Associate Professor Dr. Peter Aning Tedong joined the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Malaya in December 2014. He is currently the Head of Department of Urban and Regional Planning and was formerly the Head of the Centre for Malaysian Indigenous Studies. As an urban studies and housing scholar, Dr. Peter Aning’s broad areas of interest cover housing policy and governance, the political economy of urban planning, and neighborhood sustainability and planning. He has received numerous research grants from both the public and private sectors and has led several high-impact national and international projects. Notably, he served as Project Leader for the Family Wellbeing Index funded by the National Population and Family Development Board (LPPKN), with findings published in the 13th Malaysia Plan (RMK13). He is also the Project Leader for a study on poverty alleviation funded by the Economic Planning Unit (EPU) Sarawak, and the Principal Investigator of a comparative study on informal housing in Makassar (Indonesia) and Sabah (Malaysia) funded by the Association of Asian Social Science Research Councils (AASSREC). His recently completed projects explored socio-spatial planning in the context of Malaysia’s urban future and the dynamics of poverty among Indigenous communities in rural areas. He has also conducted extensive work on the role of governance in addressing the needs of vulnerable communities—including refugees, stateless persons, and foreign workers—while examining broader issues of housing and migration in Malaysian cities. His latest research interests center on multi-layered governance of affordable housing, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in relation to neighborhood and community planning, and the impacts of migration on regional and urban development. While his empirical focus is on Southeast Asia, Dr. Peter Aning has also conducted fieldwork in Europe, the Borneo Islands, North America, and Oceania.        

Dr. Mohd Khairi bin Ismail is a respected Malaysian economist, researcher, and academic who currently serves as a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Business and Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Cawangan Terengganu. With over 15 years of experience in higher education and research, Dr. Khairi has made significant contributions in the fields of development economics, environmental economics, and poverty studies. He is also a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Ungku Aziz Centre for Development Studies (UAC), University of Malaya—an institution known for championing inclusive and sustainable development research. A First-Class Honours graduate in Economics from Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM), Dr. Khairi later earned his PhD in Environment and Development (Economics) from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). His academic journey reflects a deep commitment to interdisciplinary research addressing socio-economic issues affecting the B40 community, urban poverty, and sustainable livelihoods. His scholarly work has been published in more than 60 journals, proceedings, and book chapters, with multiple publications indexed in Scopus and Web of Science (WoS).  Dr. Khairi has received numerous recognitions and academic awards, including the best paper award and multiple gold medals for innovation in research and teaching. His policy-based research has received grants from national research bodies, especially in projects related to community well-being, Islamic social finance, and urban resilience. In addition, he is an editorial board member for SAGE Open and reviewer for several national and international journals. His expertise has also earned him frequent invitations to media appearances, both in print and broadcast. Dr. Khairi has been featured on RTM and RTM Radio, offering expert commentary on national issues such as the cost of living, national budget, SST vs GST, and inflation. He has also contributed opinion pieces and interviews to major newspapers including Berita Harian, Utusan Malaysia, Sinar Harian, and The Star. His media engagements are characterized by a balanced, data-driven, and policy-relevant approach that bridges the gap between academia and the public.

Mary J Marret is a paediatrician with a special interest in community paediatrics. She has been practising as a paediatrician for about thirty years after undergraduate and postgraduate training at the National University of Singapore. She is a Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur with a parallel clinical appointment as senior consultant paediatrician at the University of Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC). She has extensive experience in undergraduate and postgraduate training with active involvement in the development and implementation of the undergraduate and postgraduate paediatric curriculum at the Faculty of Medicine. Currently, she is the Paediatric Assessment Coordinator for undergraduate students in the University of Malaya Medical Programme (UMMP). As Faculty Advisor for clinical assessment, she helped to design the examination format for the UMMP Final Barrier Clinical Assessment, introduced innovations to run examinations through the Covid-19 pandemic, and continues to advise on further refinements post-pandemic. She is a Fellow of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, UK, and has been examiner for membership examinations conducted by the RCPCH for over a decade. In her roles as Chairman of the Child Protection Committee at the UM Medical Centre as well as Chair of the Child Protection Sub-committee of the Malaysian Paediatric Association, she has an interest in enhancing professional capacity and competence of professionals in the field of child protection within the institution as well as in the country. She provides consultation to a multidisciplinary team that performs assessments of children referred for suspected child maltreatment and conducts in-house training for doctors, nurses and social workers involved in this multi-disciplinary care. She has been invited by various organisations to provide education on child protection and to advise on laws, polices and service provision, including other local hospitals, educational institutions, government agencies, NGOs and various professional bodies. She is a member of the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect and was part of the scientific committee for the 10th ISPCAN Asia Pacific Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect held in Kuala Lumpur. She was a member of an international committee of experts under the auspices of the World Health Organisation which developed guidelines for the health sector response to child maltreatment. Together with a fellow paediatrician, she pioneered the establishment of a paediatric developmental clinic at UMMC in the late 1990s, collaborating with the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine to address unmet needs of children with disabilities and developmental problems. This paved the way for junior colleagues to pursue training in developmental paediatrics, with the subsequent establishment of a Child Development Centre at UMMC. Her research interests are in child victimization across a variety of settings with publications in scientific journals and book chapters and presentations at local and international conferences. She has also been a reviewer for medical journals. She has collaborated in population-based research regarding the epidemiology of child maltreatment in Malaysia as well as the exposure of Malaysian adolescents to risks and victimization through their engagement with online digital technology. Her recent publications on abusive head trauma have examined adverse outcomes of mortality, disability and developmental problems as well as financial implications such as the cost of inpatient care. On behalf of the Malaysian Paediatric Association, she has written articles providing advice on child health which have been published in a local parenting magazine as well the local media. She utilises creative writing and music as channels to reflect on insights derived from her interaction with children.