Contributors

Amitav Acharya and Manjeet S Pardesi

Amitav Acharya is the UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance and Distinguished Professor at the School of International Service, American University, Washington DC. Manjeet S Pardesi is Associate Professor of International Relations in the Political Science and International Relations Programme, and Asia Research Fellow at the Centre for Strategic Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. They are co-authors of Divergent Worlds: What the Ancient Mediterranean and Indian Ocean Can Tell Us About the Future of International Order.

Jill Baker

Jill Baker is an Adjunct Fellow at the Asia Business Council in Hong Kong and a contributor to Forbes.com.

Joshua Bird

Dr Joshua Bird is an international development professional working across the Asia-Pacific and the author of Economic Development in China's Northwest: Entrepreneurship and identity along China’s multi-ethnic borderlands (Routledge, July 2017).

Susan Blumberg-Kason

Susan Blumberg-Kason is the author of Bernardine’s Shanghai Salon: The Story of the Doyenne of Old China, Good Chinese Wife: A Love Affair with China Gone Wrong and When Friends Come From Afar: The Remarkable Story of Bernie Wong and Chicago’s Chinese American Service League.

Paul Bromberg

Paul Bromberg is the author of Later Chinese Bronzes for the Scholar’s Studio (Arts of Asia Publications Ltd, 2025).

David Chaffetz

David Chaffetz is the author of Three Asian Divas: Women, Art and Culture in Shiraz, Delhi and Yangzhou (Abbreviated Press, November 2019) and Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empire (WW Norton, July 2024).

Jonathan Chatwin

Jonathan Chatwin is the author of The Southern Tour: Deng Xiaoping and the Fight for China’s Future, travelogue Long Peace Street: A walk in modern China and Anywhere Out of the World, a literary biography of the traveler and writer Bruce Chatwin. He holds a PhD in English Literature.

Christopher Corker

Christopher Corker is a PhD candidate at York University and a published translator of Japanese literature.

Diana Darling

Diana Darling is a writer who has been living in Bali since 1980.

Mahika Dhar

Mahika Dhar is a writer, essayist, and book reviewer based in New Delhi. She is the creator of bookcrumbs and her short stories have appeared in Seaglass Literary, Through Lines and Minimag among others.

Ria Dhull

Ria Dhull is an artist and collector based in NYC. Her writing also appears in Spectrum Culture.

Lesley Downer

Lesley Downer is an author, journalist and historian. She is the author of The Shogun Quartet, Geisha: The Remarkable Truth Behind the Fiction and The Brothers: The Hidden World of Japan’s Richest Family.

Yousra Feriel Drioua

Yousra Feriel Drioua is a South Korea-based Algerian writer and media graduate.

Sonal Dugar

Sonal Dugar recently graduated from Ashoka University with a degree in literature, and reviews for Scroll and other publications.

Bárbara Fernández-Melleda

Bárbara Fernández-Melleda is Assistant Professor in Latin American Studies at the University of Hong Kong

Alison Fincher

Alison Fincher (@readjapaneselit.bsky.social) is the founder and host of the Read Japanese Literature podcast and co-editor at the Asian Review of Books for Japanese fiction.

Mahitosh Gopal

Mahitosh Gopal is a Lecturer in History and Research Scholar based in Odisha, India.

Nicholas Gordon

Nicholas Gordon has an MPhil from Oxford in International Relations and a BA from Harvard. He is a writer, editor and occasional radio host based in Hong Kong.

Peter Gordon

Peter Gordon is editor of the Asian Review of Books.

Aidan Hall

Aidan Hall holds an MSc in International History from the London School of Economics, where he researched British covert visual propaganda operations in Indonesia during the mass violence of 1965-66.

Jonathan Han

Jonathan Han is a writer based in Hong Kong, with works published in Essays in Criticism and Hong Kong Review of Books.

Rick Henry

Rick Henry was a Professor of English at SUNY—Potsdam where he directed the BFA in Creative Writing.

James Herndon

A former US Marine and Iraq war veteran, Dr James Herndon worked in Udaipur, India while completing his PhD in Economics. He currently works as a consultant in Birmingham, Alabama.

