programmes at Third World Network (TWN) and works from its international secretariat in Malaysia. Ms Chee trained in international law, with degrees from the University of Malaya (Malaysia) and Cambridge University (UK). She has been involved in sustainable development work since the 1980s and is a teacher of public interest law at the Faculty of Law, the University of Malaya. She was part of the Malaysian Government delegation to the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro and provided technical support to the Chair of the Group of 77 in the negotiation of the Rio Declaration. She has participated as an accredited observer in the Commission on Sustainable Development, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity. Ms Chee has also worked closely with key officials from several developing countries on the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing related to genetic resources and traditional knowledge. She has published several articles on a wide range of issues and is currently a lead author in the chapter on Sustainable Development and Equity of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group III on Mitigation. She is also a visiting scholar at the Minzu University in Beijing and a Board member of the Dag Hammarskjöld.

Ms Jagpal is a Senior Consultant on Access to Medicines at DNDi, The Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, a non-profit drug research and development organization that creates new treatments for neglected diseases in the Global South. Ms Jagpal leads the DNDi communications strategy for South East Asia by anchoring messaging to the organization’s mission and strategic narrative while working with important global partners at HQ (Geneva) and in local markets to propel DNDi’s goals and help the most neglected patients. Ms Jagpal has excelled in giving visibility through authentic communications to DNDi and has contributed greatly to local policy and public affairs efforts. Ms Jagpal holds degrees from London Metropolitan University and University of the Arts London. She has an extensive international career, having worked as the Executive Director of the British Malaysian Chamber of Commerce (BMCC), as Country Director of Conferences for the Mumbai-based Expomedia Group Plc, and as a Strategic Corporate Relations Consultant for the Finance Accreditation Agency (FAA) in Kuala Lumpur.

Nidhi Goyal is a disabled feminist activist from India working on disability rights and gender justice. She is the founder and Executive director of the National Award winning Indian non-profit organisation ‘Rising Flame’ which works for women and youth with disabilities. For over a decade, Nidhi has been committed to changing the lives of persons with disabilities and has worked with a range of National and global women’s rights, disability rights, and human rights organizations. Nidhi’s work spans research, writing, training, campaigns, advocacy, and art. She was appointed to the UN Women Executive Director’s Civil Society Advisory Group, is a part of the multi-stakeholder steering committee of the Generation equality Forum, sits on the advisory board of VOICE, and is the President of the Board of Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID). The National Human Rights Commission invited Nidhi to be a part of a core group working on the elderly persons and people with disabilities. Nidhi is also India’s first female disabled stand-up comedian, and uses humour to challenge prevailing notions about disability and gender.

Vanita Nayak Mukherjee is a feminist activist and researcher. She co-leads DAWN’s Feminists for a People’s Vaccine (FPV) Campaign and the Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) thematic analysis team. Vanita has been a part of the feminist and social movements in Kerala, India since the early 1980s, and worked with feminist groups and networks in various capacities contributing to advocacy, capacity building and action-research. She was DAWN’s Regional Coordinator for South Asia, and is currently a member of DAWN’s Executive Committee. She holds a Master’s degree in Gender Studies from the Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, Holland and a Bachelor’s degree in Biology.
Vanita was a Program Officer and later, a Senior Advisor on Gender at the Ford Foundation’s India, Nepal and Sri Lanka office directing the Civil Society and Social Justice and the Gender, Racial and Ethnic Justice portfolios.

Gita Sen is a Southern feminist activist and academic working on gender equality and women’s human rights. She holds a PhD in Economics from Stanford University and is an adjunct professor of global health and population at the Harvard School of Public Health. She is Director and Distinguished Professor of the Ramalingaswami Centre at the Public Health Foundation of India. Her work has ranged widely, spanning poverty, population policies, human development, labour markets, and women’s health and it has helped to advance the global paradigm shift towards sexual and reproductive health and rights. Her books include: “Development, Crises and Alternative Visions: Third World Women’s Perspectives” and “Remaking Social Contracts: Feminists in a Fierce New World”. She is a founding member and current General Co-coordinator of DAWN.

Sonia Corrêa is a Brazilian feminist activist working on gender equality, health & sexuality. She is the founder of one of Brazil’s first feminist NGOs (SOS Corpo, 1981). Sonia is a research associate at the Brazilian Interdisciplinary Association for AIDS (ABIA) and co-chairs Sexuality Policy Watch (SPW). She is a prolific author with dozens of publications in several languages, such as “Population and Reproductive Rights: Feminist Perspectives from the South” and “Weighing Up Cairo: Evidence from Women in the South”. Sonia has lectured at various academic institutions, more recently at the Department of Gender Studies at LSE. Sonia was DAWN’s SRHR Research Coordinator and is a DAWN Board member. She is currently working on anti-gender politics globally.