Professor David Sogge is a specialist in the field of foreign aid, currently working as a Researcher at the Transnational Institute of Amsterdam. His research areas are foreign aid ideologies and impacts, member-based organisations, including movements of urban poor in Africa and trade unions, and policy activism via networks and academic units. He is also a visiting Professor at the Universities of Princeton and Harvard and an independent advisor fro grant-making agencies. M. Sogge is the author of several books and articles on Angola and Mozambique and other African states, among which we cite: Give & Take. What's the Matter with Foreign Aid? (Zed Books, 2002), Compassion and Calculation. The Business of Private Foreign Aid (Pluto Press, 1996 for the Transnational Institute), Selling US Wars (co-author, Achin Vanaik, 2007), Mozambique: Perspectives on Aid and the Civil Sector, (Editor, Gemeenschappelijk Overleg Medefinanciering, 1997). He also wrote many unpublished reports on South Africa.

Professor Mehdi Shafaeddin is a PhD in Economic Development at Oxford, he is currently a private consultant in trade and industrial policies, industrial capacity building and management of competitiveness. He worked for many years at the UNCTAD holding positions such as acting chief of the Macroeconomics and Development Policy Branch and of the Globalisation and Development Strategy Division. His academic career includes a Professorship at Webster University, Geneva where he taught International Trade and Finance, Economic Development, Industrial Economics, Managerial Economics, Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, at both graduate and undergraduate levels. He was also a trainer of High Government Officials in the area of Trade, Globalisation, Industrialization and Development Policies at the Turin Centre, Italy, and in Bangkok, Santiago, Beirut, Cairo, Beijing, Prague, Hanoi, Tehran and Geneva. M. Shafaeddin is a former consultant at the Ministry of Agriculture of Iran. He edited the UNCTAD Bulletin for two years and was a member of the Editorial Board of Trade and Development, an UNCTAD Review. He is the author of many articles and books.

Professor Sandra Halperin is a lecturer of International Relations at the Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research covers the fields of global development, the historical sociology of global relations, the causes and conditions of war and peace, and Middle East politics. She also taught International Relations theory and in Middle East politics at the University of Pittsburgh and at the University of Sussex. Among her recent publications we cite: War and Social Change in Modern Europe: the great transformation revisited (Cambridge University Press, 2004), Global Civil Society and Its Limits (with G. Laxer, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2003), 'Europe in the Mirror of the Contemporary Middle East: aspects of modern European history reconsidered' in Thomas, M. (ed) Islam, Modernity, and the West: critical perspectives (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), pp. 75-106. Professor Halperin has also published numerous articles in academical journals such as Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Spectrum: Journal of Global Politics, Globalizations, Third World Quarterly, etc.

Mr. Tom Burke is the founder of the E3G, an ONG working to accelerate the global transition to sustainable development. He is a visiting Professor at the Imperial and University Colleges in London and Environmental Policy Adviser to Rino Tinto, one of the world's leading mining and exploration companies. He also holds the position of Senior Business Advisor to the Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative on Climate Change. By appointment of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland he chaired the Independent Review of Environmental Governance in Northern Ireland. M. Burke also served as advisor to the Central Policy Group in the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office and as Special Adviser to three Secretaries of State for the Environment. He is a former member of the OECD’s High Level Panel on the Environment and has served on the Executive Committee of the National Council of Voluntary Organisations. He authored many articles and is currently the Chairman of the Editorial Board of ENDS Magazine.

Professor Robert Falkner is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the LSE. He also holds the position of Convenor of the LSE Summer School and is an associate of the LSE's Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. His areas of interest cover international political economy, with special emphasis on global environmental politics, multinational corporations, risk regulation and global governance. He is the author of Business Power and Conflict in International Environmental Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), as well as many academic articles and other publications. Professor Falkner was the coordinator of the international research project on the transatlantic dimensions of nanomaterials regulation that issued the report: Securing the Promise of Nanotechnologies: Towards Transatlantic Regulatory Cooperation (2009). He currently serves in the editorial committee of the European Journal of International Relations, were previously he held the position of associate editor. He is also a member of the editorial board of Global Policy.

