Collette Boushell
began singing at the age of seven in St.Michael's Church Children's Choir in Dun Laoghaire. Having studied Piano and Violin, she began formal vocal training with Deirdre Grier-Delaney in 1997. She has won the Margaret Burke Sheridan and Gervase Elwes Cups and the Cait Lanigan Cooper Bursary. Her oratorio repertoire includes Mozart's Requiem, Handel's Messiah, Bach's Christmas Oratorio and many cantatas. Collette has participated in masterclasses with Sarah Walker, Torn Krause, Paul Hamburger and Bernadette Greevy.

Olive Braiden
was director of the Rape Crisis Centre for ten years. She has been involved in campaigns for legislative reforms in the area of Women's rights. In 2003 she was appointed Chair of the Arts Council. She is a Human Rights Commissioner, a board member of the Courts Services and the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board, and is Chair of the Crisis Pregnancy Agency.

Ciaran Carson
was born and lives in Belfast. He worked in the Arts Council of Northern Ireland from 1975-1998. In October 2003 he was appointed Professor of Poetry and Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University, Belfast. He is the author of nine collections of poems and four prose books.

Hugo Hamilton
grew up in Dublin speaking Irish and German, wearing lederhosen and Aran sweaters. He has written five novels and a collection of short stories. His best known book is The Speckled People (2003) which tells the story of his German/Irish childhood in the 1950's.

Lara Marlowe
Paris-based foreign correspondent for The Irish Times since 1996, Lara Marlowe has reported on conflicts in Algeria, the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Israel and the Occupied Territories. Last year, she covered the Iraq war, returning six months later to assess the state of the US occupation.

Avi Shlaim
was born in Baghdad and grew up in Israel where he did National Service i'rom 1964-1966. He is a fellow of St. Antony's College and a Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford. His main research interest is the Arab-Israeli conflict. The author of many books, he is a frequent contributor to radio and television on Middle Eastern Affairs.

Derek Summerfield
is Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, London and Research Associate at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford. He was also formerly consultant to Oxfam and other agencies and principal psychiatrist at the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, London. He has published regularly in academic literature and elsewhere on the impact of war and atrocity on the social and cultural world of victims.

Ivana Bacik
Ivana Bacik is a practising barrister in Dublin and Reid Professor of Criminal Law, Criminology and Penology at Trinity College Dublin. She is co-author of 'Abortion and the Law' (1997) and co-editor (with Michael O'Connell] of 'Crime and Poverty in Ireland' (1998). She is a feminist activist and a Labour Party candidate for Dublin in the European elections in June 2004.

Glen Hooper
is a lecturer in the Dept of English, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick. He is editor of The Tourist's Gaze and Harriet Martineau's Letters from Ireland, and co-editor of Ireland in the Nineteenth Century. His monograph, Stranger in Ireland is to be published in late 2004.

Virginia Teehan
a native of Co. Kilkenny, she is a graduate of University College Cork and Trinity College Dublin. A board member of The Heritage Council, she has worked in the cultural field for almost twenty years. She was appointed Director of The Hunt Museum, Limerick in June 2003.

Fatima Gailani
a lifelong advocate of Women's rights in Afghanistan, she is one of only seven female commissioners who served on the 35 member Drafting Committee for the new Afghan Constitution. The Gailani family were forced into exile in 1978. Ms. Gailani was a spokeswoman for the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan and the highest ranking woms in the mujahideen, the freedom fighters battling the Soviet Union during the 1980's. A pioneer of Islamic women in political leadership her return to Afghanistan in 2001 was lauded by women throughout the country.