Assistant Professor of Psychology, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona Dr. Viviane Seyranian is a social psychologist who researches how communication and narrative content can be framed to optimize influence and behavioral change, particularly in the environmental and health realm. Her award winning research on her theory called Social Identity Framing (Seyranian, 2013, 2014) provides support for the idea that implicating social identity in communication helps to garner support for social change. In addition to her research in social influence, Dr. Seyranian also develops and tests a wide variety of interventions seeking to empower minority populations. Her research utilizes diverse methodologies ranging from lab and field experiments to qualitative methods such as manual and computerized content analysis. Dr. Seyranian earned her Ph.D. and M.A. in social psychology from Claremont Graduate University and her B.A. cum laude in psychology and government from Claremont McKenna College. She completed her postdoctoral training at the University of Southern California.
Senior Lecturer in Biotechnology, Cape Peninsula University of Technology I hold a PhD in Plant Biotechnology from UKZN, where I served as a lecturer from 2009 to 2013. I then joined the Cape Peninsula University of Technology as a Senior Lecturer in the Biotechnology Department. I lecture in Biochemistry, Microbiology and Immunology. My current research interests lie in the improvement of commercially-important crop such as Eucalyptus and sugarcane, through various biotech interventions, as well as in the development of in vitro protocols for rare and/or medicinal plants.
Lecturer in the Political Economy of Organisation, University of Leicester I joined the School of Management in February 2012. Between 2012-2014 I left Leicester to work at the University of Potsdam, Germany, on a two-year Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship. The research grant enabled me to conduct a comparative case study of three global destinations of tourism in areas of urban poverty. I came back to Leicester on a full-time lectureship in September 2014 where I am teaching on the undergraduate, postgraduate, MBA and PhD programmes with a focus on qualitative research methods and the sociology of organisation. Previously I was a lecturer at Bristol Business School, University of the West of England (UWE), where I taught on the tourism and enterprise undergraduate programmes and on the MBA. I am a Senior Research Associate of the University of Johannesburg and a Visiting Research Associate at the Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change (CTCC), Leeds Metropolitan University. I have an MSc in Political Sciences from Freie Universität Berlin and a PhD from Leeds Metropolitan University. My research interests converge at the intersections of mobility, organisation and politics. In this context I consider the role of transnational mobilities, from activists to tourists, in the formation of a global social question with a focus on the way slums are becoming destinations of a range of better-off travellers, in solidarity and volunteer travel and in slum tourism. This is also the topic of most recent book ‚Slumming It‘ (Zed Books 2016). In 2012 I received a Marie Curie Post Doctoral Fellowship from the EU for a two-year research project on slum tourism, conducted at the University of Potsdam, Germany. The project website is www.qualpot.eu. Prior to this I won an early career grant from the University of the West of England to study tourism in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas and to initiate the foundation of a slum tourism research network. I co-organised the first conference in this field of research in December 2010 at UWE. This led to the publication of a special issue on slum tourism in the journal tourism geographies and a book I edited on the same topic. In May 2014 I hosted the second slum tourism network conference in Potsdam and I am co-editor of two special issues emerging from the conference publications. More information on the slum tourism research network can be found on its webpage www.slumtourism.net In my second empirical research field I study the ways in which social movements organise themselves in response to place and space with a particular interest in the organisational form of the protest camp. In 2013 I published a book on protest camps as an organisational form (with Zed books) in collaboration with Anna Feigenbaum (Bournemouth University) and Patrick McCurdy (Ottawa University). I have taken part in the foundation of the protest camp research network. In the framework of the network, I am currently co-editing a book on case studies of protest camps across the world (forthcoming with Policy Press in 2017). I am also one of the founders of the protest camp research collective. I have previously worked in an ESRC research project on Alternative Media Organisation in the 'Global South' (RES-155-25-0029). Earlier work includes the foundation in 2003 of a research think tank, the Institute of Nomadology (InNo) in Berlin.
Associate Professor of Education, Pennsylvania State University Liliana M Garces is an Associate Professor in the Higher Education Program, Co-Director of the Center for Education and Civil Rights, and a Research Associate in the Center for the Study of Higher Education at The Pennsylvania State University. Before joining Penn State, she taught at the Graduate School of Education and Human Development at the George Washington University and completed a post-doctorate fellowship at the National Poverty Center in the Gerald R Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. She teaches courses on education policy and politics, higher education law, and race, law, and education. Dr. Garces’s research, focused on the dynamics of law and education, seeks to inform policies and practices that address inequities in education. Her work employs quantitative, qualitative and legal research methods, and draws from frameworks in law, economics, sociology, and political science, engaging in interdisciplinary research that can more effectively tackle the complex nature of educational inequality, both in K-12 and higher education. She has written on the impact of affirmative action bans on the representation of students of color in graduate and medical schools, institutional responses to court cases and laws addressing race-conscious admissions policies, and the use of social science research in education-related cases.
Associate research scientist, Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá Since August 2013, I am a research scientist at Universidad Tecnológica de Panama affiliated with the Grupo de Investigación en Biotecnología, Bioinformática y Biología de Sistemas (GIBBS) at the Centro de Producción e Investigaciones Agroindustriales - (CEPIA). Since February 2015, I am a also an adjunct researcher at Institute of Scientific Research and High Technology Services (INDICASAT-AIP). My main research objective is to promote and expand the use of computer tools coupled with statistical analysis, machine learning and data mining techniques to derive biological insight from high-throughput biomedical data. I am also interest in diverse areas of computation, such as: high performance scientific computing and systems biology. I completed my Ph.D. in Experimental Medicine and my MSc. in Computer Science (Bioinformatics) at McGill University, in Montreal, Canada. Previously I obtained a BSc. in Computer Systems Engineering at UniversIdad Tecnológica de Panamá.
Acting Director, Astronomy and Space Science, CSIRO Dr Bock has made the focus of his career the design, construction, and operation of radio telescopes. http://people.csiro.au/B/D/Douglas-Bock Australia Telescope National Facility http://www.atnf.csiro.au/
