Before coming to DURP Ashok Das was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the San Francisco State University. He also worked as an architect in India, and as an architecture/planning consultant in the US. Ashok’s research revolves around issues of urban poverty in developing countries of South and Southeast Asia, in countries such as India, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines. Community participation and empowerment, slum upgrading and low-income housing, decentralization and local governance, and the role of civil society in development among his key topics of interest. His doctoral work at UCLA explored the nature, measurement, and comparison of empowerment arising from participation by poor households in post-decentralization slum upgrading programs in India and Indonesia. Ashok’s recent research has explored community-managed, integrated microfinance for urban poverty alleviation; local government-led, community-based efforts towards disaster preparedness and risk reduction; and how institutional idiosyncrasies and planning education influence each other and planning practice. He has also investigated the impacts of inclusionary zoning and other affordable housing policies on local/regional housing markets in the United States, especially in California and Hawaii. Globalization’s impact on urban form and historic preservation in emerging economies are other research interests. He is also an avid sportsman, trekker, and cartoonist. In 2016, he received the Chancellor’s Citation for Meritorious Teaching, one of UH Manoa’s highest teaching awards.

Monica Ghosh has been an academic librarian since 1988. A graduate of the University of Michigan Master of Information and Library Studies, she began her career in library instruction and general reference at Michigan State University and moved to the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa (UHM) in 1991 as a reference librarian. A few years later, she was appointed as the South Asia Studies Librarian, and is the only librarian who has also served twice as the Director of the Center for South Asian Studies at UHM.  While Chair of the renowned Asia Collection at UHM Library, she received her PhD in English. After serving twice as Interim Associate University Librarian for Planning, Administration and Personnel, she was appointed Interim University Librarian in August 2017-2019. Her professional associations include the Committee on South Asia Libraries and Documentation (CONSALD) and the Association for Asian Studies (AAS)–she has presented her scholarship at the annual meeting of AAS and at the Annual South Asia Conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Her research interests include South Asians writing in English; literature of the South Asian diaspora; representations of South Asians in U.S. popular culture; and the Anglo-Indian and Chinese communities of India. 

Prior to coming to UH Manoa, Paul Lavy taught ancient art history at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, and Asian and Islamic art history at Pennsylvania State University, University Park. He has conducted research in India and throughout Southeast Asia, particularly in Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam (where he lived for a couple of years). His ongoing research, which has been funded by the University of Hawaii Research Council, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Asian Cultural Council, and the National Security Education Program, investigates the links between art/architecture and political history in early historic Southeast Asia. His primary interests are the Hindu-Buddhist artistic traditions associated with the Mekong Delta and Preangkorian Khmer civilization and their relationships with the art of South Asia. He is currently researching and writing a book on early sculpture from Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, entitled The Crowned Gods of Early Southeast Asia. His notable works include, “Conch-on-Hip Images in Peninsular Thailand and Early Vaisnava Sculpture in Southeast Asia” in Before Siam: Essays in Art and Archaeology, (2014), ed. Nicolas Revire and Stephen A. Murphy; “A Lopburi Buddha at the Honolulu Museum of Art,” Orientations 43, 5 (June 2012): 53-59; “As in Heaven, So on Earth: The Role of Vishnu, Harihara, and Shiva Images in the Politics of Preangkorian Southeast Asia,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 34, 1 (2003): 21-39.