The panels that are submitted to the 2023 conference will be reviewed by the following people:

Susanne Jaspars
Susanne Jaspars is a Research Associate at the Food Studies Centre, SOAS, University of London. She recently completed PhD in Politics at the University of Bristol on the history and politics of food aid in Sudan, which she converted into a book published in 2018 (Food Aid in Sudan: A History of Power, Politics and Profit. Zed Books). She previously completed an MSc in Human Nutrition (in 1986). Susanne has worked in humanitarian crises for thirty years, as practitioner and researcher. As a practitioner she worked for Medecins sans Frontieres (Holland), Oxfam-GB, UNHCR, WFP and others, and used this experience to inform her research. Prior to starting her PhD, Susanne worked as a Senior Research Fellow in the Humanitarian Policy Group at the Overseas Development Institute in London. Her research focuses on the social and political dynamics of food security, livelihoods and nutrition in situations of famine, conflict and disasters, and more recently on the humanitarian dimension of migration to Europe. Susanne has published a number of books, academic articles and policy reports, and is on the editorial board of Disasters journal.

Andrew Cunningham
Andrew has thirty years’ experience in the humanitarian sector, twenty-five years of which with MSF. Andrew has worked in a wide variety of contexts and geographical locations in Africa, the Former Soviet Union, and Asia. He has a PhD in War Studies from King’s College and has published a professional book in the Routledge Humanitarian Studies series on the topic of INGO-State relations. Andrew has served as a member of the Board of MSF International and is currently a board member of the International Humanitarian Studies Association. Andrew works as a researcher, strategic and operational evaluator, and governance advisor for various humanitarian organisations.

Rodrigo Mena
Rodrigo Mena is Assistant Professor of Disaster and Humanitarian Action at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam. His research focuses on humanitarian responses and risk reduction to disasters and their interaction and nexus with other crises, such as social conflict, climate change, and migration. Before his current position, he worked with local and international NGOs, the UN, ministries, and as a consultant and researcher, particularly in disasters and conflict-affected places such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Chile, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, or Yemen.

Together with serving at the Board of IHSA, Dr Mena serves as a Board member of the Expertise Centre Humanitarian Communication (HumCom) and is co-convenor of the Peace and Ecology in the Anthropocene commission at the International Peace Research Association (IPRA). He also serves as a reviewer in leading journals and often takes research, monitoring and evaluation, and advisory consultancy work. In IHSA he is also part of the Safety and Security working group.

Virginie Troit
Virginie Troit is the General Director at Fondation Croix-Rouge française pour la recherche/ The French Red Cross Foundation. She is a board member of the International Humanitarian Studies Association and a Committee member of the review Humanitarian Alternatives. Master’s in Political Science, Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, Master’s in Management, Toulouse Business School, University Degree in Ethics and medical Practices, University Aix-Marseille. She is a PhD candidate in International Relations, CERI (Sciences-Po/CNRS).

Mohamed Jelle
Mohamed Jelle is a research fellow at UCL Institute for Global Health and his main research focus lies in the intersection between nutrition, cash transfers, migration and use of verbal autopsies (VA), often within the context of populations affected by humanitarian emergencies caused by conflict or disasters. He has over 8 years progressive experience in humanitarian work both in programming and research capacities. Prior to joining UCL, Mohamed worked with local and international NGOs and the UN.  He holds an MSc in Nutrition and Rural Development from University of Gent, Belgium and is currently a PhD candidate in nutritional epidemiology at the UCL Institute for Global Health. He is a board member of IHSA.

Maryam Zarnegar Deloffre
Maryam Zarnegar Deloffre Ph.D., is Associate Professor of International Affairs and Director of the Humanitarian Action Initiative, at the George Washington University (Washington D.C.), and Associate Senior Fellow at Käte Hamburger Kolleg / Centre for Global Cooperation Research, University of Duisburg-Essen (Germany). Her research and publications are on the governance and coordination of humanitarian action—with focus on quality and accountability standard-setting, humanitarian-health emergencies and localization—and on non-governmental organizations (NGOs). She teaches graduate level courses on humanitarian governance and policy, localization, and NGOs and provides policy guidance to government agencies, think tanks and NGOs. In addition to serving on the IHSA board, she also serves on the editorial board of Global Studies Quarterly, a journal of the International Studies Association (ISA), and on the ISA Committee on the Status of Women.

Bulbul Siddiqi
Dr Bulbul Siddiqi is an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science and Sociology and the Director of the Confucius Institute at NSU. He has a strong background in academic and development research.  He completed doctoral research at Cardiff University, UK, following Ethnographic research methods to understand the Islamic revivalist movement (the Tablighi Jamaat) in the UK and Bangladesh based on long-term fieldwork. The title of his doctoral research was ‘The Tablighi Jamaat in Bangladesh and the UK: an Ethnographic Study of an Islamic Reform Movement’. He also earned MA in Global Citizenship, Identities and Human Rights from the University of Nottingham. During his stay in Cardiff, Dr Siddiqi worked as a part-time research assistant in a project titled ‘The Challenge of Islam: Young Bangladeshis, Marriage and the Family in Bangladesh and the UK’.

Palash Kamruzzaman
Palash is from a multi-disciplinary background combining degrees in Anthropology; Sociology and Social Policy. Before joining the University of South Wales, he worked at the University of Bath, University of Leicester, Nottingham University, the University of Liverpool, and Independent University, Bangladesh.

One of their current research projects focuses on expertise in development policies and aid ethnographies. He argues that there is a gap in the existing scholarship as very little is known about the creative roles, agency, and interests of experts from the global South (a group he describes as National Development Experts). Palash also leads a British Academy funded inter-disciplinary research project that aims to explore the experience of violence and loss of dignity among the forcibly displaced Rohingyas in Bangladesh and Internally Displaced People in Afghanistan. His other research interests are approaches to development, participation in policy-making, international aid and conditionalities, civil society, and extreme poverty.

Tawfique M. Haque
Chair, Department of Political Science and Sociology at North South University. Director, South Asian Institute of Policy and Governance (SIPG)