Professor Riccardo Petrella is the Initiator and former president of the Lisbon Group, he is an Italian political analyst and economist. Currently a regular teacher at the Catholic University of Louvain and at the Europa College in Bruges, he has taught in many universities around the world. Mr. Petrella worked for the European Commission as supervisor of the FAST-programme (Forecasting and Assessment in Science and Technology). Before that he was secretary-general of the Italian committee for the development of social sciences and director of the European Center for Research in Social Sciences of UNESCO in Vienna. In the 90s he published a trilogy, the last book being "Water Manifesto", that defends the universal rights to access water sources;  he fonded and he is the Secretry General of the "International Committee for a World Water Contract" chaired by Mario Soares.

His Excellency Jan Pronk is a familiar name in Dutch politics as well as in UN circles. A politician and diplomat, Pronk has served four terms as a Minister in the Dutch government, particularly in the field of Development Cooperation before turning towards the international scene and the United Nations. With a previous experience in the international organization in 1985 when he held the position of Assistant UN Secretary General, he was named in 2002 UN Special envoy to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Tokyo. Two years later UN Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed him as the first UN Special Representative for Sudan. He holds at this time the position of Professor of Theory and Practice of International Development at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague.

Professor David Hall is the Director of the Public Services International Research Unit of the University of Greenwich, UK. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the same University in the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences. His research is centered on the issues of water, energy and healthcare. He previously worked on the development of a database on privatization for the British trade unions. M. Hall is the author of many reports and articles on the subject of water and related issues. He is a former coordinator of the Watertime project, funded by the European Commission. He was also a lecturer at the World Bank water division, and an invited speaker at meetings on water and related issues organised by the UN, OECD, ILO, UNCTAD, the Economic and Social Committee of the EU and at meetings organised by unions and various other civil society organisations in over 30 countries.

Professor Howard Nicholas is a Sri Lankan economist and social scientist, Senior Lecturer in Economics at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of the Erasmus University of Rotterdam. His areas of interest are non-neoclassical economics, capacity building for economics related policy and business decision making. Among his publications we cite: Macroeconomic dynamics of the Surinamese economy (Teaching case study, Lim A Po Institute, Suriname, 2009), ‘Inflation in Sri Lanka: Ideology vs reality’ (chapter contribution in felicitation volume for Prof. W.D. Lakshman. University of Colombo) ', in W.M. Wimalaratne (ed) The Economics of Professor W.D. Lakshman, (University of Colombo, 2008), “World Economic Crisis, Deflation, Recession, and the Coming Shift in the Balance of Global Economic Power” (Paper presented at Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, Colombo, Sri Lanka, October, 2008). M. Nicholas publishes also in Development and Change, the revue of the ISS and is a contributor to several national and international journals, his comments concerning mainly the status and future evolutions of the Sri Lankan economy.

Professor Amelia Hadfield is a Lecturer in European International Relations. She pursued doctoral studies and graduate teaching at the University of Kent Brussels and Vesalius College, as well as extra-academic work in various European institutions. Amelia has taught courses on IR theory, philosophy and methodology, Britain and Europe, European foreign policy, foreign policy analysis, and identity. At the University of Kent, Amelia is the Director of the MA in International Relations. Further afield, Amelia has served as associate fellow with Chatham House, CEPS (Brussels) and the Pan-European Institute (Finland), and taught European foreign policy at Sciences Po Lille in 2008. Amelia is presently the founding Director of Kent’s Energy Analysis Group, serves on the Editorial Board of The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs and is the UACES Secretary for 2008-10. Amelia’s current areas of research include European foreign policy, and the role of identity in foreign policy formation. Recent publications include ‘Foreign Policy and Dyadic Identities: the Role of the CFSP’, Journal of Geopolitics, Issue 11 (4), 2006, and ‘Janus Advances? An Analysis of EC Development Policy and the 2005 Amended Cotonou Partnership’, European Foreign Affairs Review, Vol. 12, Issue 1, 2007, Foreign Policy: Theories, Actors, Cases, edited by Steve Smith, Amelia Hadfield and Tim Dunne (OUP 2008). Forthcoming publications include a monograph exploring the connections between identity and foreign policy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008) and a critical introduction to foreign policy (OUP 2009)

