Kyoko Kusakabe is a Professor of Gender and Development Studies at Department of Development and Sustainability, School of Environment, Resources and Development, Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand. She has been researching and teaching gender and development in Asia especially focusing on the Mekong Subregion. Her research focus is on gender issues in labor/ work, especially on labor migration, garment factory workers, informal employment, and agriculture and fisheries. She is currently an executive committee member of Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries Section of Asian Fisheries Society. She is also a co-editor-in-chief of Gender, Technology and Development journal (Taylor and Francis). She is a co-author of Thailand’s Hidden Workforce: Burmese Migrant Women Factory Workers (Zed Books, 2012, co-authored with Ruth Pearson) and co-edited Fisherfolk in Cambodia, India and Sri Lanka: Migration, gender and well-being, (Routledge, 2020).

Visit: https://dds.ait.ac.th/dvteam/professor-kyoko-kusakabe/

Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay (PhD) has worked for the last three decades internationally on gender and development. She is among the first generation of gender trainers and advocates and has specialised on citizenship and governance including a critique of gender mainstreaming as technology of governance. Based at KIT (Royal Tropical Institute) Amsterdam from 1996 – 2017 she led a team specialising on gender and development, undertaken research, advisory work, and directed gender short courses. She has authored several publications based on gender and co-published with southern partners. Her edited work Feminist Subversion and Complicity: Governmentalities and Gender Knowledge in South Asia interrogates feminist politics of involvement in governmental programmes. The book finds that even as feminist politics gets assimilated into governmental agendas it nevertheless also subverts these mainstream agendas. Maitrayee was Visiting Professor at the Graduate Studies Institute in Geneva in 2015, and was a research associate till 2017. She is at present an associate at KIT.

Visit: https://www.kit.nl/staff/maitrayee-mukhopadhyay/

Dr. Mihir Kanade (India) is Director of the Human Rights Centre of the University for Peace (established by the UN General Assembly) since 2009. He is the Academic Director of UPEACE (2017-present) and the Head of its Department of International Law (2014-present).

He is also an adjunct faculty at Universidad Alfonso X El Sabio (Spain), Long Island University (LIU Global Centre in Costa Rica), and Universidad de Los Andes (Colombia). Dr. Kanade serves as the academic co-coordinator of the LLM programme in Transnational Crime and Justice offered at the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, Turin, Italy. Dr. Kanade currently serves as an independent expert of the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Expert Mechanism on the Right to Development. He also chairs the drafting group of international experts appointed by the OHCHR for preparing a legally binding instrument on the right to development. His principal area of academic research and study is the interface between globalization, governance, public international law and human rights, covering several themes including trade, business and investment, sustainable development, forced displacement of people, indigenous peoples’ rights, public health, amongst others. He has served on the International Advisory Board of the International Bar Association on the topic of Business and Human Rights. Prior to academia, Dr. Kanade practiced for several years as a lawyer at the Bombay High Court (Nagpur and Bombay benches) and at the Supreme Court of India. He holds a LL.B from Nagpur University (India) and a Master degree and Doctorate from UPEACE.

Visit: https://www.upeace.org/pages/dr-mihir-kanade

Nanneke Winters is Assistant Professor in Migration and Development at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), The Hague, part of Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Her research interests include im/mobility, migrant trajectories and translocal livelihoods in Central America and beyond. Her research collaborations have been funded by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) and the German Research Fund (DFG), and her work has been published in a variety of journals including International Migration Review and Population, Space and Place. Before joining ISS, Nanneke completed her PhD in Development Studies at the University of Antwerp and held research positions in the Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning at Utrecht University, and in the Department of Anthropology and African Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. In Mainz she co-developed the DFG-funded research project ‘African trajectories across Central America: displacements, transitory emplacements, and ambivalent migration nodes’.

