_{Dr Elsie Ho and Professor Richard Bedford at Asia:NZ's launch of the Outlook07 report in Auckland, 8 July 2008. (Photo:Scoop.co.nz)}
 

Dr Elsie Ho is Senior Research Fellow in the Migration Research Group of the Population Studies Centre, University of Waikato. She has been researching the cross-cultural transition and adaptation of Asian immigrants and international students for over a decade, and her research projects have included primary research conducted in New Zealand, Hong Kong and Australia as well as extensive and innovative analyses of census and migration statistics. Her substantive research programmes have been funded by the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, the Marsden Fund as well as contract funding from a range of policy-focused government agencies and community organisations.

 Professor Richard Bedford has been Professor of Geography at the University of Waikato since 1989. His undergraduate and graduate degrees are from the University of Auckland and his PhD was completed in 1971 in the Research School of Pacific Studies at the Australian National University. He is a specialist in migration studies and since the mid-1960s he has been researching processes of population movement in the Asia-Pacific region.

During the 1980s Professor Bedford was the Convenor of the Population Monitoring Group of the former New Zealand Planning Council. In 1990 he was awarded the NZ 1990 Medal for services of New Zealand. In 2000 he was elected to Fellowship of the Royal Society of New Zealand.

He is currently a member of the New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO, and Chair of the Commission's Social Sciences Sub-Commission. He is also the New Zealand Immigration Service's representative on the inter-governmental International Metropolis Project, and the Royal Society of New Zealand's contact point with the International Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change Programme (IHDP) and the International Geographical Union (IGU). He is a full member of the IGU Commission on Population and Environment. In 2001 he was appointed by the Minister of Immigration as academic adviser to the Ministerial Advisory Group on Immigration.

Professor Bedford is on several editorial advisory boards for journals including The International Journal of Population Geography (UK), The Journal of Migration and Ethnic Studies (UK), the Journal of International Migration and Integration (Canada), The Journal of Population Research (Australia). He is currently co-editor of The New Zealand Geographer.