ILAN PAPPÉ is a fellow of the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. He is the director of the European Center for Palestine Studies and the co-director of the Exeter Center for Ethno-Political Studies. His recent books include: Gaza in Crisis (Haymarket, 2011), with Noam Chomsky; The Husaynis: The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty (California University Press, 2011); and The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel (Yale Univeristy Press, 2011). He is also the author of A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oneworld 2007). A native of Haifa, Professor Pappé obtained his BA degree from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1979 and the D. Phil from the University of Oxford in 1984. He founded and directed the Academic Institute for Peace in Givat Haviva, Israel between 1992 and 2000, and was the Chair of the Emil Tuma Institute for Palestine Studies in Haifa between 2000 and 2006. Professor Pappé was a senior lecturer in the department of Middle Eastern History and the Department of Political Science in Haifa University, Israel between 1984 and 2006.

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ALEJANDRA JUÁREZ was born in the Central Valley of California. Both her maternal and paternal grandfathers were braceros during the 1930s. Her own parents began migrating in the 1970s following the harvest seasons in California, providing her with a bi-national upbringing. At the age of 15 she began working alongside her parents and older siblings as a farm worker during school breaks. After earning her BA at California State University, Stanislaus, she worked assisting immigrant adults learn English. Since then, she has also worked as a women's advocate against violence and sexual abuse, on campaigns to end the U.S. blockade on Cuba and on issues of food security among Latino immigrants, and has traveled to Venezuela, Mexico, and Paraguay as part of solidarity delegations. In 2007 she returned to university for a Masters in Public Policy from Oregon State University. There she wrote her thesis on Mexican agricultural policies. In the process of writing, she became aware of the inextricable link between NAFTA, the WTO, IMF, and OECD policies and the displacement of Mexican workers and campesinos who then are forced to migrate North. In early 2010 she began writing for El Organizador and joined its editorial board shortly thereafter. More recently, she organized for the March 4th (2010) and March 2nd (2011) State-wide Day of Action in defense of public education and against the budget cuts in California. She has been involved in organizing in the immigrant/Latino community for several years as part of a grassroots coalition known as the Alianza (or Alliance for a Just Immigration Policy). She's on the road today sponsored by the Emergency Labor Network (ELN) and Alianza por una Política Migratoria Justa to build a network of grassroots Worker-Community Committees where the struggles for workers' and immigrant rights -- women, Blacks, Latinos, and other oppressed sectors -- can unite and stand firmly based on politics of independence from the dominating parties and corporations.

GUY STANDING is Professor of Economic Security at the University of Bath in the UK. He was previously Director of the Socio-Economic Security Programme of the International Labour Organisation, where he worked for 30 years. He has been involved in numerous research and advisory projects, in developed and developing countries and, in the early 1990s, in the “transition” countries of Eastern Europe. He has written and edited books on labor economics, labor market policy, unemployment, labor market flexibility, structural adjustment policies and social protection policy. Recent books include: The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (Bloomsbury Academic, 2011); Social Income and Insecurity: A Study in Gujarat, with Jeemol Unni, Renana Jhabvala and Uma Rani (Routledge, 2010); Work after Globalization: Building Occupational Citizenship (Edward Elgar, 2009) and Promoting Income Security as a Right: Europe and North America (Anthem Press, 2005).

BOAVENTURA DE SOUSA SANTOS is Professor of Sociology, University of Coimbra (Portugal), Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Global Legal Scholar at the University of Warwick. He is director of the Center for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra and has written and published widely on the issues of globalization, sociology of law and the state, epistemology, social movements and the World Social Forum. He has been awarded several prizes, most recently the Science and Technology Prize of Mexico, 2010  and the Kalven Jr. Prize of the Law and Society Association, 2011. His most recent books in English include The Rise of the Global Left: The World Social Forum and Beyond (Zed Books, 2006); Democratizing Democracy: Beyond the Liberal Democratic Canon (Verso, 2005); Another Production is Possible: Beyond the Capitalist Canon (Verso, 2006); Another Knowledge is Possible: Beyond Northern Epistemologies (Verso 2007); and Voices of the World (Verso 2010).