Visit: https://www.eur.nl/en/people/nanneke-winters

Natascha Wagner is Associate Professor of Development Economics at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam (Netherlands). Her research interests lie in international economics/ development, ICT for development and health. She has participated in numerous impact evaluation projects in Africa and Asia ranging from good governance to public health and rural infrastructure programs and applying experimental as well as quasi-experimental impact evaluation techniques. She has been the lead principal investigator of a large scale randomized controlled trial on the impact of information and communication technology in promoting retention and adherence to antiretroviral treatment in Burkina Faso. The project has been financed by the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation - 3ie. 

While the project did not identify any impacts on retention and adherence, it determined important bottlenecks to mobile health interventions such as lack of overall and ICT literacy. Moreover, the project provides evidence that recipients of the SMS messages felt appreciated and supported resulting in enhanced emotional wellbeing.

A recurring theme in Natascha’sresearch is gender and female empowerment, be it in her assessment of bride price payments, polygyny, female genital cutting, gender bias in teaching evaluations or by police officers. Natascha has published articles in, among others, Health Economics, Economics of Education Review, Journal of Development Studies and World Development.

Visit: https://www.natascha-wagner.com ; https://www.eur.nl/en/people/natascha-wagner

Peter A.G. van Bergeijk (1959) has a PhD in international economics from Groningen University. The dissertation was defended in 1990, deals with trade and diplomacy and has been published in 1994 as Economic Diplomacy, Trade and Commercial Policy: Positive and Negative Sanctions in a New World Order. Peter has been and is a professor at Erasmus School of Economics, Zurich University and since 2009 at the International Institute of Social Studies alternating academia with jobs in banking (ABN, UBS, DNB = Dutch Central Bank) and policy making as chief economist at the ministry of Economic Affairs and the Dutch competition authority. Peter is (co)author/editor of 30 books and 250+ articles. His latest books are Deglobalization 2.0 Trade and openness during the Great Depression and the Great Recession (2019), the recent Pandemic Economics (2021) and the forthcoming Research Handbook on Economic Sanctions (December 2021).

Visit: www.petervanbergeijk.org ; https://www.eur.nl/people/peter-van-bergeijk

Pranita Achyut joined ICRW as the Director of Research and Programs in ICRW Asia. Pranita brings 20 years of experience in applied research and program monitoring, particularly in gender, gender-based violence, adolescent health and family planning. During her previous tenure at ICRW, Pranita led some of  the organization’s flagship programs, including Gender Equity Movement in Schools (GEMS) and Promoting Adolescent Engagement Knowledge & Health (PAnKH). She worked across teams to develop knowledge products as well as organize disseminations for key audiences – stakeholders, policymakers and government agencies. In her new leadership role at ICRW Asia, Pranita is responsible for oversight of the four teams that represent ICRW Asia’s research agenda: Health; Violence, Rights and Inclusion; Gender, Youth and Development; and Gender, Economic Empowerment and Livelihoods. Pranita holds a Master’s Degree in Population Studies from the International Institute of Population Sciences in Mumbai, as well as a Master’s Degree in Statistics from Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi, India.

Visit: https://www.icrw.org/staff-members/pranita-achyut/

Renzo Taddei teaches anthropology and science and technology studies at the Federal University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. His research focuses on the socio-cultural dimensions of how humans relate to the atmosphere. He has written on climate forecasting, disasters, geoengineering, and how the atmosphere features in Brazilian indigenous modes of existence. Dr. Taddei is a research associate at the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions at Columbia University, a member of the Climate Change National Science and Technology Institute (INCT) in Brazil, and is a standing committee member at the World Meteorological Organization. He earned his doctoral degree in anthropology from Columbia University. He was a visiting scholar at Yale University, Duke University, and the University of the Republic in Uruguay.

Visit: http://cred.columbia.edu/about-cred/people/principal-investigators/renzo-taddei/  

Rodrigo Mena is Assistant Professor of Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Governance at the Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam. His research focuses on humanitarian aid responses and risk reduction to disasters, and their interaction and nexus with other crises, such as social conflict, climate change, and migration. Dr Mena also serves as a Board Member of the International Humanitarian Studies Association (IHSA) and as convener of the Peace and Ecology commission at the International Peace Research Association (IPRA). Before his current positions, he has worked as a consultant, researcher and project manager with local and international NGOs, the UN, and ministries, particularly in disasters and conflict- affected places such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Chile, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, or Yemen. Recently he has been part of a research project on local response to COVID-19 in 7 countries, and it is at the moment co-coordinating the research programme “Humanitarian governance: accountability, advocacy, alternatives” financed by the European Research Council.

