Peter Andreas joined the Brown Department of Political Science in the fall of 2001, and holds a joint appointment with the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. He was previously an Academy Scholar at Harvard University, a Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and an SSRC-MacArthur Foundation Fellow on International Peace and Security. He received his BA from Swarthmore College and PhD from Cornell University. Andreas has published ten books. This includes, Rebel Mother: My Childhood Chasing the Revolution (Simon & Schuster, 2017); Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America (Oxford University Press, 2013); Blue Helmets and Black Markets: The Business of Survival in the Siege of Sarajevo (Cornell University Press, 2008); Policing the Globe: Criminalization and Crime Control in International Relations (co-author, Oxford University Press, 2006); and, Border Games: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide (Cornell University Press, 2nd edition 2009). Other writings include articles for publications such as International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Perspectives on Politics, Political Science Quarterly, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Harpers, Slate, The New Republic, and The Nation. He has also written op-eds for newspapers such as the Washington Post and provided testimony before the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives.

Pablo Beramendi is Professor of Political Science (Political Economy) at Duke University. His work focuses on different aspects of the political economy of inequality and redistribution. He has paid particular attention to the territorial dimension of distributive conflicts, trying to understand why some political unions redistribute more than others around the world. A second line of work focuses on the origins of the fiscal capacity of the state and its implications for distributive politics today. Within this line of inquiry, he is particularly interested in the causes and consequences of different tax structures across space and time. He also has a long standing interest in the linkages between economic and political inequalities, particularly focused on the political economy of electoral turnout. Finally, he has recently started a new project on the political determinants of income mobility.

Beatrice Chng is Sustainable Mobility Officer at ICLEI World Secretariat based in Bonn, Germany. In this capacity, she has been leading and implementing various projects, as well as developing tools to assess the urban mobility system in cities. She works closely with local and regional governments by providing capacity building, enhancing access to finance and implementing global agendas to a local level. She has interdisciplinary work and research experience in the Asia Pacific, Europe, and Africa regions focusing on sustainable cities and mobility in the developing world. Prior to ICLEI, Beatrice was a consultant at Ramboll-ENVIRON, delivering sustainable solutions to multinational companies and governments. She holds an Erasmus Mundus Master’s in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management (MESPOM) at Lund University, Sweden.

Joan Clos is the former Executive Director of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), at the level of Under-Secretary-General by the United Nations General Assembly. He held this office from October 2010-December 2017. He was twice elected Mayor of Barcelona, serving two terms from 1997 until 2006. He was Minister of Industry, Tourism, and Trade of Spain between 2006 and 2008. Prior to joining the United Nations, he served as the Spanish Ambassador to Turkey and Azerbaijan. He is a medicine graduate from the Universidad Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), and specialized in Public Health and Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland). At the international level, in 1998 Dr. Clos was elected President of Metropolis, the international network of cities. Two years later, he was elected President of the World Association of Cities and Local Authorities (WACLAC). Between 2000 and 2007, he served as the Chairman of the United Nations Advisory Committee of Local Authorities (UNACLA). And between 1997 and 2003, he was member of the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR).

Ramin Jahanbegloo is a political philosopher. He is presently the Executive Director of the Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Nonviolence and Peace Studies and the Vice-Dean of the School of Law at Jindal Global University- Delhi, India. He received his B.A. and M.A. in Philosophy, History and Political Science and later his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Sorbonne University. In 1993 he taught at the Academy of Philosophy in Tehran. He has been a researcher at the French Institute for Iranian Studies and a fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University.  Ramin Jahanbegloo taught in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto from 1997-2001. He later served as the head of the Department of Contemporary Studies of the Cultural Research Centre in Tehran and, in 2006-07, was Rajni Kothari Professor of Democracy at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi, India. In April 2006 Dr. Jahanbegloo was arrested in Tehran Airport charged with preparing a velvet revolution in Iran. He was placed in solitary confinement for four months and released on bail. He was an Associated Professor of Political Science and a Research Fellow in the Centre for Ethics at University of Toronto from 2008-2012 and an Associate Professor of Political Science at York University in Toronto from 2012 – 2015. He is also a member of the advisory board of PEN Canada. He is the winner of the Peace Prize from the United Nations Association in Spain (2009) for his extensive academic works in promoting dialogue between cultures and his advocacy for non-violence.

Giorgos Kallis is an environmental scientist working on ecological economics and political ecology. He is ICREA Research Professor at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Previously he was a Marie Curie International Fellow at the Energy and Resources Group of the University of California at Berkeley. Giorgos holds a PhD in Environmental Policy and Planning from the University of the Aegean in Greece, a Masters in Economics from Universitat Pompeu Fabra, and a Masters in Environmental Engineering and a Bachelors in Chemistry from Imperial College, London. He is interested on the political-economic roots of environmental degradation and its uneven distribution along lines of power, income and class. His current research is motivated by the double global economic and ecological crisis.

