Anthony Aisenberg is an established urban planner, engagement consultant, and founder of CrowdSpot. CrowdSpot is an award-winning digital consultancy specialising in map-based community engagement and data collection leading the way at the intersection between urban planning, public participation, and technology. Anthony has a diverse interdisciplinary background across government and private consulting that has seen him deliver projects with strong public value for over 15 years in areas such as transport, public safety, and education. Anthony holds a Post-Graduate Diploma of Environment and a master’s in Urban Planning from the University of Melbourne.
Hayley Cull is Director of Advocacy and Community Engagement at Plan International Australia. She leads a multi-disciplinary team of campaigners, communications, and policy professionals working to create a just world for children and equality for girls. Hayley has led major national and global campaigns on child rights, international development, and gender equality, working with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Plan International, and various other non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Australia, the UK, and internationally. Through her work, Hayley has helped influence changes to laws and policies around the world, with a particular focus on ending violence and discrimination against children and girls.
Adrija Dey is a British Academy post-doctoral Research Fellow and a senior teaching Fellow at the Department of Development Studies, SOAS University of London. Her research is titled ‘Gender Based Violence in Indian Universities: A Study of Campus Life, Student Activism, and Institutional Responses’. Her research expertise encompasses digital feminist activism, student movements, and universities as sites of repression and counter-struggle. She is the author of Nirbhaya, New Media and Digital Gender Activism (2018, Emerald Publishing). She is also part of the Alliance of Women in Academia and other campaigns in the UK fighting against sexual and gender-based violence in higher education.
Jenny Edwards is project manager for the Action for Empowerment and Accountability research programme (A4EA). She has over ten years’ experience of working on gender issues, including as project manager for the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment programme. Her publications include ‘Gender, Sexuality and Development: Revisiting and Reflecting’ (IDS Bulletin 47.2: 105–22, with Zahrah Nesbitt-Ahmed), and she is the co‑editor (with Andrea Cornwall) of Beijing+20: Where Now for Gender Equality? (IDS Bulletin 46.4), Negotiating Empowerment (IDS Bulletin 41.2), and Feminisms, Empowerment and Development: Changing Women’s Lives (2014, Zed Books).
Maha El Said is the founder of the Anti-Harassment Unit at Cairo University. She is also the chair of the Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, Cairo University. She has publications on Arab American writings, creative writing, popular culture, gender, and the impact of new technologies on literature. Her latest book is Rethinking Gender in Revolutions and Resistance: Lessons from the Arab World (2015, Zed Books) which addresses gender identities, gender relations, and gender norms post-Arab Spring.
Amal Hamada has been an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Cairo University since 2007. Her initial work focused on the Iranian Revolution. Latterly, she has focused more on women and gender issues in the Middle East, particularly Egypt. She was active in planning, designing, and implementing the first professional master’s degree on Gender and Development in Egypt. This programme is offered at Cairo University and was designed in collaboration with IDS. Since October 2019, she has served as the academic coordinator of the programme and as director of the Women’s Studies unit within the Faculty of Economics and Political Science.
Enas Hamdy has been a researcher since 2009, focusing on the elimination of gender-based violence in Egypt, health, education, women, human rights, and finance. She holds a BA in Statistics, an MA in Gender and Development (Cairo University), and a Diploma in Research and Development. Previously, she worked at Al-Zanaty and Associates, Egypt. She has also worked at the Social Research Center (SRC), American University, Cairo, and as a Monitoring and Evaluation Officer at the National Heart Institute Fellows’ Association. She joined HarassMap in 2013 and in 2018 was appointed as the head of the Board of Trustees.
Nicole Kalms is an Associate Professor and founding director of the Monash University XYX Lab. In this role, Nicole leads two significant research projects: ‘Urban Exposure: Interactively Mapping the Systems of Sexual Violence in Cities’ and ‘Women and Girls Only: Understanding the Spaces of Sexual Harassment in Public Transport’. She is the author of the monograph Hypersexual City: The Provocation of Soft-Core Urbanism (2017, Routledge) and actively engages a diverse audience. Nicole is frequently invited to speak to the public about sexuality and urban space at major national and international cultural institutions.
Ayesha Khan works at the Collective for Social Science Research in Karachi. She researches gender and development, social policy, and conflict/refugee issues in the region. She is author of The Women’s Movement in Pakistan: Activism, Islam and Democracy (2018, IB Tauris). Her recent work on women and political activism has been published in Contemporary South Asia and Asian Affairs. She has served on the governing bodies of leading NGOs in Pakistan and participated in advocacy-related taskforces to influence government policy in support of women’s rights.
Ahmed Kheir is an independent consultant and researcher, co‑founder, and former executive director of Support for Information Technology Centre, an independent Egyptian civil society organisation working through research and advocacy to promote and defend rights to knowledge and access to information. With a BA in Sociology from Ain-Shams University (2003), and a master’s degree in Gender and Development from the Faculty of Economic and Political Science, Cairo University (2018), he has worked as a researcher, editor, and writer in a variety of research settings, with expertise in social movements, resistance studies, economic empowerment, gender equality, and the gender gap in technology.
