Yakin Ertürk has been on the faculty of the Department of Sociology and the Gender and Women’s Studies Programme at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey and 2002 became the head of the latter.  She also taught at the Centre for Girls, at King Saud University in Riyadh (1979-1982) and from 1979 to 1981 served as its chair.  Between 1997 and 2001 she took leave from her university post and joined the United Nations, serving first as Director of the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW) in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (Oct.1997- Feb.1999), then as Director of The Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW) at UN Headquarters in New York (March 1999 – Oct. 2001).

    Nira Yuval-Davis is Professor of Gender & Ethnic Studies at the University of Greenwich, London and Visiting Professor at the Department of Cultural Studies at the University of East London. Professor Yuval-Davis has written extensively on theoretical and empirical aspects of women, nationalism, racism, fundamentalism and citizenship in Europe, Israel and elsewhere. She is the author or co-author of ten books, including Gender and Nation, which has been translated into six languages.

    Amrita Basu is Professor of Political Science and Women’s and Gender Studies at Amherst College and Director of the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center. Her main areas of interest are social movements, religious nationalism, and women’s activism in India. She is the author of Two Faces of Protest: Contrasting Codes of Women’s Activism in India and the editor or co-editor of four books, including The Challenge of Local Feminism: Women’s Movements in Global Perspective and Appropriating Gender: Women’s Activism and Politicized Religion in South Asia.

    Julia Szalai is Head of the Department of Social Policy and Social History at the Institute of Sociology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at ELTE University, Budapest. She is the Editor of East Central Europe/l’Europe du Centre-Est: Eine Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift (ECE/ECE), a trilingual journal of the social sciences and humanities. She is also Chair of the Max Weber Foundation of the Study of Social Initiative (Budapest-Glasgow), and advisor to the Hungarian Ministry of Welfare. Her main research interests are: the history of social policy in East Central Europe; ‘old’ and ‘new’ poverty in Central Europe; women’s changing situation on the labour market in post-1989 Hungary; ‘recognition struggles’ of the Gypsy and  the deficiencies of the post-communist embourgeoisement process and their consequences for new class and ethnic relations in Hungary.

    Amy Mazur is Associate Professor of Political Science and Criminal Justice at Washington State University and co-convener of the Research Network on Gender Politics and the State. Professor Mazur is the author or editor of four books, including Gender Bias and the State and most recently, Theorizing Feminist Policy.  She has published articles in Political Research Quarterly, French Politics and Society, Policy Studies Journal, West European Politics, European Journal of Political Research, and Contemporary French Civilization.  

    Dorothy Stetson is Professor of Political Science at Florida Atlantic University and co-convener of the Research Network on Gender and the State. Professor Stetson’s research interests include women, politics and policy in advanced industrial states. She is the author or co-editor of several books, including Abortion: Public Policy in Comparative Perspective, Comparative State Feminism, and Women’s Rights in the U.S.A.: Policy Debates and Gender Roles.

    Sonia E. Alvarez is Associate Professor of Politics at the University of California at Santa Cruz.  She is the author or co-author of four books, including Engendering Democracy in Brazil, The Making of Social Movements in Latin America, Cultures of Politics/Politics of Cultures, and Contentious Feminisms (forthcoming). Her writings on feminisms, social movements, and democratization have appeared in Signs, Feminist Studies, Revista Estudos Feministas, Estudios Latinoamericanos, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Debate Feminista, Meridians, Revista Mora, and several edited collections and movement publications..

    Margaret (Peg) Snyder (Ph.D., Sociology, University of Dar es Salaam) is the founding director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), and was co-founder of the African Centre for Women at UNECA and member of the Committee to Organize Women’s World Banking. She is currently Seminar Associate at Columbia University and advisor to the UN’s intellectual history project.

    Hilkka Pietilä is a Finnish freelance researcher and writer. She is the author or co-author of eleven books on women and the United Nations, including United Nations and the Advancement of Women and Making Women Matter. She is the former Secretary General of the Finnish United Nations Association.