Adwoa Yeboah Gyapong is an External Researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam. She has a PhD in Development Studies. Her area of interest is in the political economy /ecology of development, particularly contestations around land, labour and food. She is also a social policy analyst and a consultant with experience in monitoring and evaluation of development interventions. She has conducted research and consultancy in several African countries including, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroun, Ghana, Zimbabwe and South Africa. She has several academic publications on land grabs and resource politics, decentralization and development policy which be accessed on google scholar and research gate.

Visit: https://www.eur.nl/en/people/adwoa-yeboah-gyapong

Andrew M. Fischer is an Associate Professor of Development Studies at the ISS and the Scientific Director of CERES, The Dutch Research School for International Development. He is also editor for the journal Development and Change and founding co-editor of the Oxford University Press book series Critical Frontiers of International Development Studies. His latest book, Poverty as Ideology (Zed, 2018), was awarded the International Studies in Poverty Prize by the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP) and Zed Books and is fully open access. He is a development economist, demographer and social policy specialist, with a PhD from the London School of Economics (LSE) and over 30 years of experience in development. He has worked extensively on Chinese regional development policies in the minority areas of western China for over 20 years. His current research examines the external financing of social policy in developing countries.

Visit: https://www.eur.nl/en/people/andrew-fischer; https://ceresresearchschool.nl/people-network-and-contact/ceres-director-andrew-fischer/

Ms. Anna Minj is one of the Programme Directors at BRAC and currently leads two of its multisectoral core programmes named Community Empowerment Programme and Integrated Development Programme. Her role is to provide strategic leadership in planning and managing the programmes and its different projects for ensuring successful achievement of the expected outcomes with quality towards contributing to the organization’s overall goal. 

She has over 27 years of extensive professional experience in leading multi-sectoral programme planning and management in the development sector particularly in women’s empowerment, poverty reduction, livelihood security, integrated holistic development, ultra-poor graduation, gender mainstreaming and Indigenous people's rights. Have proven track records in leading program/project development, formulation of policies/strategies, and operationalization of them successfully with results and impact. She is also specialized in gender programming and gender mainstreaming both at organization and programmatic levels. 
She has a Master’s degree (MSc) in Zoology and a Post-Graduate diploma in Project Planning and Management from IDPM, Manchester University, UK. In her career, she worked in different senior-level positions both at national and international organizations including CARITAS and CARE Bangladesh and currently at BRAC the largest development organization.
Affiliated with a number of national and international level forums and networks in the field of development, gender equality, women’s rights, and indigenous people's rights. Currently Chairperson of Bangladesh Community Radio Association, the Vice-Chair of National Coalition of Indigenous Peoples in Bangladesh & SIL International Bangladesh and member of Indigenous People’s forum. Served as the Convener for Girls NOT Brides, Bangladesh Chapter, and Engaging Men & Boys Alliance, Bangladesh and served as the executive board member of Stromme Foundation-Norway for 5/6 years. She is also the founder member of ‘WE CAN’, Bangladesh.

Visit: http://www.brac.net/executive-body

Beata Kowalska – is a feminist sociologist, a Professor at the Institute of Sociology, of the Jagiellonian University. In recent years her research has focused on gender dimensions of the citizenship and women’s mobilizations. It has permitted her to combine her academic fascinations with experience working on programmes and initiatives for gender equality in Poland and abroad. She is engaged in Scholars at risk Network that protects scholars suffering grave threats to their lives, liberty, and well-being by arranging temporary research and teaching positions at institutions in our network.  as well as convenes faculty, students, and higher education community members to discuss global and regional academic freedom climates and to develop solutions that strengthen the university space.

Visit: https://socjologia.uj.edu.pl/en_US/instytut/pracownicy/beatakowalska

Biplabi Shrestha is a Programme Director at the Asian-Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women (ARROW). ARROW, a global South Feminist organization based in Malaysia, works towards an equal, just, and equitable world that enables women and young people to realize their full sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR). Biplabi’s long involvement in gender equality and women’s health are inspired and informed by the lived realities of women and girls in Asia. As a programme manager at ARROW (2017-2019), Biplabi managed ARROW’s multi-country programme that builds constituencies with new alliances to develop knowledge and ownership of gender, feminism, and SRHR issues by strengthening the linkages between issues that pose challenges to the SRHR agenda, such as but not limited to, climate change, conflict and crisis situations, disability, migration, food insecurity, religious fundamentalism and conservatisms. Prior to ARROW, her work in Nepal focused on capacity strengthening of women and young people at the local and national level on HIV and AIDS. Biplabi holds a degree in Gender and Peace Building from the University for Peace in Costa Rica with a full scholarship from Asian-Peacebuilders Scholarship (APS) Programme. 