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GÖRAN THERBORN is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Cambridge, UK, and affiliated professor at Linnaeus University, Sweden. He has been co-Director of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, professor of sociology at Gothenburg University, Sweden, and of political science at the Catholic University at Nijmegen, Netherlands. His books include, Science, Class and Society (l976), What Does the Ruling Class Do When It Rules (l978), The ideology of Power and the Power of Ideology (l980), Why Some Peoples Are More Unemplkoyed Than Others (l985), European Modernity and Beyond. The Trajectory of European Societies, l945-2000 (l995), Between Sex and Power. Family in the World, l900-2000 (2004), Inequalities of the World /2006), From Marxism to Postmarxism? (2008), The World. A Beginner's Guide (2011). He is currently working on a global project on Cities of Power.

SUJATA PATEL is a sociologist at the University of Hyderabad. Her research interests cover a wide array of topics, including modernity and social theory, history of sociology/social sciences, city-formation, social movements, gender construction, reservation, quota politics and caste and class formations in India. She is the Series Editor of Studies in International Sociology (Sage, 2010-1012), Studies in Contemporary Society (Oxford, India) and Cities and the Urban Imperative (Routledge, India). She is also the author of The Making of Industrial Relations (OUP, 1997), editor of The ISA Handbook of Diverse Sociological Traditions (Sage, 2010) and Doing Sociology in India, Genealogies, Locations and Practices (Oxford, 2011) and coeditor of five books, Bombay: Metaphor of Modern India (OUP, 1995); Bombay: Mosaic of Modern Culture (OUP, 1995); Bombay and Mumbai: The City in Transition (OUP, 2003); Thinking Social Science in India (Sage, 2002); and Urban Studies (OUP, 2006).

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CLAUS OFFE is one of the world’s leading political sociologists. A prominent representative of the tradition of critical theory, he is the author of numerous path-breaking essays and books in democratic and social theory, economic development, political sociology, public policy and European Studies. In addition, he has made significant contributions to understanding the relationship between democracy and capitalism. His recent work has focused on economies and states in transition to democracy. Important publications include Contradictions of the Welfare State (MIT Press 1984), Disorganised Capitalism (Polity Press 1985), Varieties of Transition: The East European and East German Experience (The MIT Press 1996), Modernity and the State (Polity Press 1996) and Reflections on America: Tocqueville, Weber and Adorno in the United States (Cambridge University Press 2005).

VIVEK CHIBBER (Ph.D. Sociology, UW-Madison) is Associate Professor of Sociology at New York University. He is the author of Locked in Place: State-Building and Late Industrialization in India (Princeton University Press, 2003), which has received numerous awards, including the 2006 Distinguished Publication Award of the American Sociological Association (honorable mention) and the 2005 Barrington Moore Jr. Prize of the ASA’s Comparative and Historical Sociology Section. He is completing a book titled, "Postcolonial Theory and the Spectre of Capitalism," due out in Winter 2011 by Verso. The book is a critique of postcolonial theory, both as an explanatory framework and as a form of radical thought.

GEORGE J. SANCHEZ is Professor of American Studies & Ethnicity, and History at the University of Southern California.  He is the author of Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (Oxford, 1993), and co-editor of Los Angeles and the Future of Urban Cultures (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005) and Civic Engagement in the Wake of Katrina (University of Michigan, 2009).  Past President of the American Studies Association in 2001-02, he currently serves as Director of the Center for Diversity and Democracy, and Vice Dean for Diversity and Strategic Initiatives at USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.  In 2010, the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education Inc. selected him as the outstanding Latino/a faculty in higher education research institutions, and in 2011 the American Historical Association awarded him their first ever “Equity Award” for a lifelong commitment to bringing equity and diversity to the historical profession.

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