Yayah KHISBIYAH has been a faculty member of the Department of Psychology at Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta since December 1994, where she is also the founding-director of the Center for Cultural Studies and Social Change (established in 2000). She also teaches at postgraduate program in Peace and Conflict Resolution at Universitas Gadjah Mada. She has been a consultant for International Labour Organization (for program on eliminating child labour in Weleri, Middle Java), UNICEF (for psychosocial programming of peace building in Aceh and Ambon), and WHO (for program on health bridging peace in Aceh). In 1999, with Sardono W. Kusumo, she co-founded Sidra Foundation, an NGO committed to promoting social transformation in Solo through arts and cultural approach, mainly via it's two programs: Solo Heritage Society (SHS) and peAce (Partner for Enlightenment and Cultural Empowerment). For 6 years (1998-2004), she was also a permanent columnist for a psychological consultation feature in Solopos, a daily newspaper in Middle Java.

Y. Khisbiyah has a master's degree in Community/Social psychology from the Department of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell (1997), with the support from the Fulbright Foundation. While in the US, she worked as a research assistant at the Center for family, Work and Community, and an evaluator for the Centre for Immigrant and Refugee Community Leadership and Empowerment (CIRCLE) administered by the UMass system. Her bachelor's in psychology is from Universitas Gadjah Mada in Indonesia (1992). She was a research assistant between 1989 and 1994 at the Population Studies Center, Universitas Gadjah Mada, and also at the Center for Policy and Strategic Studies. She has diplomas in conflict resolution and peace research from Uppsala University in Sweden (1998) and from the European Peace University in Schlaining, Austria (1994). She participated in Fulbright American Studies Institute on the topic of 'Church, State and Society' hosted by Boston College BOISI Center in 2003. Currently she is pursuing a Ph.D. degree in Social Psychology at the University of Melbourne with the support of AusAID scholarship and the Ford Foundation, and is working with the International Conflict Resolution Center within the University of Melbourne, particularly in it's Religion and Peace program. She tries to integrate her scholarship and activism in three main interests: gender studies, religion and pluralism, and social psychology of peace building.