Contributors

Elie Lunanga

Researcher, University of Antwerp

Researcher, University of Antwerp Elie Lunanga is a Researcher at the Institute of Development Policy, University of Antwerp. His current research interests include health, energy, natural resources, conflicts and development project evaluation in fragile countries.

Ean Tsou

PhD Candidate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, University of Calgary

PhD Candidate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, University of Calgary Currently a PhD Candidate in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Calgary, Calgary

Elizabeth A. Silber

Senior R&D Scientist, Physics, Sandia National Laboratories

Senior R&D Scientist, Physics, Sandia National Laboratories As a highly motivated and accomplished individual, I have dedicated my career to interdisciplinary research in several scientific areas, including physics, and planetary and earth science. I earned my PhD. in Physics and Planetary Science in 2014 (Western University, Canada) and graduated with an Honours BSc. (Specialization Astrophysics and Major in Planetary Science), with distinction, prior to that. Throughout my career, I have demonstrated a deep passion for learning and an insatiable curiosity about the world around me. My research interests are broad in nature, and I am constantly seeking new challenges and opportunities to expand my knowledge and expertise. In addition to my research, I have also dedicated a significant portion of my career to teaching. With nearly a decade of experience in teaching physics, astronomy, and earth science courses, I have developed innovative and novel teaching methodologies. My extensive teaching experience spans from course and curriculum development to implementation, and I have enjoyed engaging with wide audiences, both in class and online.

Edward Martey

Senior Research Scientist, Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Senior Research Scientist, Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Edward Martey (ORCID ID: 0000-0002-6933-3685) is an Agricultural and Applied economist at the CSIR-Savanna Agricultural Research Institute with 12 years of professional experience. He is a visiting Research Scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a 2022 Visiting Fellow, Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, Structural Transformation of African and Asian Agriculture and Rural Spaces (STAAARS+) program. He received his BSc (Agricultural Economics), MPhil (Agricultural Economics), and PhD (Agricultural and Applied Economics) degrees from the University of Ghana and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, respectively. He is currently the Head of the Social Science and Biometry Section of CSIR-SARI. His research, development, agricultural economics, and operational work cover a range of policy-relevant questions related to poverty, development, and commercialization in Africa. Specifically, his recent research focuses on impact assessment of agricultural technologies, energy, agricultural and rural development, time poverty, and economic valuation using choice experiments.

Edwin Dalmaijer

Lecturer in Psychological Science, University of Bristol

Lecturer in Psychological Science, University of Bristol Edwin’s research interests are best summarised as the quantitative exploration of development, both within individuals and in populations. Broadly, he investigates how affective and cognitive faculties impact each other, and how they are affected by the environment. Edwin triangulates problems with narrowly focussed experiments aided by computational models of behaviour, with machine learning to find complex patterns in large secondary datasets, and with agent-based population simulations.

Erik Meinema

Assistant Professor of Religion and Heritage, Utrecht University

Assistant Professor of Religion and Heritage, Utrecht University Erik Meinema is an assistant professor of religion and heritage in the department of Philosophy and Religious Studies. His research focuses on religious diversity, youth culture, and political secularism in East Africa. He is a member of the research group Religious Matters in an Entangled World, led by Birgit Meyer. He received a Research Talent Grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) to conduct his PhD research on the regulation of religious coexistence in coastal Kenya, in which he studied Christianity, Islam and indigenous African religious traditions within one conceptual framework. His PhD thesis received the biennial Gerardus van der Leeuw PhD Dissertation Award from the Dutch Association for the Study of Religion in 2023. He has published peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Religion, Africa, the Journal of Religion in Africa, and the Journal of Eastern African Studies. He is also interested in questions about materiality, religion and (violent) conflict and has recently published an edited volume on this topic with Brill together with Lucien van Liere. Together with Lucien, he also currently works on a project on The Meaning of Weapons.