Dr.Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits, Assistant Professor in Conflict and Peace Studies at The International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University, Rotterdam , The Netherlands. Her research interests are in the intersections of Violent Conflicts and Development and on topics under the broader themes of external interventions in conflict and peacebuilding, state building, post-war transitions, security sector reform and EU security and defence policy.

Visit: https://www.eur.nl/en/people/dr-shyamika-smits-jayasundara

Sohela Nazneen is a feminist political economist based at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS). Sohela’s research focuses on gender and politics, feminist movement, women’s empowerment in South Asia and sub Saharan Africa and has published on these-including in World Development; Contemporary South Asia, Women’s Studies International Forum.Her recent publication is: Negotiating Gender Equity in the Global South (Routledge). Sohela convenes IDS’ flagship MA programme on Gender and Development.

Visit: https://www.ids.ac.uk/people/sohela-nazneen/

Victoria Fontan is a Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies and Vice President of Academic Affairs at the American University of Afghanistan. She is also a visiting professor at the Western Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESO), Guadalajara, Mexico; at the Institut Supérieur des Techniques de Développement, Kalehe, République Démocratique du Congo; and the University of Duhok, Iraq. Her original academic specializations have been twofold, first, critical terrorism studies from a peace studies perspective, focusing on the role of humiliation in relation to the emergence of insurgencies, mostly in a Middle Eastern context, and second, post-liberal peace studies, from a decolonial perspective. She is now focusing her research on higher education in emergencies; and open recognition networks to build sustainable peace. Prior to her appointment to Afghanistan, she coordinated the establishment of the quality framework for HPass, the LinkedIn-type platform for humanitarian workers and volunteers. She is also engaging in selected academic activities within the fields of peace education, peace-building research, and critical terrorism studies. 

Visit: http://www.victoriacfontan.com ; https://www.auaf.edu.af/about-us/our-team/administration/

Dr. Cawagas (Philippines/Canada) is an Adjunct Faculty at the University of Alberta, Canada. She was a Professor at the UN-mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica. Prof. Cawagas has a Doctorate in Peace and Development Education, MS in Educational Management and BS in Education. Her scholarly interests include peace and development education, curriculum development, education for sustainable development, global education, and multicultural education in both formal and nonformal modes. She has taught and conducted workshops in these fields for graduate students, teachers, academics, school administrators, community leaders, soldiers, and civil servants in various North and South countries. Her publications include articles, book chapters, and books in International Journals and Publishers such as the American Psychological Association, Routledge, Palgrave, Garland, Academic Press, Sumach, and International Journal for Curriculum and Instruction among others.

Visit: http://www.ualberta.ca/educational-policy studies/people/faculty/adjunct-faculty.html

Zeynep Kaşlı is an Assistant Professor in Migration and Development at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), part of Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her areas of interest are human (im)mobility, borders, transnationalism and citizenship that transcend the disciplinary boundaries between political science, sociology, geography and socio-legal studies. Across these areas, she has published in journals such as Political Geography, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Journal of Refugee Studies and Alternatives: Global, Local, Political as well as other scholarly and non-scholarly periodicals and edited volumes. She completed her Ph.D. in the Interdisciplinary Near and Middle Eastern Studies Program and Graduate Certificate in Law and Society Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle with a dissertation titled (Re)Bordering Territory and Citizenship on the Greek-Turkish Borderland (March 2017). She holds BA in Political Science from Boğaziçi University, MA in Social and Public Policy from University of Leeds, MA in Political Science from Sabancı University. Before joining ISS, she has recently worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Horizon 2020 ReSOMA project and Cities of Migration Project, under the supervision of Peter Scholten at Erasmus University, as visiting Professor at Vienna University, Political Science Department and lecturer at Leiden University College.

Visit: https://www.eur.nl/en/people/zeynep-kasli