Organising Committee 2017:
J. Daniel Luther (jdaniel_luther@soas.ac.uk) (QA Co-founder)
Daniel finds themself immersed in their doctoral research at the interstices of ‘queer’ and ‘normativity’ in the Department of South Asian Studies at SOAS, University of London. After having lived by the sunny shores of Singapore for nearly a decade and the busy city of Delhi prior to that you can always find them happy to escape the calamity of the grey London weather in any bright and cheery English pub.
Jenny Ung Loh (jl99@soas.ac.uk) (QA17 Organising Committee)
Jenny divides her time between academic pursuits focused on South Asia (gender and sexuality, religious studies, colonial and postcolonial history) and her corgis (owning, adoring, and promotional work). Living in the countryside (no streetlights), she enjoys frequenting country pubs, cooking, and obstacle courses.
Aapurv Jain (aapurvjain@gmail.com) (QA Co-founder)
Aapurv is a development practitioner based in New Delhi, India. He completed his MA Gender and Sexuality at SOAS, University of London as a Felix Scholar and has been working as a Program Officer at Partner for Law in Development (PLD), a non-profit in New Delhi, India.
Allan C. Simpson (as143@soas.ac.uk) (QA Co-founder)
Allan is into all that is contemporary South Korean, specifically queer works of literature and film. He is an avid learner of languages and teaches Korean to keep that coin coming, but most especially enjoys teaching his SOAS hinnies the Geordie tongue. Oft found in cafes; and craquant cake is the way to his heart!
Tessa Qiu (583120@soas.ac.uk) (QA17 Organising Committee)
Tessa Qiu is a fourth year Music and Chinese student at SOAS. After hanging out at the Beijing LGBT Centre during her year abroad in China, she’s been more and more interested in queer activism both in London and Beijing. You can be sure to hear her on SOAS radio playing the freshest underground music from China and the diaspora on her radio show “bang bang bang de qiao men sheng”!
How Wee Ng (hn15@soas.ac.uk) (QA Co-founder)
How Wee teaches Chinese cinema and Modern Chinese Language in the Department of China and Inner Asia. He received his doctorate from SOAS, Univeristy of London on the assumption that he would be following the footsteps of eminent alumni like the late Chinese writer Lao She.
Instead, the greatest reward was finding himself using strange British phrases like: ‘You look chuffed!’, ‘Oh, I’m absolutely gutted’, ‘Blimey!’, ‘You’re such a knob!’
He puts it down to British telly and his students.
Shantanu Singh (s.singh49@lse.ac.uk) (QA17 Organising Committee)
Shantanu is an economist at the LSE India Observatory working on development, entrepreneurship, gender, and education. He completed his M.Sc Economics from the LSE and is always talking data. He finds curiousity a compelling motivator when it comes to tastebuds, languages or people.
Imrane Lawrence Trocme (597180@soas.ac.uk) (QA17 Organising Committee)
Imrane is studying political ecology and development with a focus on capitalist ecological crises and social unrest in the middle east. Reading too much obscure academic literature on social relations has drawn him to seek escape routes: discovering new worlds of music & cinema, attempts at amateur film-making, day long cooking sprees and techno raves in the depths of London. Recently he feels subject to a certain degree of cognitive dissonance, wondering how he could be both a force of progressive change in this world and spend most of his time on an isolated sunny beach paradise with a few friends, loud music and fresh lager.
U Bava dharani (612438@soas.ac.uk) (QA17 Organising Committee)
Bava is a third year LLB student. When she is not reading about the shortcomings of the different legal regimes that govern this planet, she escapes to South Indian cinema. Years of watching cinema has conditioned her well to sit for long hours at a time and listen attentively, which has helped immensely in university. So yes she strongly believes that being a film junkie can be an educational experience. Of course getting away with snacking is the tricky part.