Professor Mark Beeson is an experienced teacher in the field of Political Science whose research focuses on the politics, economics and security of the Asia-Pacific region. He is currently a Senior Lecturer at the University of Western Australia. He also worked with the Universities of Birmingham (Professor of International Politics), York (UK), Murdoch, Griffith and Queensland (Australia). Recent published books include Regionalism, Globalization and East Asia: Politics, Security and Economic Development, (Palgrave, 2007), Securing Southeast Asia: The Politics of Security Sector Reform, (with Alex Bellamy, Routledge, 2007), Bush and Asia: America's Evolving Relations with East Asia (ed., Routledge, 2006). Professor Beeson publishes extensively on his areas of expertise and is engaged in several projects that analyse the geopolitical context in which processes of regional integration are unfolding in East Asia.

Professor Stéphanie Blankenburg works at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London as Lecturer in International Political Economy. She specializes in growth theory, the role of institutions in growth and economic development, the contemporary dynamics of the international economy and the history of economic analysis and methodology. Her published books and articles include Neoliberalismus: Der theoretische Entwurf, der Gegner und die praktische Verwirklichung (with H. Schui, VSA, 2002), "Den Bullen reiten? – Möglichkeiten zur wirtschaftlichen Bändigung, in: H. Fürderer, E. Kaiser, I. Pflügl and R. Widowitsch (eds), Trotz Gegenwind, (OGB Verlag, 2005, pp. 67-97), "Neoliberalismus: Ökonomische Theorie, Gesellschaftliche Wirklichkeit und der Dritte Weg" in: R. Faber (ed..), Neoliberalismus in Gegenwart und Geschichte (Verlag Königsberg, 2000).

Professor Chris Edwards chairs the Exam Board and the Board of Studies of the Master programs at the University of Leicester. He was appointed as Senior Lecturer and Reader in 2004 and 2006, and received a personal chair in 2010. His field of research is the area of “sliding modes”. He is a contributor to many edited books and he published over seventy articles in academic journals. He is the co-author of Advances in Variable Structure and Sliding Mode Control, (Springer-Verlag, 2006) and Sliding Mode Control: Theory and Applications (with S.K. Spurgeon, Taylor & Francis, 1998). M. Edwards is a m ember of the editorial board of the IMechE Journal of Systems and Control, an Associate Editor of the Asian Journal Control and of the International Journal of Systems Science, and a Subject Editor for the International Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control.

Professor Saad-Filho is a lecturer of Political Economy in the Department of Development Studies of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Educated at the University of Brasilia he received his PhD at the University of London (SOAS). His areas of research include the political economy of development, industrial policy, Latin American political and economic development, inflation and stabilisation, and the labour theory of value and its applications. He authored The Value of Marx: Political Economy for Contemporary Capitalism (Routledge, 2002), and co-authored Marx’s Capital (Pluto, 2004), Economic Policies for Growth, Employment and Poverty Reduction: case study of Zambia (Mission Press, 2007). He also published articles in journals such as: Development and Society, Marxism, Historical Materialism, Review of Political Economy and New Political Economy

Professor Andrew Fisher is a Senior Lecturer in Population and Social Policy at the Institute of Social Studies - the Hague where he teaches on issues of population, poverty and social policy in Staff Group IV of ISS (Rural Development, Environment and Population) and on development economics in the ISS general course and in the International Political Economy of Development core course. He is also the current convenor of the Poverty specialisation at ISS. As an interdisciplinary development economist, M. Fisher is interested in marginalised and/or disadvantaged peoples, his research including issues of poverty, inequality, social exclusion, disadvantage, discrimination, and social conflict, and how these are affected by various patterns of economic growth, modes of social policy provisioning, and aid. He also works on the macroeconomic repercussions of aid and on the history of economic development thought, with a particular focus on structuralist, post-keynesian and institutionalist approaches in development economics. He is also the Executive Editor of the Journal of China in Comparative Perspective and was awarded Best Paper of the Development Studies Association annual conference in London on 8 November 2008, by the Journal of International Development and Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, for the paper 'Looking to the Pioneers for a Path through the Meta-Narratives: structuralist insights for current debates on aid and development'.

