Dr Vilashini Somiah is a feminist anthropologist from Sabah, Malaysia, and a Senior Lecturer in the Gender Studies Programme at Universiti Malaya. She holds a PhD from the National University of Singapore, an MA from Ohio University, an MRes from Universiti Malaya, and a BA from Universiti Malaya. Her research centres on underrepresented narratives of women, migrants, and interior Bornean communities, with a particular focus on marginality, survival, and lived political realities. She is co-editor of Revisiting Covid-19 in Malaysia: Plight and Perseverance (UM Press, 2023) and Sabah from the Ground: The 2020 Elections and the Politics of Survival (SIRD/ISEAS, 2021). Her first single-authored monograph, Irregular Migrants and the Sea at the Borders of Sabah, Malaysia: Pelagic Alliance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), received the Universiti Malaya Award for Outstanding Achievement (ACUM) for Best Social Science Book and has gained international recognition. She is currently completing her fourth book on the lives and resilience of Bornean women, under contract with University of Hawaii Press. Dr Somiah was a Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics in 2024, supported by the Henry Luce Foundation and SEANNET, where she researched Indigenous women entrepreneurs in Sabah and forms of entrepreneurial resilience in the post–Covid-19 period. She was also an ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute Visiting Fellow in 2025, focusing on subaltern politics in East Coast Sabah in the lead-up to the 2025 Sabah state elections. She currently serves as a Harvard Asia Center Associate (2025–2026) and was elected to the Southeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS), where she will serve until 2028. In 2026, she was awarded the Greenberg Chair Visiting Scholar Bursary at the University of Ottawa. Beyond academia, she writes widely on Malaysia’s socio-political landscape and is co-founder of the Datum Initiative, a regional research observatory working at the intersection of data, justice, and inclusive socio-economic transformation in Southeast Asia. To know more about her works as a scholar and with Datum visit www.vilashinisomiah.com and www.datum-initiative.com      

Sahar Rasoulikolamaki is a Lecturer in Linguistics at the English Department, Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, Universiti Malaya. Her research focuses on critical discourse analysis, social semiotics, and multimodal communication, with particular focus on (multimodal) argumentation, mediated representation, and (social) media discourse. She explores topics such as online radicalisation, extremism, and political violence, and is interested in how multimodal resources reflect and construct identities, power dynamics, and ideological positionings. Her scholarly work has been published in renowned journals including Discourse & Communication, Journal of Language and Politics, Terrorism & Political Violence, and Discourse & Society, among others.

Dr. Samsul Farid Samsuddin is a Senior Lecturer at Department of Library & Information Science in the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, University of Malaya. He was a Senior Librarian at Universiti Putra Malaysia Library (2010 - 2018) before joining the University (UM) in 2018. He graduated with Diploma in Building Surveying in 2003 and Bachelor of Science in Information Studies (Library & Information Management) in 2010 both from Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM). Dr. Samsul Farid obtained his Master degree in Library & Information Science (MLIS) from Universiti Malaya in 2012 and his doctorate (PhD) in Rural Advancement from Universiti Putra Malaysia in 2017. His research is geared towards Community Development in Behavioral and Information Studies (library services & information management, information literacy, digital literacy, user needs & behaviour, information services for rural advancement, the use of ICT for development and community development). He's an expert in his fields and has published numerous articles in the library literature, systematic literature review papers and presented at various conferences.