Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya, PhD Linguistics (University of Westminster) is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (University of London). An elected Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society (Great Britain & Ireland), she is also associated with King's College (University of London) and holds a MSc in Finance (University of London) and a BSc Honours in Economics (University of London). Among her publications are over eighty papers in peer-reviewed journals worldwide and four books including the volume co-edited with Professor Richard Pankhurst The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean (Africa World Press, New Jersey, 2003).
Jean-Pierre Angenot, PhD in African Linguistics (University of Leiden) and PhD in Romance Philology (University of Brussels). He is a Professor of Ethnolinguistics at the Federal University of Rondonia (Brazil). In 2003, he was the co-founder, with Dr Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya, of TADIA (The African Diaspora in Asia), an international academic programme associated with the UNESCO Slave Route project. He is the author of over one hundred and fifty publications.