Mr Sayidafzal Mallakhanov obtained a Bachelor’s Degree (2000) and a Master’s Degree (2002) from the Tashkent State Institute of Oriental Studies. Since 2002 he is working at the National Commission of the Republic of Uzbekistan for UNESCO (Senior Expert/Deputy Secretary-General).\n\nHe was the coordinator for preparation following multinational and national nominations to the Representative List of ICH and Good Practices for ICH Safeguarding: “Katta Ashula”, Askiya”, “Navruz”, “Palov Culture and Tradition”, “Margilan Crafts Development Center: Safeguarding of the Atlas and Adras Making Traditional Technologies”, “Khorazm Dance – Lazgi”, “Miniature Art”, “Bakhshi Arts”, “Telling tradition of Nasreddin Hodja”, “Art of crafting and playing Robāb/Rubāb/Rubob”, “Traditional embroidery of Central Asia”, “Traditional folk games of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan”, “Sericulture and Traditional Production of Silk for Weaving”. Moreover, Mr Sayidafzal Mallakhanov was also coordinator of the Uzbekistan -ICHCAP Cooperative Project: Publishing an ICH Inventory Booklet (2015-2017) and the ICHCAP Project on Conducting ICH Video Documentation in Uzbekistan (2015-2018).\n

Graduating in 1980 with a Bachelor of Business Studies from Massey University in New Zealand, Galumalemana has always been most interested in art, cultural heirtage and human rights. In 2006, together with his wife Wendy, they established the Tiapapata Art Centre Inc., a charitable trust promoting traditional and contemporary arts and crafts in Samoa. He has amassed an extensive photographic and video record of many of Samoa’s most iconic expressions of material culture and has been associated as a Research Fellow to the National University of Samoa on gender issues.

Dr. Jyldyz Doolbekova is an anthropologist, researcher, and consultant with a background in traditional ecological knowledge, place-based education, and local development to support and preserve the biocultural diversity and the well-being of mountain local communities in Kyrgyzstan. \n\nShe participated in the research within the project "Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) Contribution to SDGs - Community Education and Development" initiated and supported by International Research Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage in Asia-Pacific (IRCI, https://www.irci.jp/). The results of the study entitled "Visionary Local Communities in Promoting Intangible Cultural Heritage in Kyrgyzstan" (2020), and "The Evolving Role of Community Museums in Intangible Cultural Heritage Preservation: A Case Study from Kyrgyzstan" (2021) were presented at the International Symposium in Tokyo (online).\n\nShe has 15 years of experience with the Christensen Fund Central Asia Program (California, San Francisco) as a Special Advisor, Program Manager, and Regional Coordinator. Before joining The Christensen Fund, she was the University Projects Officer for the Aga Khan Humanities Project (AKHP), based at project headquarters in Dushanbe (Tajikistan), where she developed and implemented programs in conjunction with Central Asian universities to promote pluralism in ideas, cultures, and people through innovative humanities curricula rooted in traditional arts and knowledge. \n\nShe received a Ph.D. in anthropology, ethnology, and ethnography with a thesis on "Traditional ecological culture of the Kyrgyz (on the example of the Murghab Kyrgyz in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries)" at the Institute of Cultural Heritage of the National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic; received the equivalent of her MA from Kyrgyz National University Department of History and also earned a Master’s in International Relations from the International University of Kyrgyzstan. \n\n

Dr. Saifur Rashid is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh and has been a member of the faculty since 1993. He obtained his PhD in Anthropology in 2005 from Curtin University of Technology, Australia, and worked there as a Post-Doctoral Research and Teaching Fellow from 2006 to 2008. Dr. Rashid has been working with various UN agencies, Government organizations, national and international NGOs, and academic and research institutions of home and abroad for last 25 years. His areas of research interest include E-Governance, Heritage, Indigenous Knowledge, Natural Resources Management, Ethnicity, Migration and Visual Documentation. He has published several books and written many research articles in refereed scientific journals. His recently authored and co-authored books include ‘Connecting State and Citizens: Transformation Through e-Governance in Rural Bangladesh (2018)’, ‘Traditional Medicine: Sharing Experience from the Field (2017)’ and ‘Pains and Pleasure of Fieldwork’ (2016), Intangible Cultural Heritage in Urban Context (2020). He has made a number of documentaries on various ICH elements of Bangladesh for ICHCAP and Google Arts & Culture and awarded Distinction Prize for one of the documentaries made for ICHCAP, South Korea. Dr. Rashid is now working on two book projects: one on ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage of Bangladesh’ and another on ‘Anthropology and Heritage’. He is also working on another two book projects: one on ‘Migration, Fraudulence and Social Mediation’ and another on ‘The Told and Untold Stories of Bangladeshi Migrants in the Europe’. Professor Rashid is a member of the ICH National Expert Committee of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs of the Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh and member of the executive committee of APHEN-ICH (Asia-Pacific Higher Education Network for Intangible Cultural Heritage) of ICHCAP. Professor Rashid visited more than 40 countries for attending meetings, seminars and conferences and gave lectures as key speaker and has been a Visiting Professor of Chonnam National University and Chonbuk National University, South Korea since 2015.