RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service
RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Serviceis an award-winning, multimedia source of independent news and informed debate, covering major stories and underreported topics, including women, minority rights, high-level corruption, and religious radicalism.
Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove
Rev. Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove is the author of Revolution of Values: Reclaiming Public Faith for the Common Good.
Mike Callanan
Michael Callanan is a retired teacher of Logic and History, with an interest in international relations and contemporary history.
Imran Khalid
Imran Khalid is an international affairs commentator and freelancer based in Karachi, Pakistan.
Michael D. Breen
Michael Breen, twenty years a Jesuit, then educational psychologist (Boston College) and researcher, (Ireland) student counsellor,(Bathurst and Wollongong Unis) organisational psychologist,(private practice, mostly in W.A.) Zen practitioner Dai Boku.
Jude Conway
Dr Jude Conway is a Novocastrian historian, who edited Step by Step: Women of East Timor, stories of Resistance and Survival (2010) and whose 2022 PhD thesis is on the Newcastle women’s movement. Jude was a fellow activist for the self determination of East Timor, who first met Vacy Vlazna in 1997 and remained friends since that time.
James A. Millward
James A. Millward is a professor of history at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, where he teaches Qing, Chinese, Central Asian and world history.
Dermot O’Gorman
Dermot O’Gorman is a global sustainable development leader with 25 years’ experience in envisioning, ideating, and implementing solutions to protect wildlife and the environment. He has been the CEO of WWF-Australia since 2010 and holds board positions with the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID) and the Luc Hoffmann Institute and is the Chair of OpenSC.
Sophie Vorrath
Sophie is editor ofOne Step Off The Gridand deputy editor of its sister site,Renew Economy. She is the co-host of theSolar Insiders Podcast.Sophie has been writing about clean energy for more than a decade.
William J. Barber II
Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II is president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, and co-chair of the the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. His books include: “The Third Reconstruction: How A Moral Movement is Overcoming the Politics of Division and Fear” (2016), “Revive Us Again: Vision and Action in Moral Organising” (2018) and “We Are Called to Be a Movement” (2020). Follow him on Twitter @RevDrBarber.
Coco Yixin Yin
Coco Yixin Yin, a masters student at Nanjing University, is an intern at the Centre for China and Globalisation (CCG) contributing to its Pekingnology and https://www.eastisread.com/The East is Read newsletters.
Pearls and Irritations guest Mike McIntire
Mike McIntire is an investigative reporter, author and editor. As a member of the investigations unit at The New York Times, he shared Pulitzer Prizes in 2022 for reporting on the hidden financial incentives behind police traffic stops, and in 2017 for reporting on covert Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election
Vivienne Porzsolt
Vivienne Porzsolt is a a secular Jew whose parents were refugees from the Nazis. She is a longtime activist for a range of social justice issues. She is spokesperson for Jews against the Occupation in Sydney and has been an advocate for justice and equality in Palestine/Israel for many years.
Guest author Robert Wood
Dr. Robert Wood has been a Benjamin Franklin Fellow at University of Pennsylvania and an Endeavour Research Fellow at Columbia University. The author of more than 300 articles and five books, Robert serves as a Director at Centre for Stories. He has a fortnightly interview on politics on community radio station RTR FM. Robert lives in Perth.
Jesse MacKinnon
Jesse MacKinnon is a high school history teacher running for Congress in California’s 10th District. He is challenging a sitting Democratic incumbent in the primary because of congressional Democrats’ unwillingness to meaningfully oppose the Trump administration.
Nader Hashemi
Nader Hashemi is the director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and an associate professor of Middle East and Islamic politics at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He is also a non-resident fellow at DAWN.
Samuel Cairnduff
Dr Samuel Cairnduff is a lecturer in media and communications in the School of Culture & Communication at the University of Melbourne, where he teaches across arts and cultural management, strategic communications, and public relations. His research examines cultural leadership, institutional ethics, and the role of cultural organisations in social change.
Guests author Mukhtar Amanbaiuly
Mukhtar Amanbaiuly Undergraduate Student at Nazarbayev University School of Sciences and Humanities Political Science and International Relations.
Pearls and Irritations guest Royce Kurmelovs
Royce Kurmelovs is an Australian freelance journalist and author of The Death of Holden (2016), Rogue Nation (2017) and Boom and Bust (2018). He lives in Adelaide, South Australia.
Royce Kurmelovs
Royce Kurmelovs is an Australian freelance journalist and author of The Death of Holden (2016), Rogue Nation (2017) and Boom and Bust (2018). He lives in Adelaide, South Australia.