Professor Jane Harrigan is a lecturer of Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, she is also a member of the SOAS Food Studies Center. Her geographical area of expertise is the Middle East and consequently she teaches Economic Development of the Modern Middle East and Applied Economics of the Middle East. Her authored books are: Aid and Power in the Arab World: The IMF and World Bank Policy-Based Lending in the Middle East and North Africa (with Hamed El-Said, Palgrave Macmillan 2009), Economic Liberalisation, Social Capital and Islamic Welfare Provision. (with Hamed El-Said, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) , From Dictatorship to Democracy. Economic Policy in Malawi 1964-2000 (Ashgate, 2001), and Aid and Power: The World Bank and Policy-Based Lending. (co-author, Routledge, 1995). She has also published more than a few articles in journals such as Development Viewpoint, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, Development Policy Review, The Middle East Journal, etc

Professor Mushtaq Husain Khan is Senior Lecturer in Economics and Associate Dean of the Faculty of Law and Social Sciences at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London and a member of the Centre of South and South East Asian Studies. His main areas of interest are institutional economics, the economics of rent-seeking, corruption and clientelism, industrial policy and state intervention in developing countries. His work focuses on the South and South East Asian economic development and in particular the development of India. Among his published work, Professor Mushtaq Khan is the author of Rents, Rent-Seeking and Economic Development: Theory and Evidence in Asia. (ed with Jomo, K.S., Cambridge University Press 2000), and State Formation in Palestine: Viability and Governance during a Social Transformation (with George Giacaman and Inge Amundsen, Routledge, 2004), as well as several academic articles and chapter contributions in books: ‘Good Governance and Growth in Africa: What can we learn from Tanzania?’ (with Hazel Gray), in Vishnu Padayachee (ed.) The Political Economy of Africa, (Routledge 2010), ‘The Political Economy of Industrial Policy in Asia and Latin America’ (with Stephanie Blankenburg), in Giovanni Dosi and Mario Cimoli eds. Industrial Policy and Development. (Oxford University Press, 2009).

Professor Murat Arsel is Lecturer in Environment and Sustainable Development at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), of the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. Proviously to this position he he after being a Post-doctoral Lecturer at the University of Chicago. His research interests lies broadly in the areas of political economy and social theory, particularly regarding the interface between capitalism and nature-society relationships in rapidly developing societies. In this perspective, his work focuses on natural resource management and sustainable rural development in rapidly industrializing nations in the Middle East (especially Turkey) and Central Asia. Murat Arsel is the the author of Water, Environmental Security and Sustainable Rural Development: Conflict and Cooperation in Central Eurasia (Routledge, 2009), Environmentalism in Turkey: Between Democracy and Development? (Ashgate, 2005), Reflexive developmentalism? Toward an environmental critique of modernization (Adaman & Arsel, 2005).

Professor Mansoob Murshed is lecurer of International Industrial Economics as well as Professor of the Economies of Conflict and Peace at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in the Hague. He is also an Honorary Fellow at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo, Norway (PRIO). He focuses his research on globalisation, development economics including the economics of transition, and international trade and trade policy. In 2003 he was the first holder of the Prince Claus rotating Chair in Development and Equity established by Utrecht University and the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in early 2003 in honour of Prince Claus of the Netherlands (1926-2002). Previously, Professor Murshed taught International Economics at the Birmingham Business School and was Honorary Professor of Development Economics at the Utrecht School of Economics. He is the author of numerous articles and contributor to several books, including: 'The Conflict-Growth Nexus and the Power of Nations', in J.A. Ocampo, K.S. Jomo and R. Vos (eds) Growth Divergences: Explaining Differences in Economic Performance., (Zed Books, 2008), 'Marginalisation in an Era of Globalisation.', in M. Hordijk, M. van Eerd and K. Hofman (eds) The Role of the United Nations in Peace and Security, Global Development, (Edwin Mellen Press, 2008), and 'Inequality, Indivisibility and Insecurity', in S. Saideman and M.Joëlle Zahar (eds) Insecurity in Intra-State Conflicts: Governments, Rebels, and Outsiders,(Routledge Books, 2008).