Visit: https://www.arrow.org.my/people/biplabi-shrestha-bipu/

Boaventura Monjane is a scholar-activist from Mozambique. He holds a PhD on Postcolonialisms and Global Citizenship, from the Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra. He is based at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS, UWC) as a postdoctoral researcher and is also a fellow of the International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter-Strategies of the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. His areas of interest include: agrarian social movements, rural politics, food sovereignty and climate justice.

Visit: https://qesclimatejustice.info.yorku.ca/about/scholars/boaventura-monjane/

C. Sathyamala is a public health physician and epidemiologist with a PhD in Development Studies. She is currently a postdoc academic researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies, Den Haag, Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her areas of interest include food security and politics of food, political economy of health, medical ethics, reproductive rights, and environmental justice. She has been active in both the health and women’s movement in India for some decades. She has authored and co-authored books and published in journals, peer-reviewed and otherwise, and in newspapers on wide-ranging topics.

Visit: https://www.eur.nl/en/people/christina-sathyamala 

Conrad joined Hivos in September 2018 to lead program development on transparency and accountability. Since February 2021, he leads Hivos’ work on civic rights in a digital age. Before that, Conrad worked with Development Initiatives (UK/Kenya) on increasing access and use of data & information for poverty reduction. Prior to that, he was Deputy Director of Towards Transparency (TT) in Hanoi, Vietnam, where he led programs on business integrity and youth engagement. Conrad remains involved with TT as a member of its board. From 2005-2011, Conrad worked at Transparency International, most recently providing technical support for TI chapters' work to support victims and whistleblowers – with a focus on Latin America, Central & Eastern Europe and Asia Pacific.

Conrad studied History at the University of Potsdam, Germany and Deusto University in Bilbao, Spain, and holds an MSc in international non-profit management and social investment from City University London.

Visit: https://hivos.org/opinion/an-open-renewal-for-civic-rights-inclusion-and-climate-justice/; LinkedIn; Twitter

Dr. Emmanuel Opong is currently the Regional Director for WASH & Capacity Building for World Vision in Southern Africa. He provides leadership and management responsibility for WASH programmes in nine countries, and is also responsible for the global capacity building of WASH staff with the Desert Research Institute (DRI) and Drexel University.

Dr. Opong holds a Ph.D. and two Masters Degrees in Psychology and International Development, as well as Post-Graduate Diplomas in WASH and Public Health. He has over 35 years of leadership, management and field experience in international development in over 30 African countries, the US, Europe and Asia.

Throughout his career, Dr. Opong has led research work and co-authored papers on various WASH projects with faculty and students from academic institutions in Africa and the US. In 2020, he published his first book Fate and Destiny: The True Story of a Christian Development Worker sharing why he is passionate about the issues of WASH, grounded in the belief that no child should die because of unsafe water, poor sanitation and hygiene.

Visit: https://www.wvi.org/clean-water/dr-emmanuel-opong-regional-director-wash-and-capacity-building-southern-africa

In both teaching and research, Esther focuses on the politics of knowledge production and deployment, with an emphasis on the fields of health and education. Her interests relate to the interactions between a) narratives about notions of international development, gender equality and social justice, and b) the actors that engage with these issues. Additionally, Esther’s research is geared to better understanding the ways in which women and men contest and subvert gendered, classed and racialised norms and violence, and inequalities more broadly. Esther recently completed a 5-year mixed methods study on sexual and reproductive health and rights in 10 countries in Sub-Saharan African and South Asia. She managed the research project with a co-principal investigator, coordinating the work done by the core UvA research team, 10 country research teams and 31 project implementation partners in these same countries. Within the framework of this study, she co-edited a Special Issue on the topic of early marriage, published in Progress in Development Studies in December, 2020. Esther is a committed teacher, who enjoys working with BA and MA students and PhD candidates as they explore their particular interests. In so doing, Esther pays particular attention to supporting students as they engage with questions regarding research ethics and positionality.

