Prof Ashley Thompson is Hiram W Woodward Chair of Southeast Asian Art at SOAS University of London. Her research focuses on the premodern arts and literatures of Southeast Asia, with a particular emphasis on Cambodia. She is currently completing a monograph titled “After Angkor: The Work of Buddhist Art.”

Prof Samerchai Poolsuwan is the Professor of Anthropology at Thammasat University, Thailand, and holds a doctorate degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His current research, focusing on the Buddhist iconography in the Theravādin context of Southeast Asia, has yielded a number of publications on exploration of the Pagan-period and the early-Thai Buddhist arts.

Prof Katherine Bowie is a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Anthropology at the Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has conducted research in Thailand for over 40 years. Her recent research focuses on Theravada Buddhism in Thailand, and she has currently completed a book manuscript on the Vessantara Jataka, entitled “The Politics of Humor: the Vicissitudes of the Vessantara Jataka in Thailand

Assoc Prof Gregory Kourilsky is an associate professor at the École française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO). He received his PhD in Religious Anthropology and History of Religions at the École pratique des hautes études (EPHE), Paris. He specializes in Thai-Lao Buddhism, but also occasionally works on Cambodia, Burma, and Southwest China. His research particularly focuses on the ways Buddhist populations in Mainland Southeast Asia have maintained their religious and cultural identity despite the intrusion of nonindigenous doctrines, ranging from Indian classical scriptures to modern Western law.