Jonathan Crane is a PhD student in Jewish Ethics at the University of Toronto.  His particular areas of interest are the intersection of religion & public agency, Jewish perspectives on war & peace, Jewish notions of duty, and nonviolence (Gandhian, secular and Jewish).  He graduated from Hebrew Union College in New York and was ordained a rabbi in May 2003.  He served as a student rabbi in India, China and the United States.  Previously he traveled to India on a Rotary fellowship, where he earned an M.Phil. in Gandhian Thought from Gujarat Vidyapith, a university founded by Gandhi in 1920.  In 2003 his reflection titled Go forth: Seek the lesson of the Other was published in the Wheaton College Quarterly.  Email: <hellojkc@hotmail.com> (10/04)

Bina D'Costa is the Post-Doctoral Research Fellow on Poverty, Inequality and Development in Post-Conflict States, in the Development Cluster at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. She was previously the John Vincent Fellow in the department of international relations of the Research School of Asian and Pacific Studiesat the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, where she earned her PhD in 2003.  She has taught in the departments of international relations and women's studies at the ANU.  Bina's dissertation, entitled Gendered Nationalism: From Partition to Creation, was an analysis of national identity politics and gender in the 1947 partition violence in the Indian subcontinent and the 1971 war of Bangladesh.  Her current research focuses on historical injustices and truth and memory in relation to the strategies of civil society in demanding justice when there is a hostile government in power.  She is also working on a comparative analysis of civil society and local concepts of justice in India and China.  In 2005 she co-authored an ANU working paper, Transnational feminism: Political strategies and theoretical resources. Email:  <bina.dcosta@stonebow.otago.ac.nz>  (1/06)

Vamba Fofana is a senior paralegal, interpreter and translator with Bretz & Coven, LLP, an immigration law firm in Manhattan, NY.  He assists attorneys in evaluating and interviewing clients and applicants for asylum, writing briefs, appeals, and affidavits, interprets for clients at asylum interviews, and testifies in immigration courts on human rights situations in Africa and the former Soviet Union.  He is currently chair of the board of directors of the Staten Island Liberian Community Association, one of the largest Liberian community associations outside continental Africa.  He also serves on the board of directors of the Union of Liberian Associations in the Americas, as well as on three sub-committees. Vamba received a diploma in paralegal studies in 2001.  Email: <vfofana@yahoo.com>  (5/04)

Jana McDonald is working with Tulane University as the program coordinator of Mother to Child Prevention of Transmission of HIV in Mirebalais, Haiti.  In December 2004 she will take a two-month leave of absence to work in South Africa with the United Nations on an HIV/AIDS project.  Jana earned a masters in international public health from Tulane University in 2001 and has since worked on prenatal health education with migrant farmworkers on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, and served as health coordinator for the American Refugee Committee in Gjilan/Gnjilane, Kosovo (see her field notes on Building Peace Through Health Care in Kosovo.)   “I am surprised more peace studies students haven’t gone into public health. The job I had in Kosovo was actually a perfect combination of my two degrees, using Health to Build Peace – every project we worked on had to somehow bring the various ethnic groups together. Our biggest success was opening the hospital to receive patients of all ethnicities.”  Email:  <bananaj@hotmail.com>  (2/05)

Yukiko Nakajima is a PhD student in the School of Social Work at the University of Minnesota, where she is on the staff of the Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse.  She earned her Masters in Social Work from Minnesota, and has also completed a certificate in psychotherapy at the University of Singapore.  [Email available from Anne Hayner.]  (5/05)

Jasmin Nordien is a visiting faculty member at the Henry Martyn Institute: International Centre for Research, Interfaith Relations and Reconciliation (HMI) in Hyderabad, India until March 2005.   HMI is an ecumenical Christian organisation, dedicated to the objective study and teaching of Islam, the promotion of interfaith dialogue and reconciliation.  " I'm straddling two programmes, the HMI praxis programme and academic programme, which means I get to do training in conflict areas in India and I'm co-ordinating a newly established 6 month post graduate course in conflict resolution, peace studies, and interfaith relations.  I'm really enjoying my stay here."  Email: <jasmin.n@mweb.co.za>  (12/04)  
 

Amy Scanlon is development director for NETWORK, a national Catholic social justice lobby in Washington, DC.    Email: <ascanlon@networklobby.org> (7/05)