Visit: https://research.vu.nl/en/persons/esther-miedema

Inge Hutter is Rector of the International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, of Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Professor of Participatory and Qualitative Research in Population and Development, since August 2015. Before joining ISS in The Hague, she was Professor of Demography (since 2004), Vice Dean Research (2005-08) and Dean (2011-15) at the Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen. She received an ASPASIA for Associate Professorship in 2000, a KNAW post-doc research position in 1996 and a PhD cum laude in 1994.

She conducted research on population and health (reproductive and sexual health, nutrition, ageing) and development in India, Cameroun and Malawi. She is highly experienced in conducting fieldwork in the Global South. She has supervised PhD research in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Ghana, Tanzania, Malawi, Uganda, and the Northern Netherlands. She adopts a participatory approach to research, i.e. involving societal stakeholders from the very beginning of a research project, thus ensuring that research not only leads to scientific publications but also to policies and actions and is relevant for society. She is an expert in qualitative research; together with Monique Hennink (Emory University, Atlanta) and Ajay Bailey (University of Groningen) she wrote the book Qualitative Research Methods with Sage (2011) which is widely used within several academic disciplines all over the world. A second edition is in process.

Visit: https://www.eur.nl/en/people/inge-hutter

Irene van Staveren is Professor of pluralist development economics at ISS. She recently published a book with ideas for a postcapitalist economics: Ideas from ten (almost) forgotten economists (PalgraveMacmillan, 2021). She is also the author of a pluralist textbook which has been transformed into a freely available mooc with over 40,000 learners worldwide (Economics after the crisis, Routledge, 2015). Irene is member of the Dutch thinktank Sustainable Finance Lab with a study about the moral compass of bankers, and board member of the Dutch student movement Rethinking Economics NL.

She publishes on feminist economics, social economics, institutional economics and ethics and economics.

Visit: https://www.eur.nl/en/people/irene-van-staveren

Jan Pronk is a Professor Emeritus at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague, part of Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He is the former Minister of Development Cooperation, serving two terms, and later Minister of Environment in The Netherlands. He has also served as an international civil servant in various capacities in the United Nations including Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference of Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations in Sudan leading the UN peacekeeping operation (UNMIS). Jan served as the President of the Society for International Development (SID); Chairman of the Inter-church Peace Council in The Netherlands, and currently holds a Chair in the Theory and Practice of International Development at ISS, The Hague. In addition to being Professor Emeritus, ​and having an Honourary Doctorate from ISS in 2002, he had been a visiting Professor at the United Nations University for Peace in Costa Rica for more than a decade until recently. Since his retirement he is involved in giving lectures at various universities.

Visit: www.janpronk.nl

LP John a.k.a Monk John, who once a pianist, a photographer, and a computer programmer, has become a Theravada Buddhist Monk for 13 years after finished his PhD in Telematics. With the knowledge from his tech background, he has pioneered in developing the biggest free online self-development and meditation platform that has users from over 235 countries and territories. He travels the world and gives his insights on mindfulness, meditation and Buddhist philosophy for detoxing, balancing and enriching life of the modern world to individuals, NGOs, government agencies, universities, and companies (such as Google, Orange, Ogilvy, Teamwork, etc.) in 70 countries.

Kristen Cheney is Associate Professor of Children and Youth Studies at ISS. Dr. Cheney has participated in research, consultancy, and capacity-building projects in Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East on issues from children’s rights to youth SRHR. Her research deals with children’s survival strategies amidst difficult circumstances and the politics of humanitarian intervention for such children, primarily in Africa. Her most recent research examines the impact of the global 'orphan industrial complex'—including orphan tourism, childcare institutions, and intercountry adoption—on child protection in developing countries. Her work takes an explicitly child-centered approach that considers how children experience and respond to the various hegemonic institutional and structural elements of global and local development practices. She has also led several studies using youth participatory research to explore issues of young people’s SRHR, including as PI for the Adolescents’ Perceptions of Healthy Relationships project (2017-2021).

Visit: https://www.eur.nl/en/people/kristen-cheney