Speaker

Dr. Emadul Islam

Dr. Emadul Islam is a Senior Research Fellow at the Ocean Policy Research Institute (OPRI) of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, Japan. He previously served as an Adjunct Scholar for the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) in Washington, D.C., USA. Earlier in his career, Dr. Islam worked as a development expert and researcher with three distinguished organizations: Transparency International Bangladesh, BRAC, and the Centre for Bay of Bengal Studies at Independent University, Bangladesh, where he contributed to research and evaluation initiatives. He earned his Ph.D. in Community Development in 2021 from the University of Malaya, Malaysia, under the prestigious Yayasan Khazanah Scholarship. In 2022–2023, he was awarded the Fulbright Visiting Scholarship to pursue post-doctoral research at Northeastern University in Boston, USA. His work has been published in journals such as the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, The European Journal of Development Research, Encyclopedia, and Social Movement Studies. Dr. Islam’s research focuses on the connectivity and resilience of coastal communities in the Indian Ocean’s Small Island Developing States (SIDS). He is also an observer to the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) under the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) for developing a global plastics treaty. Additionally, he serves as the Coordinator for the IOC-UNESCO–UN Ocean Decade Fifth Foundation Dialogue 2025.