Professor Bassam Fattouh is a Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Oil and Middle East Programme at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. He is also Reader in Finance and Management for the Middle East and Academic Director of the Master of Science programmes at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His research is focused on aspects of the international oil pricing system such as the relationship between the future market and spot market, the relationship between OPEC and the market, the causes of oil price volatility and the dynamics of oil price differentials. He has a strong background in the economic environment of the Middle East. Bassam Fattouh is the author of several chapters in edited books and many academic articles such as “The Outlook for Lebanese Reconstruction: Competition and Legitimacy”, MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies, (2006, with J. Kolb), 'Concentration in the Banking Industry and Economic Growth.' Macroeconomic Dynamics, (2005, with L. Deidda), 'Non-Linearity between Finance and Growth.' Economics Letters, ( 2002, with L. Deidda), etc.

Professor Hassan Hakimian is the new Director of the London Middle East Institute and a Reader in the Economics Department at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Previously, he was an Associate Dean at Cass Business School, City University, where he led international business education programmes in China (Shanghai) and the Middle East (Dubai). His research is focused on the Middle East and covers subjects such as human resources and demographic change, labour markets and employment policy, globalisation and economic integration. He is the author of Labour Transfer and Economic Development (Hemel Hempstead, 1990) and co-editor of The State and Global Change (Routledge, 2001), and Trade Policy and Economic Integration in MENA (Routledge, 2003). He has published in various academic journals and acted as consultant to international development agencies. He is a Research Fellow at the Economic Research Forum, a network of Middle East economists based in Cairo, and is also an active member of the Middle East Economic Association of the USA. He is the founder and Series Editor for the “Routledge Political Economy of the Middle East and North Africa”, which has produced a number of pertinent titles dealing with MENA’s economies.

Professor John Toburn is Reader Emeritus and Senior Research Fellow at the University of East Anglia, UK. His main research area is economics and he specializes in trade policy and export promotion, foreign investment, industrial development and sectoral studies, particularly in South East and East Asia. He is a former Professor of Development Economics at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University. He was a Visiting Professor at several Universities including Kobe University in Japan and Soochow University in Taiwan. Professor Thoburn is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, and is one of the participants to the panel of subject specialists for the Hong Kong Council for Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications. Selected Publications: “Challenges to the Cambodian garment industry in the global garment value chain”, in the European Journal of Development Research (2010), The impact of world recession on the textile and garment industries of Asia, Working Paper (2009), “Globalisation and restructuring in the textiles sector on households in Vietnam: impacts on households”, Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy (2007), “Globalisation and Poverty in Vietnam: [editorial] introduction and overview”, Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy (2004).

Professor Anastasia Nesvetailova is a research specialist in International Political Economy. Her areas of interest cover finance and financial crises, globalisation and governance and her current research focuses on the themes of global financial fragility and crises, the formation of financial and monetary policies, and the process of capitalist evolution in Russia and other FSU countries. She currently teaches at the School of Social Sciences of the City University in London at undergraduate and PG level. She is a former lecturer at the Centre for Global Political Economy of the University of Sussex. Professor Nesvetailova is the author of Fragile Finance: Debt, Speculation and Crisis in the Age of Global Credit (Palgrave, 2007) and Financial Alchemy in Crisis: The Great Liquidity Illusion (Pluto, 2010). She is a co-editor of Global Finance in the New Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), International Political Economy: A Reader (Sage, 2007), and author of academic and media articles on finance and political economy.

