Amineh Hoti

Dr Animeh Hoti is currently Program Director at the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan overlooking the Seerat Program at 200 universities of the country. Some of the key topics Animeh is encouraging amongst the Chairs and in the country's universities are: global peace, human rights, women's rights, seeking education, and so on.

Animeh would like to develop two aspects of her work at the University of Nottingham: 

Gender roles - in Muslim societies women still need to catch up in education, economics, etc. The literacy for women is the lowest in the world. In her PhD at the University of Cambridge, Animeh studied the tribal areas of Pakistan adjoining her fieldwork area. Here literacy was near zero. Through her work, she hopes to be able to encourage gender studies and involve students who will study women in their natural social environments in Muslim societies and in the west. 

Interfaith - Animeh has been teaching innovative interfaith interdisciplinary studies in the UK, University of Cambridge, and in Muslim societies (Islamabad, Jordan, Abu Dhabi, Qatar). Her latest book is Called, "Gems, The Religions of Pakistan," based on interfaith dialogue and studies of religious minorities in Pakistan looking at the minority religions in Pakistan some of whom are under threat. Gems is a metaphor for diverse people who show the brilliance of human character through courage. For this, Animeh has travelled extensively doing anthropological fieldwork across Pakistan, aiming to build a team based in the University of Nottingham and in Pakistan - together this team wants to conduct cutting-edge studies based in fieldwork as there has been little work in this field it will allow them to develop this area of studies. In addition, it will help with curriculum building and peace building work.

Graham Hutchings

Graham Hutchings has spent much of the past 40 years engaged in the research, analysis and interpretation of international affairs.

From 2000-2019 he did so on behalf of Oxford Analytica, the global analysis and advisory firm, where he served successively as Director of Analysis and Managing Editor of The Oxford Analytica Daily Brief, Managing Director, and finally Principal. In these roles, Graham worked at the interface of the academy, business and government, facilitating the delivery of top flight, actionable analysis on the global political economy for public and private clients around the world.  

Much of Graham’s professional life has involved research, writing and public speaking about China. He studied Chinese history, politics and language at the Hatfield Polytechnic and Ealing College of Higher Education. He is currently an Associate at Oxford University’s China Centre.

Graham was China Correspondent of London’s Daily Telegraph from 1987 to 1998, living first in Beijing and then Hong Kong. During this period, he covered the suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, the economic take-off of China, the death of Deng Xiaoping, and Hong Kong’s transfer of sovereignty from Britain to China.  During this work he travelled through more than 20 of China’s provinces.  His Modern China: A Companion to a Rising Power, was published by Penguin Press in the UK in 2000 and Harvard University Press in the United States in 2001.

He has served as Chair of the Advisory Board of the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham and is currently an Honorary Professor in the University’s School of Politics and International Relations.

Graham has been an advisor on China to the Bank of Montreal and lectured on international journalism at The City University, London.

Champa Patel

Dr Champa Patel became Director of the Asia-Pacific Programme at Chatham House (The Royal Institute of International Affairs) in 2017. In this context, her areas of research focus on South and Southeast Asia specifically on human rights, rule of law and conflict/crisis analysis. She also has research interests in South-South research and analysis.

Before joining Chatham House she was most recently the Regional Director/Senior Research Advisor for South Asia and South East Asia and Pacific Offices for Amnesty International, responsible for overseeing the research, campaigns, media and advocacy for the region. At Amnesty, she also held roles managing individuals at risk and global campaigns.

Prior to Amnesty she worked in public health for almost a decade, focused on at-risk children, refugees, asylum seekers and internal trafficking. She is a Visiting Practitioner/External Examiner at the University of York, a faculty member of the Salzburg Global Seminar and on the Editorial Board of Human Rights Quarterly. 

Champa is also an alumnus of the University of Nottingham having completed her MA and PhD at the institution.

Andrew Whitehead

Dr Andrew Whitehead is a historian of modern Kashmir and the author of A Mission in Kashmir (2007), which uses oral history and personal testimony to re-examine the standard narratives about the start of the Kashmir conflict in 1947-8. He has also written The Lives of Freda: the political, spiritual and personal journeys of Freda Bedi (2019), a biography of an English woman who in the 1930s married a Punjabi fellow student and lived the rest of her life in India, making conspicuous contributions to Indian nationalism, Kashmiri radicalism and Tibetan Buddhism. He has also established an audio archive of first-hand accounts of living through the Partition of South Asia in 1947 which is held at SOAS, University of London.  

Andrew worked for thirty-five years as a BBC journalist and was at various times the BBC India correspondent and the Editor of BBC World Service News. He continues to write, broadcast and comment on South Asian politics. He was for many years an editor of History Workshop Journal, which pioneered "history from below", and is currently an associate editor. 

He gained a PhD by published works from the University of Warwick and has been an honorary professor at Nottingham since 2015.