K. C. Zachariah was a Honorary Professor at the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. He was a senior demographer at the World Bank, from 1971 to 1989, Washington DC, the United Nations expert on demography at the Cairo Demographic Centre (1966–70) and Deputy Director, International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai (1957–1966). He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania (USA) and has six decades of research experience. He has also co-ordinated six major migration surveys in Kerala since 1998 and has published extensively in national and international journals on social, economic and demographic implications of international migration.
S. Irudaya Rajan was a Former Professor at the Centre for Development Studies (CDS), Kerala (close 40 years of post-graduate experience) Currently, he is the chair of the KNOMAD (The Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development,)World Bank working group on internal migration and urbanization. He is one of the expert committee members to advise the Government of Kerala on Covid-19. He has published in international journals on social, economic, demographic, psychological and political implications of migration on individuals, community, economy and society. He is the editor of the annual series India Migration Report since 2010 and South Asia Migration Report since 2017 published by Routledge. Founder Editor in Chief, Migration and Devleopment (Taylor and Francis).
Sheela Thomas , IAS (Retd) is a 1985 batch IAS Officer of Kerala cadre. She was the Chairperson of the Rubber Board under the Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Government of India. She was also the Secretary General of the Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries ( ANRPC) representing the Government of India. She was Additional Chief Secretary in General Administration Department & NoRKA, Secretary to the Chief Minister, Secretary in the departments of Agriculture , Co-operation, Food & Civil Supplies, Consumer Affairs and Modernising Government Programmes ( MGP) in theGovernment of Kerala.
D. Narayana is the Former Director of Gulati Institute of Finance and Taxation (GIFT). He held the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Chair at Centre for Development Studies (CDS). He was at the State Planning Board as Technical Advisor to the Board between 2013 and 2016. He was a Fulbright Fellow at Harvard Centre for Population and Development Studies, and a Visiting Professor at the Unit of International Health at University of Montreal. He led the team which prepared the report titled ‘Domestic Migrant Labour in Kerala’ (2013) which for the first time provided an estimate of the number of migrant labourers working in Kerala. His major book on health is, Slim Haddad, Enis Bariş, Delampady Narayana (Ed.), Safeguarding the Health Sector in Times of Macroeconomic Instability: Policy Lessons for Low- and Middle-Income Countries 2008, Africa World Press, Trenton, New Jersey. He was a member of the Kerala Public Expenditure Review Committee.He holds a Ph.D. from the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Kolkata. D Narayana served as consultant to International Labour Organisation (ILO), Geneva (2003-04), and Asian Development Bank (ADB), Manila (2002) on different subjects related to Kerala. He was the technical advisor to the Selection Committee in the Award category, ‘Health, Environment and Development’, Fourth Annual GDN Conference held at Cairo in 2003.
Dr. KJ Joseph is currently the Director of the Gulati Institute of Finance and Taxation (GIFT). He is also the President of Globelics and Founding Editor-in-Chief of Innovation and Development published by Taylor and Francis (London). Earlier positions that he held include Ministry of Commerce Chair Professor at Centre for Development Studies, Visiting Senior Fellow at RIS, New Delhi, Professor Jawaharlal Nehru University, IT Policy Consultant of UNESCAP for Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, Thailand and the Yunnan Province of China, Expert in Innovation studies at Tianjin University of Finance and Economics, China, selected under the program of search for global experts. He has also been a consultant to UNCTAD. His areas of expertise include science technology and innovation for development with a focus on information technology, industry studies especially electronics; FDI, trade, globalization and WTO, regional development with a focus on Kerala economy and natural resource-based development with a focus on plantation agriculture. Apart from over 80 research papers and a number of policy-oriented reports, he has six books published by five leading international publishers (Sage publications, Oxford University Press, Palgrave Macmillan, Routledge and Edward Elgar) to his credit. He has delivered invited lectures, keynote addresses and presented papers in over 80 seminars/conferences held in 35 countries and over 125 seminars/workshops/conference in India.
Dr Ravi Raman is currently a member, State Planning Board, Government of Kerala. Until recently, he was a senior fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. He was a visiting fellow in Oxford, Cambridge and Manchester for varying periods. He is also an honorary research fellow in the Department of Development Studies, SOAS, London, and affiliated researcher on Egalitarianism, University of Bergen and Visiting Research Fellow, Centre for Development Studies Thiruvananthapuram. He is the author of Global Capital and Peripheral Labour (Routledge, 2010/2012/2015), editor of Development, Democracy and the State (Routledge, 2010) and Corporate Social Responsibility (with Ronnie Lipschutz) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and has contributed to journals such as Review of International Political Economy, Review of Radical Political Economics, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Nature and Culture, Social Analysis, Business History Review, Organization and so on.
E T Mathew is Honorary Fellow, Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram. In his long and distinguished career, he has held many important positions, notable amongst them being, Head, Department of Economics, University of Kerala; Honorary Director, Comprehensive Scheme on the Study of the Cost of Cultivation of Principal Crops in Kerala, under the aegis of the Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India (1978-88); Senior Fellow, Indian Council of Social Science Research. Professor Mathew was a recipient of the Fulbright Travel Grant and Ford Economic Fellowship for Graduate Study at Vanderbilt University, USA, in 1959. His publications include Financing Higher Education: Sources and Uses of Funds of Private Colleges in Kerala (1991), Employment and Unemployment in Kerala: Some Neglected Aspects (1997) and (with K.C. Zachariah and S. Irudaya Rajan) Dynamics of Migration in Kerala: Dimensions, Differentials and Consequences (2003).
K. V. Joseph is an acclaimed professor who taught in St Xavier’s college since 1966. In his extensive academic career, he has held many important positions. He served as Head of the department of St Xavier’s College, Thumba for a long time. He was also part of the Kerala Public expenditure review committee as well. His major publications include Keralites on the move: A Historical Study of migration from Kerala, Migration and Economic development of Kerala.
P S Nair is currently working as a Guest Faculty, Dept.of Demography, University of Kerala, Trivandrum. He worked as Guest faculty in CDS as well. He was the former Professor & Head, Dept. of Population Studies, University of Botswana, Former Professor & Head, Dept. of Demography, University of Kerala. Former Director, Population Research Centres at University of Kerala and Dharwad and Reader in IIPS, and Demographer in GIRH & FP in Gandhigram, Tamil Nadu.
He took his Ph.D in Sociology- Demography from Free University of Brussels, Belgium in 1982 and worked as Visiting Professor in the University of Manitoba, Canada, visiting Research Fellow in NIDI, The Netherlands, INED, Paris, and East West Population Institute, Honolulu. Also, he functioned as a Tutor for the Distance Learning Programme of UNFPA. Also he functioned as a member of the Kerala State Planning Board Task force on ‘Health, Family Welfare and Nutrition’ (1998-2002).
He has over 40 years of teaching and research experience and supervised 20 Ph.D, 15 M.Phil and 30 MA dissertations. He has co-ordinated 14 demographic surveys including NFHS-1 Kerala and published 5 books, 52 papers in national and international Journals and 18 Book chapters. He is a member of IUSSP, IASP and Union of African Population Studies (UAPS), Asian Population Association, Honorary Indian Association for Social Sciences and Health (IASSH) etc.
Nikhil Panicker is currently pursuing his PhD at the Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Science at Northumbria University. With an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering and a graduate degree in Financial Economics, he had previous stints as a Derivatives Trader and Big Data Manager in the banking sector. Being passionate about the study of human migration, he moved to social sciences research and now works on migration spaces, barriers and inequality.