Associate Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science & Researcher, Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies, Lund University Pınar Dinç is an associate professor of political science at the Department of Political Science, Lund University and a researcher at the Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies, Lund University. Since completing her PhD at the Department of Government at the London School of Economics in 2017, her research has focused on the links between political power, conflict, climate change, environmental degradation and migration among marginalised and oppressed communities. She was the principal investigator for the Turkey Beyond Borders: Critical Voices, New Perspectives project between 2020 and 2024. Her current research is mainly focused on Turkey, Syria, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and Palestine.
President's Professor of Human Communication and Communication Technologies, Arizona State University Pauline Cheong studies the complex interactions between communication technologies and different cultural communities around the world. She believes that invisible yet powerful cultural and communicative forces make up how we interact and organize with digital media, to impact participation and power in society. Her recent projects related to changing knowledge and authority practices examine the socio-cultural implications of Big Data, including user skills, perceptions and practices of privacy and security within the Internet of Things. She is also examining how non-profit and spiritual organizations use Artificial Intelligence and digital platforms to interact and form both local and global communities. In the area of strategic communication, she has investigated how digital and social media networks facilitate the spread of narratives and memes by extremist groups, cyber-vigilantes and rumor-mongers. Her personal interests in innovative pedagogy & mentoring have also led to research projects examining how underserved and youth populations experience multiple digital divides in the learning process. Cheong has published more than 100 articles and books and has received research awards by the National Communication Association, Western Communication Association, and the International Communication Association. She is often invited to teach and speak in Asia, North America and Europe.
Ethnobotanist, National Museums of Kenya Patrick is an ethnobotanist interested in traditional uses of African biodiversity, and especially in food and nutrition. He works for the National Museums of Kenya. His research interests are: ethnobotany, traditional foods, indigenous knowledge, food and nutrition, biodiversity, and traditional farming systems.
Assistant Lecturer: Energy Studies, University of Johannesburg I hold a Master’s degree in environmental management from the University of Johannesburg. I recently moved into an academic position at the University of Johannesburg after working at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment (DFFE). In my current role, I teach the energy politics and energy policy modules. I also oversee the research efforts of 11 honours students in energy studies. My research interests cover a range of critical areas including energy governance, biodiversity conservation, climate change governance, and the broader environmental governance framework.
Investigador predoctoral en conservación y gestión de la biodiversidad, Universitat de Barcelona Graduado en Biología, especializado en Ecología, Gestión y Restauración del Medio Natural. Actualmente soy investigador predoctoral en un doctorado sobre Conservación y Gestión de la Biodiversidad. Mi tesis se centra en los desechos marinos en la Antártida, abarcando desde su abundancia y posibles fuentes hasta los microorganismos que colonizan los plásticos. He participado en las campañas antárticas 2021-22 y 2022-23. Además, soy guía de buceo certificado (Divemaster SSI).
Postdoctoral Researcher, School of Management, University of Bath Pankhuri is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the School of Management at the University of Bath working on a 4-year UKRI project to interrogate the meaning of dignity in supply chains in India and the UK’s garment and IT industries. She completed her PhD in Sociology from the University of Bristol and an MSc in Development Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. With over a decade of field and research experience working with marginalised workers, unions, government ministries, international and domestic humanitarian agencies, her research focuses on the: 1) critique of the anti-trafficking discourse and intervention; 2) use of multi-sited ethnography to study the lived experience of law and; 3) the impact of labour reforms at the intersection of migration and state bureaucracy. As a result of her interdisciplinary research and activism across a global network of scholars and practitioners committed to the study of labour rights, her expertise has been sought by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the UN Women South Asia Office, and others on a consultancy basis and her research has been supported by grants from the UK Home Office, J.N. Tata Endowment, Aga Khan Foundation, British Federation of Women Graduates, Socio-Legal Studies Association, to name a few. Pankhuri's research has appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as the Anti-Trafficking Review and Social Change and on public-facing platforms such as the Sociological Review, OpenDemocracy and Futures of Work.
