Professor Atul K. Shah has a PhD from the London School of Economics and is author of ‘Inclusive and Sustainable Finance’ (Routledge 2022), 'Jainism and Ethical Finance' (with Aidan Rankin, Routledge 2017); The Politics of Financial Risk, Audit and Regulation (Routledge 2018) Reinventing Accounting and Finance Education (Routledge 2018), 'Celebrating Diversity' (2007) and 'Boardroom Diversity - The Opportunity' (2010). He is passionate about Business Ethics, Education Reform and Diversity. Dr. Shah has published a number of papers in international academic journals such as Accounting, Organisations and Society; Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal; European Accounting Review; Journal of Financial Regulation and Compliance; Business Ethics - A European Review. Between 1995 and 1998, he published a series of papers predicting the global financial crisis, focusing in particular on derivatives and systemic risk, and regulatory arbitrage. His work has been profiled in BBC and Forbes and Dr. Shah is presently working on a series of projects around financial risk management, diverse ethics and regulation. He has Broadcast experience, with credits including BBC Radio 4, BBC World Service, Channel 4, Five Live, BBC Radio 2, Guardian and BBC Asian Network. Professor Shah also writes and comments for the Financial Times. In 2010 Professor Shah embarked on a historic 1500 mile Masala Tour of Britain, to showcase the depth and breadth of the diversity in Britain and help the country improve its cultural intelligence – this was featured in the Guardian. The tour was also widely covered on BBC radio nationally. He is also a top Business Ethics writer for The Conversation and his research on global accounting won the Best Paper award in 2019.

Melanie Barbato is the author of Jain Approaches to Plurality, published by Brill in the series Currents of Encounter. She holds a doctorate in Indology and Religious Studies from LMU Munich and a Master’s degree in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford. She currently pursues a habilitation at the University of Münster. Melanie was part of the Food and the Sacred group of the food security project at the Centre for Religion, Human Values and International Relations at Dublin City University. She coordinates, together with Shruti Dixit, the Network of Hinduism in Dialogue, which is based at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, and is an associate editor of CrossCurrents (University of North Carolina Press).

Claire Maes is Assistant Professor at the Department of Indology at the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies of the University of Tübingen, Germany. She specializes in both historical and contemporary Jainism, as well as early Indian Buddhism. Her current research project focusses on the role of fasting in the Jain tradition, with a special focus on the Jain practice of fasting to death or sallekhanā.