Mohamadou Abdoul

1Mohamadou Abdoul is a researcher from Mauritania and has a PhD in history. He is now in charge Enda’s “Prospectives – Dialogues Politics” programme. His work focuses on urban issues: participation/citizenship, popular urban cultures; political processes in Africa and regional Integration in West Africa.

Sonia Alves Calio

2Sonia Alves Calio is a geographer and has a post-doctorate in urban geography from the University of São Paulo. A researcher on urbanism, she now works on habitat issues in the CDHU, a State enterprise in São Paulo. Since 1997, she has managed the MOST-UNESCO project in Brazil: “Gender, city, and environment”.

Michel Carton

3Holding a PhD in science of education of the University of Geneva, Michel Carton1 has accomplished his academic career at the Faculty of psychology and science of education of the University of Geneva (up to 2002) and at the Graduate Institute of Development Studies in Geneva where is has a professor position and which he has been heading since 2004. His research and field interventions focus on training and skills enhancement policies in Western and Southern Africa and in Southeast Asia. Together with Kenneth King he is the co-leader of the NORRAG network addressing the critical analysis of aid policies in the fields of education and training. Within this network he takes part in studies on the relations between education, knowledge economy and knowledge society in the context of globalisation processes tending to turn education and knowledge from commons into commodities.

Marta Cassaro-Silva

4Marta Cassaro-Silva is a biologist and has a Phd in ecology and natural resources from the Federal University of San Carlos, Brazil. She is currently preparing a Master degree in ecology at the Sciences university of Neuchâtel (Switzerland).

Serge Chappatte

5Serge Chappatte is the Assistant Director General of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), in charge of the development policy and multilateral cooperation.

Iskra Dandolova

6Iskra Dandolova has a PhD in literature and human sciences from the University of Paris X-Nanterre; she is an urban sociologist, architect, research director at the Sociology Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia. Her research fields include urban politics, social inequalities, social politics and exclusion, gender and urban space.

Christina von Fürstenberg

7Christina von Fürstenberg is the chief of UNESCO’s Section of Policy, international cooperation and knowledge sharing in the social sciences.

François Hainard

8François Hainard is a professor and the Director of the Sociology Institute at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland. His research fields are economy, environment and social problems.

Norberto Inda

9Norberto Inda is a psychologist from the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina) and a professor of “Group Dynamics” and social links at the University of Quilmes and University of Mar del Plata (Argentina). A member of IASOM - International Association Studies on Masculinities, he conducts research in the gender field and more specifically on men’s condition. He is a member of the Argentinean part of the Swiss project “Gender, city and environment”.

Vincent Maugis

10A consultant to the Management of Social Transformations (MOST) programme, Vincent Maugis is in charge of the issue of knowledge transfer from research to policy. He holds a Master degree on Strategic information and technological innovation from the Institut des Sciences et Techniques de l’Ingénieur d’Angers (ISTIA) and collaborated to the Global System for Sustainable Development (GSSD), a laboratory from the Political Science department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he conducted research on the contributions of information technologies to decision-making in the field of sustainable development.

Isabelle Milbert

11Isabelle Milbert has a PhD in law and is a professor at the Graduate Institute of Development Studies (IUED). Her research and teaching focus on social networks in the cities and urban management, and on governance and citizenship.

Maxime Molyneux

12Maxine Molyneux is a Professor of Sociology at the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of London. She has been a member of the Editorial Committee of the UNRISD Beijing Plus 10 Project, the report of which will be soon published.

Isabel Rauber

13Isabel Rauber has a Phd. in Philosophy. Professor of the Faculty of Philosophy of the Havana University. Director of “Pasado y Presente XXI”, a researcher in the Centre of Studies of America, in charge of the MOST-UNESCO Project: “Environmental transformation in cities and social relationships between men and women” in the the Dominican Republic and Cuba. She studies Latin American social movements and is a specialist in gender and in the participation process of citizens in the new community.

Fenneke Reysoo

14Fenneke Reysoo2 is a Dutch anthropologist and holds a BA in ethnology from the University of Neuchâtel. She is now the deputy director in charge of teaching programmes of the Graduate Institute of Development Studies (IUED). Since 2000 she has been a teacher in “Anthropology, gender and development”. She has a mission of mainstreaming gender analysis in all the disciplines studied at IUED. She has a solid research experience in different universities and within international networks on the vast field of gender and development issues; she is specialised in health and reproductive and sexual rights issues. She is the co-manager of IUED’s gender colloquia.

Álvaro San Sebastián

15Álvaro San Sebastián is an architect (UBA) and social psychologist. Since 1986 he has been a researcher at the architecture, design and urban Faculty of the University of Buenos Aires. He participated in different national and international research projects and is in charge of the training of the POIESIS centre. During 4 years he coordinated the RED programme for interaction and development between university and enterprise. He participated in the management and organisation of research and management projects. Since 1997, he has been in charge of UNESCO’s MOST project in Argentina on gender, city, and environment.

Rolf Steppacher

16Rolf Steppacher3 teaches at IUED (Graduate Institute of Development Studies); his theoretical orientations include: ecological, institutional and evolutionary economics, eco-development and sustainable development. Two of his publications are related to gender issues.

Kadidia Tall

17Kadidia Tall is an adviser in social and family economy. She works to promote women by the means of trainings, studies, follow-up-support-counselling in the social and political field.

Christine Verschuur

18An anthropologist and a teacher on gender and development at the Graduate Institute of Development Studies, Christine Verschuur has been working on gender and development issues for a long time through research projects, projects evaluations or training programmes.

19She is the coordinator of the Swiss UNESCO’s MOST project on Cities, environment and gender relations together with François Hainard. She also coordinates the publication Cahiers genre et développement, a yearly publication created in 2000 and published by L’Harmattan. She is the co-manager of IUED’s gender colloquia with Fenneke Reysoo.

Sandra Walter

20Sandra Walter has a BA in social Sciences from the University of Lausanne and got a Master from the Graduate Institute of Development Studies (IUED). She is currently working on a PhD on “Gender, citizenship and urban environment management: the implications of institutional reforms in Kerala”. This research is funded by the national research programme NCCR North-South, a program funded by the SNSF and SDC.