Cynthia "Mil" Duncan returned to the University of New Hampshire in the spring of 2004 as founding director of the Carsey Institute. Widely recognized for her research on rural poverty and changing rural communities, Duncan was a sociologist at UNH for 11 years before leaving to become director of the Ford Foundation’s Community and Resource Development Unit in 2000. At the Ford Foundation she was responsible for a team of national and international leaders in the community development, youth, and environmental fields. Duncan was the associate director of the Rural Economic Policy Program at the Aspen Institute prior to her former work at the University.

In 1999, Duncan published Worlds Apart: Why Poverty Persists in Rural America, which received the American Sociological Association’s Robert E. Park Award for the best book in Community and Urban Sociology. Duncan is the author of numerous book chapters and refereed articles. She received her PhD from the University of Kentucky in sociology and is a recipient of the University of Kentucky Department of Sociology Thomas R. Ford Distinguished Alumni Award. Duncan has a BA from Stanford University.

Diane Elson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex (UK). For almost 40 years, she has carried out research on gender and development, and is regarded as one of the 50 key thinkers on development – David Simon, ed., Fifty Key Thinkers on Development (Routledge, 2005). Her current research and teaching interests focus on global social change and the realization of human rights, with a particular focus on gender inequality and economic and social rights. Elson has served as a member of the U.N. Millennium Project Taskforce on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, and as vice-president of the International Association for Feminist Economics. From 1998 to 2000, she occupied the post of Special Advisor to the Executive Director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women.