Associate Professor Martha Kuwee Kumsa,
Wilfrid Laurier University (Canada).
Dr. Kumsa’s teaching and research interests include: bridging the micro-macro rift; interdisciplinary knowledge; reflexive learning; liberatory practice; Participatory Action Research; transformative community practice; explorations of spirituality, issues of identity and cohesion, the paradox of nationalism and transnationalism, the flux of glocalization (global homogenization and local fragmentation), issues of home, homeland, and belonging among diasporic communities of refugees and immigrants.
Dr. Kumsa arrived in Canada as a refugee in 1991, escaping a life of terror and uncertainty in Ethiopia. As a broadcaster and print journalist, she continued to write voluminously during the 10 years she spent in jail as a prisoner of conscience in Addis Ababa. She is an active member of PEN International; PEN Canada; Canadian Journalists for Free Expression; the Oromo-Canadian Women’s Organization; and, is a founding member of Oromo Global Communities Network. She also actively volunteers for Amnesty International.
Dr. Kumsa has received, among other awards, the Helman/Hammet Award for Free Expression from Human Rights watch in New York and the Dr. Wilson Head Memorial Award for Outstanding Work in Anti-Racism, Peace and Human Rights from Atkinson College, York University.
Professor Henry Reynolds,
Chair, Riawunna Centre UTAS
Director, Community, Place & Heritage Research Unit (CPHRU)
Honorary Associate with History & Classics, UTAS
Henry Reynolds is an eminent Australian historian acknowledged as the outstanding scholar in Aboriginal-European relations in Australia.
Henry Reynolds was educated at the University of Tasmania. He worked for 30 years in Townsville at James Cook University and is currently an Australian Research Council Senior Fellow at the University of Tasmania in Launceston and also holds a post at Riawunna, the Centre for Aboriginal Education of the University of Tasmania.
His many awards include the 1982 Ernest Scott Historical Prize; the 1986 Harold White Fellowship, National Library of Australia; the 1988 Human Rights & Equal Opportunities Commission Arts Award; the 1996 Australian Book Council Award for non-fiction; and, the 2000 Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards for Literary Work Advancing Public Debate (The Harry Williams Award).