Professor Peter Ferdinand has taught at the University of Warwick for more than three decades. He is a Reader in Politics & International Studies and a former British Academy Research Fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. He’s researches focus on mainly three fields: theories & processes of democratization, the political economy of development & international relations in the Asia-Pacific region and the political & economic transition of the former communist states in the Former Soviet Union & Eastern Europe. He is the author of several books among which we name: Introduction to Politics (Oxford University Press, 2009), Enterprise and Welfare Reform in Communist Asia (ed. with Martin Gainsborough, Cass, 2003), Hong Kong in Transition: One Country, Two Systems(ed. with Robert Ash, Brian Hook and Robin Porter, Routledge Curzon, 2003). Also he is the former Head of the Asia-Pacific Programme of the Royal Institute of International Affairs & former Chair of PAIS (one of the largest and most dynamic departments of politics and international studies in the UK)

Professor Massoud Karshenas is a Member of the SOAS Center for Iranian Studies. Since 2003 he teaches Economics at the Department of Economics, SOAS, University of London. He was previously Professor of Development Economics at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, and a Research Associate in Department of Economics of Warwick University. M. Karshenas also has experience as an International Policy Advisor as he is the Research Coordinator for the Middle East region within the Global Research Project on Social Policy in Late Industrializers at UNRISD, Geneva. He was Principal Advisor to UNCTAD, LDC Branch and a Member of Euro-Mediterranean Research network (femise) at the Mediterranean Institute in Marseille. He also worked with the International Labour Office, where he was External Economic Consultant and then Senior Advisor. He authored Industrialization and Agricultural Surplus: A Comparative Study of Economic Development Asia (Oxford University Press, 1995), as well as numerous articles in Edited books and in academic journals.

Professor David Leonard is a Former Dean of International and Area Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, he is currently Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies of the University of Sussex, UK. Since the beginning of his career he worked on governance issues in Sub-Saharan Africa. He spent many years on the field, in African countries where he conducted short-term work and research focusing on methods of improving the delivery of public services in the rural areas of Africa, both directly through managerial and policy reform and indirectly through partnerships with private actors. M. Leonard has worked with international organizations like FAO and the Inter-Governmental Authority for Development. His recent research is being conducted under a Research Councils of the UK Global Uncertainties grant on “Security in an Africa of Networked, Multilevel Governance.” Among his publications we mention: Africa’s stalled development. International Causes and Curses (Lynn Rienner, 2003, with Scot Straus), African Successes: Four public managers on Kenyan rural Development (University of California Press, 1991).

Professor Mattheuw McCartney is Lecturer in Economics with reference to South Asia and Member of Centre of South Asian Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His areas of expertise are microeconomics the Economic Development of South Asia and the comparative Economic Development of Asia and Africa. His research centers on the state, planning and late industrialization, as well as the economic development and political economy of development in South Asia and comparative economic development. He is the author of two monographs and several academic articles and chapters in books.: ‘Episodes of Liberalisation’ or ‘The Logic of Capital’: The Genesis of Liberalisation in India, (Working Paper, School of Oriental and African Studies, 2004), Export Promotion, the Fallacy of Composition and Declining Terms of Trade (or the Moors’ Last Sigh), (Working Paper, School of Oriental and African Studies, 2004).

Professor Paul Okojie is a specialist in Africa and Pan-Africanism. He is Senior Lecturer in Law at the Manchester Metropolitan University where he co-ordinates the School of Law exchange programs in Eastern Europe. He is a campaigner for human rights and fundamental freedoms and has worked with minority groups in the UK. He has published on policing and refugee issues. M. Okojie is a member of the International Governing Council of the Centre for Democracy and Development and an Equality Officer at the Manchester Metropolitan University. He also acted as an adviser to the Louise Da-Cocodia Education Trust.

Professor Hans Opschoor teaches in the areas of Environmental Economics and Economics of Sustainable Development at the Free University of Am­sterdam and at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. His area of expertise covers the North-South nexus of environmental and ecological economics. He also acquired experience on the field in Botswana, where he worked and lived and India and China, where he was involved in the development of a few projects. He is a member of the UN Committee on Development Policy, of the Royal Netherlands' Academy of Sciences and of PUGWASH in the Netherlands. Until 2005 he was the Rector of the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague and before that the Chairman of the Council for Environment and Nature Research. He also held the position of Director at the Institute for Environmental Studies of the Free University in Amsterdam. He holds honorary Professorships at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and at Nanjing Agricultural University.

