David A. Feingold, Ph. D.

DAVID A. FEINGOLD is the director of the Ophidian Films Ltd. and International Coordinator for Trafficking and HIV/AIDS in the Office of the Regional Advisor for Culture, UNESCO, Bangkok. Educated at Dartmouth, Yale and Columbia, he is a research anthropologist and award-winning filmmaker. He has conducted extensive field research in Southeast Asia over four decades, particularly among the Akha and Shan peoples. An internationally recognized expert on opiate production and trade, Feingold served as consultant to the Select Committee on Narcotics of the U.S. Congress and to the United Nations. He currently serves as the UNESCO representative on the UN Inter-Agency Working Group on the Trafficking of Women, and has represented UNESCO at numerous international fora on human trafficking. He is a Fellow of the Centre d’Anthropologie de la Chine du Sud et de la Peninsule Indochinoise (CACSPI)

His scholarly papers include: "Opium and Politics in Laos"; "The Political Ecology of Opium on the Thai - Burma Frontier"; "Networks of Identity: Ethnic Designations and Kin Groupings among the Johgwö Akha of Northern Thailand;" "On Knowing Who You Are: Intra­ethnic Distinctions Among the Akha of Northern Thailand"; "Money, Myths and Models: Opium, Economics, and History on the Thai-Burma Frontier"; "Towards a Theory of Consumable Cur­rencies"; "Kings, Princes and Mountaineers: Ethnicity and the State on the Burma Frontier"; "Environmental and Cultural Factors in the Behavioral Action of Drugs"; "Killer Ethnography: The Social Management of Research Among the Khmer Rouge"; "Deconstructing the Body: The Political Ecology of Land Mines in Cambodia"; "Bodies in Evidence: Land Mines in Cambodia"; "The Hell of Good Intentions: Opium in the Political Ecology of the Trade in Minority Girls and Women"; “Sex, Drugs and the IMF: Some Implications of ‘Structural Readjustment’ for the Trade in Heroin, Girls and Women in the Upper Mekong Region,” and, most recently, “Think Again: Human Trafficking” for Foreign Policy Magazine. 

He has researched the trade in minority girls and women from Burma, Yunnan and Laos to Thailand under grants from the Else Sackler Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. He was awarded a series of production grants from the Spunk Fund Inc. for the PBS documentary film on this subject, TRADING WOMEN, narrated by Angelina Jolie. His other films include sixteen documentaries in Cambodia in the 1980’s and 1990’s. These range from an early examination of the restoration of Angkor Wat to filming the Khmer Rouge in the jungle and a three-year project on landmines in Cambodia. He has undertaken other major projects in Peru and Mozambique. His films have appeared on the BBC, CH-4 (U.K.), FR-3 (France), SBS and ABC (Australia), National Geographic, ABC, NBC, and PBS.

Bridget Anderson, DPhil
Bridget Anderson is Senior Researcher and Programme Head at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, Oxford University. She has worked with undocumented women migrants for many years, both in the UK and Europe. This has included working closely with and advising migrants’ organisations, trades unions and legal practitioners at local, national and European levels. She has published extensively in the field of migrant and trafficked labour, including; Needs and Desires: Demand and Trafficked Labour, IOM (2004. She is currently working on, Needs and Desires: Findings on the Market for Migrant Sex and Domestic Labour.

Dr. Kevin Bales, BA, M., MS
Kevin Bales is one of the world’s leading experts on modern-day slavery. He is currently the director of Free the Slaves, a U.S. based anti-slavery organisation and a professor of sociology at Roehampton University, London. He is also a consultant to the United Nations on slavery and trafficking Kevin Bales has published widely on the subject including the internationally acclaimed work, Disposable People: New Slavery in a Global Economy (1999). He is currently working on the third book in the slavery series, concentrating on people and projects that liberate and rehabilitate slaves.

Professor Ronaldo Munck, BA, PhD
Ronaldo Munck is the Theme Leader in the Internationalisation, Interculturalism and Social Development Department at Dublin City University. His particular interests include the relationship between globalisation, democracy and civil society with particular focus on the debate on migration and the new Ireland. He has published and spoken extensively on the issue of globalisation and labour, including Labour and Globalisation: A New Great Transformation? (2002) and Globalisation and Social Exclusion: A Transformational Persepective (2004). He is currently working on a book on Globalisation and Contestation.

Dr. Monika Smit
Monika Smit has been a senior researcher at the Bureau of the Dutch National Rapporteur on Trafficking in Human Beings since 2000. The main task of the Bureau is to collect information on trafficking in human beings and report annually to the Dutch Government. The annual report covers all aspects of trafficking from legislation and policy to victim protection and prevention. The fifth report due to be published at the end of 2006 will also look at exploitation outside the sex industry.

Monnika Smit is also a member of the Dutch Council for the Administration of Justice and the Protection of Juveniles and was previously (1983-2000) an assistant professor at Leiden University. She has published extensively in the field of children and youth care and unaccompanied minor asylum seekers.

Stana Buckowska, BA, MA
Stana Buchowska was in 1995 one of the co-founders of La Strada, Poland. She has extensive experience working with trafficked women in Central and Eastern Europe and has led numerous training initiatives in the region for, NGO’s, professionals working in the field and law enforcement agencies. She has also undertaken research for among others, Anti-Slavery International. She is currently the national co-ordinator for La Strada and a member of the executive board of the La Strada Foundation. She is also a member of the international board of the Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women.

Suzanne Egan - Commissioner-Irish Human Rights Commission
Suzanne Egan has been a lecturer in International and European Human Rights Law at the Faculty of Law in University College Dublin since 1992. She is a qualified barrister and holds a Master of Laws Degree from Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto. Prior to lecturing at UCD, she was the Legal Supervisor of an independent research centre on refugee law and policy in Canada (1989-1991) and a Research Assistant at the Law Reform Commission in Ireland (1991-1992). She is a former member of the Executive Committee of the Irish Refugee Council. She has published widely in the area of human rights, particularly with regard to refugee law and policy and has engaged in human rights training for various non-governmental organisations, the Council of Europe as well as members of the legal profession.