I am an anthropologist by training and I am involved in research on community development and engagement. All of my work with the communities have been supporting and creating a structure for them to participate in circular economy by empowering them with skills and knowledge that are relevant for them to establish community-based enterprise or to enhance their knowledge on being an Indigenous entrepreneurs at the rural regions. For this purpose, I adopt participatory community-based action research and ethnographic study, particularly when I conduct social impact assessment before conducting the research and after the implementations of the projects. My primary research focusing on community-driven development project that includes the applications of Indigenous knowledgeas tools for the community livelihood development in the circular economy on community-based cultural and knowledge conservation by engaging the makers, artisans and women to actively participate in the projects. The most successful research and sustainable community engagement has been the development of the Indigenous knowledge of the traditional textile, the Iban pua kumbu that has led to a series of educational polysensory exhibition, the “Textile Tales of the Pua Kumbu since 2015. I am also an art curator, curating cultural exhibitions and based on the HIR (2013-2016), I created a community-based enterprise that promotes the traditional Iban Pua Kumbu internationally.

Zulazhar Bin Tahir is a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Malaya after he ceased his legal practice at Messrs Hamid Sultan & Rakan-Rakan in 2000. Currently, Dr. Zulazhar teaches courses on the Malaysian Legal System, Criminal Procedure, and Criminal Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Malaya. His research interests include criminal law, the Malaysian legal system, child law, welfare law, and elderly law. He has authored and co-edited numerous books and publications within these areas of expertise.

  Professor Dr. Ngeow Wei Cheong is currently a lecturer at the Department of Oral & Maxillofacial Clinical Sciences, Faculty of Dentistry of the University of Malaya. He was a visiting professor at the University of California, San Francisco in 2015/2016. He graduated from the University of Malaya in 1992 and was a private practitioner for 9 months before he was offered the post of tutorship at his alma matter. Three years later, he took up a house job at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead, England, where he obtained his Fellowship in Dental Surgery from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and the Royal College of Surgeons of England. He subsequently returned to Malaysia and was a pioneer lecturer at the then newly established Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. He later became a lecturer at the University of Malaya in 2000. He later graduated with a Master in Dental Science studying the effect of a combination of long acting analgesic and local anaesthetic on third molar surgery pain in 2008, and obtained a PhD from the University of Sheffield, specialising on Peripheral Nerve Regeneration by studying the effects of different scar reducing agents on nerve repair. He has published more than 160 scientific papers in local and international journals, and was the Editor of the Malaysian Dental Journal from 2005-2007 and the Editor of the MDA Newsletter for 2015. His research interests are craniofacial anthropometry, variations of the mandibular nerve, and recovery of peripheral nerves after microsurgical repair. He is currently an Honorary Supervisor for the Harvard School of Dental Medicine.