Mary Hillis

Mary Hillis (@mhillis) is a teacher and writer based in Japan.

Melanie Ho

Melanie Ho is the author of Journey to the West: He Hui, a Chinese Soprano in the World of Italian Opera.

Tahir Kamran

Tahir Kamran is author of Chequered Past, Uncertain Future: The Story of Pakistan.

Farida R Khan

Farida R Khan @farida_art is an art historian and writer. Her work has appeared in Scroll and elsewhere.

Martin Laflamme

Martin Laflamme is a Canadian Foreign Service Officer who has served in Tokyo, Beijing (twice) and Kandahar. He is currently posted to Taipei.

Elizabeth Lawrence

Elizabeth Lawrence is Associate Professor of History at Augustana College.

Stuart Lloyd

Stuart Lloyd is the author of Tales from the Tiger’s Den: An Oral History of Foreigners in the Far East 1920-2020, and several military history and travel titles.

Michael Londra

Michael Londra’s fiction, poetry, and reviews have appeared in The Arts Fuse, Restless Messengers, The Fortnightly Review, and The Blue Mountain Review, among many others. He contributed six essays and the introduction to New Studies in Delmore Schwartz, coming soon from MadHat Press; and is the author of forthcoming Delmore&Lou: A Novel of Delmore Schwartz and Lou Reed. He lives in Manhattan.

Sankha Maji

Sankha Maji teaches English at Raghunathpur College, India.

Shyamasri Maji

Shyamasri Maji teaches English at Durgapur Women’s College, West Bengal.

Priyanka Mattoo

Priyanka Mattoo is the author of Bird Milk and Mosquito Bones

Stephen Mercado

Stephen Mercado, formerly an officer of the CIA’s Open Source Enterprise, now a freelance translator and writer, is the author of The Shadow Warriors of Nakano: A History of the Imperial Japanese Army’s Elite Intelligence School and of Japanese Spy Gear and Special Weapons: How Noborito's Scientists and Technicians Served in the Second World War and the Cold War.

Rosie Milne

Rosie Milne is the author of the novels How to Change Your Life, Holding the Baby, Olivia & Sophia and Circumstance.

Shakir Mir

Shakir Mir is an independent journalist and book critic based in New Delhi.

Kalpana Mohan

Kalpana Mohan is the author of Daddykins: A Memoir of my Father and I, (Bloomsbury India, 2018) and An English Made in India: How a Foreign Language Became Local (Aleph Book Company, 2019).

Juan José Morales

Juan José Morales is the co-author of Painter and Patron: The Maritime Silk Road in the Códice Casanatense (Abbreviated Books, 2020) and The Silver Way: China, Spanish America and the Birth of Globalisation, 1565–1815 (Penguin, 2017).

Maximillian Morch

Maximillian Morch is a researcher and author of Plains of Discontent: A Political History of Nepal’s Tarai (1743-2019) (2023)

Ryan Plocher

Ryan Plocher also learned German as an adult. He lives in Berlin.

Prarthana Prakash

Prarthana Prakash is a London-based editor who has previously written on business, economics and culture.

Bill Purves

Bill Purves is a Hong Kong-based writer. He is the author of several books, including A Sea of Green: A Voyage Around the World of Ocean Shipping and China on the Lam: On Foot Across the People’s Republic.

Jianan Qian

Jianan Qian is a bilingual writer from Shanghai, China.

Ian Rapley

Ian Rapley is Senior Lecturer in modern Japanese history at Cardiff University and author of Green Star Japan: Esperanto and the International Language Question, 1880–1945 (Hawaii University Press, October 2024)

John A Riley

John A Riley is a writer and former university lecturer based in Newcastle, UK.

Sumana Roy

Sumana Roy is an Indian writer, poet and translator.

Alan Ali Saeed

Alan Ali Saeed is Associate Professor of English Literature at Sulaimani University, Iraqi-Kurdistan.

Rosanne Salazar

Rosanne Salazar is a Filipino writer and book reviewer based in Zurich.