Ignacio Sánchez Cuenca is Associate Professor of Political Science in the Department of Social Sciences at the Universidad Carlos III-Madrid and Director of the Carlos III-Juan March Institute of Social Sciences. His main research areas are comparative politics, political violence, terrorism and theory of democracy. He has published articles in journals such as Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Annual Review of Political Science, European Union Politics, Politics & Society, Terrorism and Political Violence, Party Politics, Government & Opposition, Philosophy of Social Sciences, South European Society and Politics and several others. He has worked previously at Complutense University of Madrid (2002-2013), University Pompeu Fabra of Barcelona (1997-1999) and University of Salamanca (1995-1997). During the academic year 2004-05, he was the Rice Visiting Professor at Yale University.

Ambassador Fathallah Sijilmassi is an economist and a career diplomat. F. Sijilmassi holds a Phd in International Economics from the University of Grenoble and is a graduate of the Institute of Political Studies of Grenoble. After having worked at the « Banque Commerciale du Maroc » (currently Attijariwafabank) in Milan (Italy) from 1989 to 1992 and then at the Moroccan Foreign Trade Ministry from 1992 to 1999, he held, at the Moroccan Ministry for Foreign Affairs, several senior level positions: Director of Multilateral Cooperation (1999-2001) and Director of European Affairs (2001-2003). In 2003, he was appointed as Ambassador to the European Union in Brussels (2003-2004), then to France (2005-2009). From 2009 to 2012, he is back to Rabat (Morocco) and is appointed CEO of the newly created Moroccan Agency for the Investments Development (AMDI). During this period, many international companies and SMEs chose Morocco as their regional platform. From 2012 to 2018, Fathallah Sijilmassi is Secretary General of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), an international organization, with headquarters in Barcelona (Spain), bringing together 43 countries of the Euro-Mediterranean region and whose vocation is to promote regional dialogue and cooperation.

Eduard Soler i Lecha is Doctor in International Relations and Graduate in Political Science from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He is currently Senior research fellow and research coordinator at CIDOB (Barcelona Center for International Affairs) and associate lecturer in the Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals (IBEI). Since december 2009 he is also serving as advisor on Mediterranean Affairs for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the EU term Presidency. He is a member of the Observatory of European Foreign Policy and participates in different transnational research projects and networks such as EuroMeSCo and INEX. His works have been published as monographic volumes and in journals such as Mediterranean Politics, Insight Turkey and Europe’s world. His main areas of expertise are: Euro-Mediterranean relations, Turkey’s foreign and domestic politics, North African and Middle Eastern political dynamics, Spain's Mediterranean policy and security cooperation in the Mediterranean. 

Mariona Tomàs is Assistant professor of Political Science at the Universitat de Barcelona. Her research focuses on metropolitan governance, urban policies and local government. She has published several articles, book chapters, and comparative studies. She has been a researcher at the National Institute for Scientific Research of Quebec (INRS) and postdoc at the University of Montreal. She received the Academic Gold Medal of the General Governor of Canada and INRS Award for her PhD in Urban Studies (2007). In 2013 she won the first prize of the political book of the Parliament of Quebec.

Lurdes Vidal is Head of the Arab and Mediterranean World Department at the IEMed. She holds a degree in Translation and Interpretation from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and studied International Relations. She is Editor-in-Chief of the quarterly journal afkar/ideas and contributes to diverse media. She lectures on the subject of Arab Politics in the Master on the Arab and Islamic World at the University of Barcelona. Her notable publications include “Democracia islámica: ¿un debate envenenado?”, in Ámbitos de Política y Sociedad (2008), Los retos de la educación básica en países del Mediterráneo Sur, Fundación Carolina/CeALCI/IEMed (2006); “Islam político y democracia, riesgo u oportunidad?”, in Ámbitos de Política y Sociedad (2006), “El reto del desarrollo en Egipto”, in DCidob (2006), “Syria, Vertigo in the Face of a Radicalised Revolution and an Uncertain Future”, a Med.2012 IEMed Mediterranean Yearbook (2012), “Perceptions on Democracy and Islamism: Hypotheses and Second-Guessed Predictions”, a Euromed Survey 2011 (2012) y “Blogs y redes sociales: la rebelión de los jóvenes árabes” (2013), Fundación Tres Culturas del Mediterráneo (en prensa). She lived in Damascus (Syria) in 1998, where she studied Arabic.