Gill Matthewson is a founding member of the XYX Lab at Monash University. For many years, she has been investigating the gendered substructure of the architecture profession, and in particular, how it manifests through the weakening participation of women. More recently, her research focus has been on the impact of the gendering of space, and how sex, gender, and sexuality may limit who and what contributes to the production of, and participation in, the spatial culture of cities. Gill’s expertise lies in quantitative and qualitative data analysis and visualisation to highlight these impacts.
Menaal Munshey is a PhD candidate in criminology at the University of Cambridge, where her research focuses on access to justice for cases of gender-based violence in Lebanon. She is the Research Lead on a major security sector reform project in Lebanon. She was called to the Bar of England and Wales as a Sir Albion Richardson Scholar at Gray’s Inn. As a lawyer, she has worked on human rights, prison reform, and criminal justice issues in Pakistan. Previously, she worked as a policy researcher and consultant at United Nations agencies in Tokyo, Barcelona, Vienna, and Beirut.
Sana Naqvi is currently pursuing a master’s degree at the International Institute of Social Studies as part of the Mundus Masters Programme in Social Policy (MAPP) Programme. Previously, she worked as a Research Assistant at the Collective for Social Science Research in Karachi. Her research interests include gender, development, and collective action. She is a feminist and activist, and one of the organisers of the Women’s March in Pakistan.
Anne M. Spear holds a PhD in International Education Policy from the University of Maryland and is an affiliate of the programme. Her published research addresses gender and education issues, teachers and teaching, and women’s leadership. Anne is a certified teacher and holds an MS.Ed in Education and Social Change at the University of Miami. She has worked in Burkina Faso for ten years, starting as a Girls’ Education and Empowerment US Peace Corps Volunteer as part of a master’s degree in International Studies at the University of Wyoming.
Jordan J. Steiner (MA, MSW, LSW) is a PhD candidate in the Social Work programme at Rutgers School of Social Work. Her research addresses sexual violence in schools, campus sexual assault, international social work, global trafficking, poverty, and violence against women and children. Jordan holds a master’s degree in International Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, as well as a master’s in Social Work from Rutgers, and is a licenced social worker. She has conducted research in Benin for over ten years, where she was a US Peace Corps Volunteer from 2007–09.
Mariz Tadros is a Professor of Politics and Development at IDS, University of Sussex who specialises in the politics of gender and development, religion, religious inequalities and change, intangible heritage, and unruly politics. She has led several multi‑disciplinary, multi-country research programmes, and currently convenes the Coalition for Religious Equality and Inclusive Development (CREID). She has authored over 100 publications, and her books include: Resistance, Revolt, and Gender Justice in Egypt (2016, Syracuse University Press), The Muslim Brotherhood in Contemporary Egypt: Democracy Redefined or Confined? (2012, Routledge), and Copts at the Crossroads: The Challenges of Building Inclusive Democracy in Egypt (2013, American University in Cairo Press).
Lucia Tangi is an Assistant Professor of Journalism at the University of the Philippines, Diliman Quezon City. She started her research voyage on women seafarers in 2008 as part of her awakening as a Third World feminist. She worked as a journalist in Manila, Hong Kong, and Japan for 15 years before joining the academe in 2007.
Sophie Tanner is a Research Manager at the Plan International headquarters. She has worked in international development for over ten years, specialising in research, and monitoring and evaluation. She has conducted and managed large, multi-country research and evaluation projects for a number of international and national non-governmental organisations, including the International Rescue Committee and Plan International. With an MA in Education and International Development from University College London, Sophie has lived and worked in a variety of contexts, including the UK, Nigeria, India, Kenya, South Sudan, and Japan, focusing on issues related to gender and violence, and girls’ rights and education.
Heba Youssif has a BA (Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University) and an MA in Gender and Development, as well as a Diploma in International Relations and European Integration (Estonian School of Diplomacy). She specialises in gender, human rights, and project management, and has designed and led many trainings on gender-based violence, sexual harassment, inclusion, and diversity. Currently, she works to combat violence and sexual harassment of women in public spaces through her involvement in managing a Plan International Egypt programme. She was an advisory member of the Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Group in the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network.
Zonia Yousuf is a Development Research Consultant. Previously, she worked as a Research Officer at the Collective for Social Science Research, Karachi. Before joining the Collective, she worked for the Research and Legislation wing at the Pakistan Institute for Parliamentary Services as a Parliamentary Subject Expert. She has co-authored a number of parliamentary publications, which include Databook on Sustainable Development Goals: Pakistan’s Challenges and Opportunities (2017, Pakistan Institute for Parliamentary Services (PIPS)), and Parliamentary Research: Theory and Practice (2017, PIPS). Her research interests include sustainable development, urban development, and gender.