R.W.Connell is University Professor of Education at the University of Sydney, formerly at the University of California-Santa Cruz and Macquarie University. Professor Connell is a researcher and theorist concerned with human experience, social dynamics, social justice and peace. He is the author of sixteen books, including Gender (Cambridge, Polity, 2002), The Men and the Boys (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2000), Masculinities (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1995), Schools and Social Justice (Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1993), and Gender and Power (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1987).

Nicolás Lynch (Ph.D., Sociology, New School for Social Research) is Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Ph.D. Program in Social Sciences at the National University of San Marcos in Lima, Perú. Professor Lynch is also a political columnist in the daily La República in Lima. He has published several books, including Los jóvenes rojos de San Marcos, La transición conservadora, Una tragedia sin héroes, and El pensamiento arcaico en la educación peruana. Professor Lynch was formerly Minister of Education, Political Advisor to the President of the Republic of Perú, and President of the Peruvian Sociological Association.

Walter Johnson (Ph.D., History, Princeton University) is Associate Professor of History at New York University. Professor Johnson is the author of numerous articles and book chapters, and three books: the award-winning Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1999), The Chattel Principle: Internal Slave Trades in the Americas, 1808-1888 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), and River of Dark Dreams: Slavery, Capitalism, and Imperialism in the Mississippi Valley (Harvard University Press, forthcoming).

Christopher Bertram is Reader in Social and Political Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol, UK. Professor Bertram’s main research interests are in modern social contract theory, theories of justice (especially global distributive justice), and public justification. He is the author of Rousseau and the Social Contract (Routledge, 2003), Vice-President of the Rousseau Association, and until recently, editor of Imprints: A Journal of Analytical Socialism.

Si Kahn has worked for 40 years as a civil rights, labor, and community organizer. He is executive director of Grassroots Leadership, a 25-year old progressive non-profit organization that works to abolish for-profit private prisons, jails, and detention centers. He is the author of How People Get Power, Organizing: A Guide for Grassroots Leaders, and most recently The Fox in the Henhouse: How Privatization Threatens Democracy (with Elizabeth Minnich). A songwriter and musician, Kahn is releasing his 15th CD Blood From Stones concurrently with The Fox in the Henhouse.

Elizabeth Minnich (Ph.D., Philosophy, New School University) is Senior Fellow at the Association of American Colleges and Universities. She has worked for 40 years as a university professor and administrator, author, speaker, workshop leader, consultant, and scribe. A feminist philosopher, she has lectured at over 150 colleges and universities and is the author of Transforming Knowledge (Temple, 1990) and The Fox in the Henhouse.

Marguerite Mendell (Ph.D., Economics, McGill University) is Associate Professor in the School of Community and Public Affairs and Director of the Karl Polanyi Institute of Political Economy at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. Professor Mendell's research and teaching focuses on the social economy in Quebec, alternative investment strategies, comparative community economic development, comparative public policy, history of economic thought, and economic democracy and governance, among others. She has published widely in these areas.

Nancy Neamtan is President and Executive Director of the Chantier de l'économie sociale, a non-profit organisation administered by 28 representatives of various networks of social enterprises (cooperatives and non-profits), local development organisations and social movements. The mission of the Chantier de l'économie sociale, a Quebec-wide organisation, is the promotion and development of the social economy. For the past 20 years, Ms. Neamtan has been involved in a diversity of organizations devoted to community economic development and labour force development and training.