Abha Salwan

Abha Salwan is a doctor and writer based in India, with a poetry chapbook called In Which I Lose Hair like Furballs.

Nishad Sanzagiri

Nishad Sanzagiri is a London-based consultant and writer. He writes weekly on Infinity Inklings, and his work has been featured in The Times of India, The Independent, The Telegraph, The Guardian and more.

Smitha Sehgal

Smitha Sehgal is the author of the poetry collection Brown God’s Child.

Francis P Sempa

Francis P Sempa is the author of the books Geopolitics: From the Cold War to the 21st Century and America's Global Role: Essays and Reviews on Geopolitics, National Security and War. His work has appeared in The Diplomat, American Diplomacy, the South China Morning Post, The National Interest, the Claremont Review of Books and other publications. He is a contributing editor to The American Spectator and writes a regular column for Real Clear Defense.

Kateryna Shabelnyk

Kateryna Shabelnyk is a PhD in Japanese literature in Nagoya, Japan.

Alex Smith

Alex Smith is Asia New Zealand Foundation's research programme manager.

Yorim Spoelder

Yorim Spoelder is a Dutch historian based at the Free University Berlin, and the author of Visions of Greater India: Transimperial Knowledge and Anti-Colonial Nationalism, ca 1800-1960.

Angus Stewart

Angus Stewart founded the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast and has written for publications including Cha, Typebar and STAT.

Wendy Xiaoxue Sun

Wendy Xiaoxue Sun is an Assistant Professor at Grinnell College, specializing in Asian-German Studies, creative writing and online influence.

Doris Sung

Doris Sung is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Alabama and author of Women of Chinese Modern Art (De Gruyter Brill, 2024).

Joshua Tan

Joshua Tan is a Singapore-based historian and researcher.

Phyllis Teo

Phyllis Teo is an art historian and writer currently based in Singapore. She is the author of Rewriting Modernism: Three Women Artists in Twentieth-Century China (Leiden University Press, 2016).

Lucas Tse

Lucas Tse is a fellow at All Souls College, Oxford University.

Thảo Tô

Thảo Tô is a writer from Vietnam. Her writing can be found in Sine Theta Magazine, diaCRITICS and The Augment Review.

SB Veda

SB Veda is the pen name for Sujoy Bhattacharyya, a British/Canadian independent writer based in Kolkata whose works, among others, have been published in The Independent, The Guardian, The Ottawa Citizen and The Global Calcuttan.

Jan-Markus Vömel

Jan-Markus Vömel is a historian and a post-doctoral fellow at the Research Center for Area Studies with the Indonesian National Research and Innovation Agency in Jakarta.

Soni Wadhwa

Soni Wadhwa teaches Literature Studies at SRM University, Andhra Pradesh, India.

Jane Wallace

Jane Wallace is a Hong Kong-born journalist and author living in London.

Martin Witte

Martin Witte has worked as a journalist, language instructor, and human rights activist. He currently provides support for scientific research at the University of California-Berkeley.

Jennifer Wong

Jennifer Wong is a Hong Kong poet now residing in the UK. Her books include Goldfish (Chameleon Press), Diary of a Miu Miu Salesgirl (Bitter Melon Poetry) and time difference (Verve), and the collection 回家 Letters Home (Nine Arches Press). Instagram @jenniferwswong

Ben Woollard

Ben Woollard's writing has appeared JSTOR Daily, Literary Hub, Comment, The Revealer and elsewhere.

Alvin Yapan

Alvin Yapan is the author of Worship the Body.

Kristen Yee

Kristen Yee is an American writer of Chinese and Portuguese-Jamaican descent.

Hilton Yip

Hilton Yip is a writer based in Taiwan and former book editor of Taiwan’s The China Post.

Shehrazade Zafar-Arif

Shehrazade Zafar-Arif is a Pakistani writer, theatre critic, and book reviewer based in London.

Vikram Zutshi

Vikram Zutshi is an American writer, journalist, and culture critic whose work spans politics, art, history, religion and literature.

Andreas von Buddenbrock

Andreas von Buddenbrock works as an artist and freelance illustrator in Hong Kong under the pseudonym “The Ink Trail”.