Keynote Speakers

Dr. Meghna Guhathakurta taught International Relations at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh from 1984 to 2007. She is currently Executive Director of Research Initiatives, Bangladesh (RIB) a research support organisation based in Dhaka, which specialises in action research with marginalised communities. Dr. Guhathakurta graduated from the University of Dhaka and received her Ph.D from the University of York, UK in Politics. Her field of specialisation has broadly been international development, gender relations and minority politics. She is well published in migration trends in Partition histories, peace-building in post conflict societies and minority rights in South Asia. Dr. Guhathakurta was Member, National Human Rights Commission, Bangladesh from 2016 to 2019 and is advisor to the International Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission, an advocacy watchdog. She has been project coordinator of RIB’s work on Early Childhood Learning in the official Rohingya camps as implementing partner of UNHCR from 2011 to 2015 and recently led a project to mitigate tension and hostility between refugee and host communities in the Cox’s Bazaar area. She co-edited The Bangladesh Reader with Willem Van Schendel of the University of Amsterdam. Her recent and forthcoming publications include: Gender and IR : The Bangladesh Context, The Road to Victory Day, 1971: an insiders account, Gendered Notions of Unpaid Care Work in Rural Bangladesh: Recognizing, Sharing and Visualising Probable Trajectories and Breaking Barriers: the role of the Audience in Interactive Theatre in Bangladesh.