Professor Luis Ritto is a Former EU Ambassador to the Holy See, FAO and Order of Malta, he is a Vatican Protocol expert. M. Ritto holds a Master’s degree in International Politics by CERIS and a PhD in Business Administration from the University of Washington. He is a former Head of the Caribbean Division of the European Commission in the Directorate-General for Development. He also worked as a bank manager in Portugal, Luxembourg, and in the Southern Africa region. He also taught Development Economics and European Studies at the Universidade Lusófona in Lisbon. He is the author of several Working Papers for the Jean Monnet Chair: The European Union and the Caribbean: Analysis and Challenges (Jean Monnet Chair, University of Miami, May 2005), The Convention on Europe and the Enlargement of the European Union ( Jean Monnet Chair, University of Miami, February 2003).

Professor Neil Robinson is a Senior lecturer in Politics at the University of Limerick, where he is the course Director of the Bachelor in Politics and International Relations. He is a specialist in the fields of Russian and post-communist politics, particularly the political economy of post-communism and post-communist state building. He is the author of Ideology and the collapse of the Soviet system. A critical history of Soviet ideological discourse,(Edward Elgar, 1995), and Russia: a state of uncertainty, (Routledge, 2002), co-author (with Karen Henderson) of Post-communist politics, (Prentice Hall, 1997). He is equally the editor or co-editor of Institutions and political change in Russia, (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), Reforging the weakest link: global political economy and post-Soviet change in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), (Aidan Hehir) State-building. Theory and practice, (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), and (with Todd Landman), The Sage handbook of comparative politics, (London: Sage, 2009). M. Robinson taught previously at the Universities of York and Essex. He is the author of articles in several journals including Soviet Studies, European Journal of Political Research, Political Studies, The Journal of Communist Studies and Transitional Politics, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Demokratizatsiay, Review of International Political Economy.

Professor Ashwani Saith is lecturer of Rural Economics at the Institute of Social Studies in the Hague. Since 2005 he became the Dean of the ISS. He previously taught Development Studies at the London School of Economics, where he also held the position of Director of the Development Studies Institute. He is a visiting professor at the Centre for Development Studies in India, at the SEWA Academy in Ahmedabad, at the Institute of Developing Economies Advanced School in Tokyo, and at the Centre for Development Planning of the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. He is the Editor of the academic journal Development and Change, and was a member of the Boards of Advisory Editors of several other journals, including the Journal of Development Studies, Labour and Development, Journal of Agrarian Change. His published works include: ICTs and Indian Economic Development, (co-edited, Sage Publishers, 2005), Forests: Nature, People, Power (Blackwell, 2000), The Village in Asia Revisited, (co-editor, Oxford University Press, 1997).

Professor Admasu Shiferaw is PhD in Development Economics at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS), he is currently a Research Fellow at the University of Gottingen. He was recently awarded a research grant from the German Research Foundation for a research project on “The Dynamics of Job Flows, Investment and Product Mix in African Firms”. He acquired teaching experience at the ISS where he taught between 2006 & 2008 several courses on Economics of Globalization, Microeconomic Analysis of Households, Firms and Institutions, Regression and Data Analysis, etc. He is coordinator of the weekly Research in Progress Seminar at the ISS, and a member of the macro-micro research cluster at ISS, as well as of the Ethiopian Economic Association and of the Royal Economic Society. He published more than a few articles including: “Survival of Private Sector Manufacturing Firms in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Role of Productivity & Ownership”, World Development (37,3, 2009, 572-584), “Firm Heterogeneity and Market Selection in Sub-Saharan Africa: Does It Spur Industrial Progress?” Economic Development & Cultural Change (55, 2, 2007, 393-423).

Professor Theodore Trefon is the Director of the Belgian Reference Centre for Expertise for Central Africa E-CA — CRE-AC) and heads the Contemporary History Section of the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium. He teaches at ERAIFT “Ecole Régionale Post-Universitaire d’Aménagement et de Gestion Intégrés des Forêts et Territoires tropicaux” at the University of Kinshasa. His area of expertise coves DR Congo and he focuses on the issues of state-society relations, forest-city links, urban anthropology and environmental governance. He is also a Research Coordinator for the Forest-City Interface dimension of APFT. Among his published books we cite: Parcours administratifs dans un Etat en faillite: Récits de Lubumbashi (RDC), Les Cahiers de l’Institut Africain/L’Harmattan (with B. Ngoy) and Re-inventing Order in the Congo: How people respond to state failure in Kinshasa, (ZED Books, 2004).

