Student-Led Bangladesh 2.0 and Beyond: Debt, Development, and Democracy

 

This panel will focus on debt, development, and democracy beyond the 2024 political transformation in Bangladesh. This event will be chaired by Dr. Mustahid Husain, Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto.

 

If you would like to submit questions to our panel, please do so through the following submission form

 

 

Dr. Debapriya Bhattacharya is a renowned economist and Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) in Dhaka, Bangladesh. His expertise spans economic policy, international development, and global governance. Currently, Dr. Bhattacharya chairs the Committee preparing the "White Paper on the State of Bangladesh Economy" for the country's Interim Government. He also serves on the United Nations Committee for Development Policy (UN CDP) and founded two influential think tank networks: LDC Monitor and Southern Voice. Dr. Bhattacharya's career includes significant diplomatic roles. He represented Bangladesh as Ambassador to the World Trade Organization and UN Offices in Geneva and Vienna. Additionally, he advised the Secretary General of UNCTAD on Least Developed Countries (LDCs) as a Special Advisor. His leadership at CPD is notable, having served as its inaugural Executive Director. Dr. Bhattacharya's scholarly work continues to shape discussions on development economics. His latest book, "Assessing COVID-19 Impact on SDG Delivery in Bangladesh" (Routledge, 2024), examines the pandemic's effects on sustainable development goals in his home country.

 

Dr. Farida Chowdhury Khan is Professor of Economics at University of Colorado Colorado Springs. She is Editor of the Journal of Bangladesh Studies and has served as officer or Board member of several professional organizations related to Bangladesh such as the Association for Economic Development Studies on Bangladesh, Bangladesh Environmental Network, and Bangladesh Development Initiative. Her scholarship is in international trade policy and economic development in Bangladesh, and on labor issues, particularly on injury risk, in the United States. Another strand of her interdisciplinary research includes that related to gender and indigenous peoples.

 

Dr. Fahim Quadir is the Dean and Vice-Provost of Graduate Studies and Professor of Global Development Studies at Queen’s University. Prior to joining Queen’s he served as the Interim Dean and Associate Vice-President Graduate in the Faculty of Graduate Studies, as well as Professor of Development Studies at York University. The recipient of many awards and fellowships, including Fulbright, Killam, SSRC, and SSHRC, Dr. Quadir held academic positions at several other universities in the USA, Canada, and Bangladesh. He has edited/co-edited five books and published extensively in various peer-reviewed journals on such topics as civil society, South-South cooperation, aid effectiveness, good governance, democracy, human security, human development, and regionalism.

 

Michael Kugelman is Director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington DC. He manages the Center's publications, research, and events on the region. He is also a columnist for Foreign Policy magazine and writes its weekly South Asia Brief newsletter. His recent projects have looked at shifting geopolitics in South Asia, US-India technology cooperation, the future of US-Pakistan relations, and Bangladesh's foreign policy.

 

Dr. Naomi Hossain is a political sociologist with degrees in philosophy, politics, economics, social anthropology and development studies from the University of Oxford, London School of Economics and Political Science, and the University of Sussex. She is part-Bangladeshi and part-Irish, and has lived and worked in Bangladesh, at the world’s largest NGO, BRAC; in Indonesia and the UK, while at the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University; and in the US, at the Accountability Research Center at American University in Washington DC.

 

Dr. Mustahid Husain is an anthropologist at the University of Toronto, focuses on global political economy, complex trauma, migration, and social justice. His upcoming book, Masculinity and Mental Health of Muslim Men of Colour: Diaspora and Intersectionality of Canadian Youth (Palgrave 2024), examines factors affecting Muslim Canadian youth's mental health, proposing community-based solutions through an intersectional lens. His previous work, Development, Neoliberalism, and Islamism in South Asia: The Case of Bangladesh (Palgrave 2022), explores neoliberal policies' impact on Bangladeshi society and industries. Dr. Husain's forthcoming novel, Double Truths (Kantara Press 2024), blends history and fiction to examine the World Bank, inspired by Saidiya Hartman's critical fabulation concept. His research has been featured in Foreign Policy and The Times Higher Education. Dr. Husain completed his doctoral and postdoctoral studies at the University of British Columbia, where he received the Future Alumnus Award.

 

Dr. Salim Rashid is a Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His most enduring research has focused on the impact of religion on economic development, particularly the influence of Christianity on Europe's economic progress. Development economics has driven many of the questions he has explored, including land tenure, land reform, and microfinance. Throughout his career, Rashid has been a vocal critic of the notion that "Economics is a science." He has been intrigued by the concept of 10% economic growth, which suggests that an average citizen's real income could potentially double every decade for the foreseeable future. In his view, the primary obstacle to long-term sustained growth in Bangladesh is land allocation. In his work "Compact Townships and the Magical 10%," Rashid has built upon the ideas of many earlier Bangladeshi thinkers to propose a path towards achieving this ambitious growth target. This proposal represents a synthesis of his research interests and his commitment to addressing practical economic challenges in developing nations.