Guest author Michelle Fahy,
Michelle is an independent researcher specialising in investigating links between the weapons industry and Australian government. Her work has appeared in Progressive International, Arena, Declassified Australia, Michael West Media and elsewhere. Member of MEAA.
Dave Kellaway
Dave Kellaway is on the Editorial Board of Anti*Capitalist Resistance, a member of Socialist Resistance, and Hackney and Stoke Newington Labour Party, a contributor to International Viewpoint and Europe Solidaire Sans Frontieres.
Mona Shtaya
Mona Shtaya is a Palestinian digital rights defender, working as the Campaigns and Partnerships Manager (MENA) and Corporate Engagement Lead at Digital Actions; she is also a 2024 Migration and Technology Monitor Fellow and a non-resident scholar for the Middle East Institute (MEI) in the Palestine-Israel program.
Sara Dowse
Sara Dowse is an American-born Australian feminist, author, critic, social commentator, and visual artist. Her novels include Schemetime published in 1990, Sapphires, and As the Lonely Fly, and she has contributed reviews, articles, essays, stories, and poetry to a range of print and online publications.
Roberta Esbitt
Roberta Esbitt is an international architect, property developer and academic with a special interest in residential property markets. She has a B.Arch from Cornell University (USA), and an M.Bus (Property) and a PhD from RMIT University (Australia), and since 2007 was sessional lecturer at RMIT as well as guest lecturer in Europe. She is currently an Associate at RMIT University.
Refaat Ibrahim
Refaat Ibrahim is the editor and creator of The Resistant Palestinian Pens website, https://resistant.blog/ where you can find all his articles. He is a Palestinian writer living in Gaza, where he studied English Language and Literature at the Islamic University. He has been passionate about writing since childhood, and is interested in political, social, economic, and cultural matters concerning his homeland, Palestine. He is also dedicated to amplifying the voice of the Palestinian people living under the weight of Israeli occupation and global neglect. Refaat believes that writing is the way to knowledge, representing the accumulation of keen insight; for him, it is the bridge connecting ideas to people’s minds and emotions to their hearts. He writes with purpose and principle, aiming to open a path for others to perceive things as they truly are. His pen will not stop as long as his heart beats.
Stephen Bartos
Stephen is an internationally recognised expert on governance, regulation and public finance.
Stephen was Professor of Governance and Head of the National Institute of Governance at the University of Canberra, and also a Commissioner with the International Airservices Commission, the regulator that governs operators’ access to international air passenger and freight routes into and out of Australia.
Christine Owen
Christine Owens academic work at ANU, Melbourne University and Murdoch University was on literature, history and writing. Her research on the rise of female individualism was published as The Female Crusoe (2010).She was an anti-nuclear activist in the 80s and a regular contributor to The Fremantle Shipping News, edited by Hon Michael Barker KC.
Graeme Turner
Graeme Turner AO is Emeritus Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland. A former president of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and one of only two humanities’ based researchers to serve on the Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Committee, he has a long history of engagement in higher education and research policy. One of the founding figures in media and cultural studies in Australia, his most recent book is ‘The Shrinking Nation: How we got here and what we can do about it’ (UQP).
Peter Allitt
Peter Allitt worked within the Victorian Education Department introducing the educational application of computers and information management. Consulted to multiple private and public organisations across Australia around education, strategic planning, information management and organisational change.
Regina Jefferies
Dr Regina Jefferies is a Laureate Postdoctoral Fellow at the Evacuations Research Hub.
Axel Bruns
Axel Bruns is an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and Professor in the Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, and a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society. His books include Are Filter Bubbles Real? (2019) and Gatewatching and News Curation: Journalism, Social Media, and the Public Sphere (2018), and the edited collections Digitizing Democracy (2019), the Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics (2016), and Twitter and Society (2014). His current work focusses on the study of user participation in social media spaces, and its implications for our understanding of the contemporary public sphere, drawing especially on innovative new methods for analysing ‘big social data’. He served as President of the Association of Internet Researchers in 2017–19. His research blog is at http://snurb.info/, and he tweets at @snurb_dot_info.
Meg Grealy
Meg Grealy is a research officer with the Drug Policy Modelling Program at UNSW Sydney, where she has worked on projects including treatment system reviews, evidence reviews, and most recently on working to calculate Australia’s government expenditure on drug policy. She is a cultural studies graduate interested in infrastructural inequalities across Australia that impact people’s lives, specializing in qualitative social research and community engagement.
Glen Davis
Former senior executive and Chief Executive in Federal, State and Local Government. Director of innovative bank subsidiary and retailing enterprises. Former member of Science Council of the National Library. Founding Chairman of the Australian Standards Committee on Smart Cards.BA(Admin), JP(Qual), FAIM.