Mr. Flavio Valente is a specialist in facilitating participatory integrated strategies in a wide variety of areas, including health, nutrition, education, human rights, social participation, income generation and microcredit. He is the Secretary General of FIAN International, a global civil society organization that has advocated for the realization of the right to food for more than 20 years. He also coordinates the International Secretariat of the Alliance for Peoples Action on Nutrition and is a member of the National Coordination of the Brazilian Forum on Food and Nutritional Security Organizations. He works with the NGO Brazilian Action for Nutrition and Human Rights. From 2002 to 2007, Mr. Valente was the Brazilian National Rapporteur on the Human Rights to Adequate Food, Water and Rural Land. He also worked for several years as the Technical coordinator of ABRANDH (Brazilian Action for Nutrition and Human Rights) a Civil Society organization linked to the World Alliance for Nutrition and Human Rights (WANAHR)

Professor Rolph Van Der Hoeven is PhD in Development Economics, he is a Professor on Employment and Development Economics at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague. He’s areas of research cover the issues of employment, inequality and economic reform. He also focuses on problems related to basic needs, structural adjustment, poverty alleviation and decent work. A former Director of the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Policy Coherence Group, he previously held the position of Manager of the Technical Secretariat of the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization, established by the ILO. He was also Chief of the Macroeconomic and Development Policy Group, and held other positions in the Employment Department at the ILO, Geneva. M. Van Der Hoeven was Chief Economist of UNICEF in New York and worked on several projects in Ethiopia and Zambia. He authored and edited several books, edited three special journals, and published more than twenty articles.

Professor Joao Guimaraes is Senior Lecturer in Regional Planning at the Institute of Social Studies (The Hague), he is a Social and Regional Policy Expert. He is co-author of Buenas prácticas en la cooperación para el desarrollo. Rendición de cuentas y transparencia (Los Libros de La Catarata, 2008), Por Fin, La Pobreza? Informe de País - Nicaragua (Research Report for the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, 2008) and 'Las Estrategias de Reducción de la Pobreza: Un Apunte Crítico', in E. Echart, L. Miguel Puerto and J. Angel Sotillo (eds) Globalización, Pobreza y Desarrollo: Los Retos de la Cooperación Internacional, (Los Libros de La Catarata, 2005, pp.313-332), etc. He is a visiting teacher at the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, Thailand.

Mr. John Sauven is the executive director at Greenpeace UK. he joined the organisation in the early 1990 and became involved in the campaigns to ban underground nuclear testing in the Pacific and in the campaigns against Trident in the UK. M. Sauven contributed to the development of Greenpeace's "Greenfreeze" campaign for better standards in refrigeration to protect the ozone layer. He also contributed to the promotion of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) as part of Greenpeace’s forest campaign meant to support the buying of legal and sustainable timber and paper. Sauven was the leader of the global campaign to stop the expansion of soya in the Amazon rainforest, leading to a historic victory when a moratorium was agreed on further deforestation by the large multinational corporations like Cargill. He is also a regular contributor to The Guardian in the UK.

Mr. Dirk Beeuwsaert is the Executive Vice-President of GDF SUEZ, in charge of the Energy Europe and International business and a Member of the GDF SUEZ Executive Committee. He began his career in 1971 with Intercom and when this company was absorbed into Electrabel he became head of Electrabel's conventional generation. Subsequently he was appointed to the Electrabel Management Committee, and as Chairman of the Board of Laborelec and Recybel, and director of several companies, including Synatom, Belgonucléaire, Twinerg (Luxembourg), Rosen and Alpenergie (Italy), and Electrabel Nederland. In 2000 he became CEO of Tractebel Electricity & Gas International (now GDF SUEZ Energy International) and member of the Tractebel General Management Committee. In 2009 Mr. Beeuwsaert took over the Europe and International Energy Division of GDF SUEZ and was appointed Executive Vice-President, in charge of the Energy Europe and International business line