Aalia Cassim is a Senior Researcher at the Development Policy Research Unit (DPRU), University of Cape Town. She has an MSc in Development Economics from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Since joining the DPRU, Aalia has worked on higher education, industrial policy, temporary employment services, minimum wages, youth unemployment, the informal sector
and social welfare.
Terence Darko is a researcher at Capacity Development Consult (CDC), a Ghanaian-based research and consulting firm. He has an MA in Social Policy Studies from the University of Ghana. Before joining CDC, he worked with Innovations for Poverty Action Ghana and the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research. His research interests include policy processes, public sector management, social protection, and technology and development.
Indra de Lanerolle runs the Network Society Lab at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, where he is a Visiting Research Associate. He has worked with many civil society organisations (CSOs) on digital and new media strategies including CorruptionWatch, Soul City and the Benchmarks Foundation Community Monitors programme. He manages the Internet and Mobile for Change programme working with CSOs to analyse and improve their strategic and tactical use of mobile
and internet tools.
Duncan Edwards is Programme Manager for the research, evidence and learning component of Making All Voices Count at IDS. His work focuses on building an evidence base on citizen engagement and accountable responsive governance. His current research interests include the use of research knowledge in development, and the roles of innovation and technology in governance, voice, transparency and accountability work. A long-standing advocate of opening up IDS data and knowledge, he has supported partner organisations by strengthening their technical capacity and articulating their theories of change and the role of data in them.
Jonathan Fox is a professor in the School of International Service at American University, Washington DC. He studies the relationships between accountability, transparency and citizen participation. His books include Accountability Politics: Power and Voice in Rural Mexico (OUP, 2007) and Mexico's Right-to-Know Refor ms: Civil Society Perspectives (co-editor, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2007). He currently serves on the board of directors of Oxfam America and Fundar (Mexico), and is a member of the International Experts Panel of the Open Government Partnership's Independent Reporting Mechanism.
Gacheke Gachihi is a social justice advocate, community organiser and independent social movement researcher. He has been involved in the grass-roots human rights movement in Kenya since 1997, amplifying the voices of grass-roots social movements in democratic struggles. He is also a member of the Bunge La Mwananchi (People's Parliament) and participated in its formative stages, helping to create a nationwide social justice movement, with many bunge chapters across the country.
Nathaniel Kabala is an independent researcher based in Kenya. He is currently studying for a master's degree in Gender and Development Studies at Kenyatta University.
Lucas Katera is the Director of the Governance and Service Delivery Research programme at REPOA. As an economist (PhD, University College Dublin) he has worked on local government and service delivery, financial management, governance, accountability, and public policy and poverty. He is currently research team leader on the World Bank's Service Delivery Indicators survey, as well as working on collaborative research with the Christian Michelsen Institute on Tanzania's future as a petro-state.
Miguel Loureiro is the convenor for the MA Governance and Development programme at IDS. An interdisciplinary social scientist and agriculturalist, his research focuses primarily on notions of social change among state and non-state actors. Over the past 15 years he has worked on and taught issues related to agrarian reforms, farming systems and village studies; disasters, risk and vulnerabilities; public policy and state–citizen communication.
Rosie McGee is a Research Fellow at IDS. She works on citizen engagement in governance and social change processes, focusing on accountability, responsiveness and power. Rosie has co-led a major impact review of transparency and accountability work, conducted research on citizen agency in fragile and violent settings (especially Colombia and Mozambique), and is actively involved in monitoring, evaluation and facilitating learning in complex governance programmes. She currently serves on the International Experts Panel of the Open Government Partnership's Independent Reporting Mechanism. Since 2013, she has coordinated the research, evidence and learning component of the Making All Voices Count programme.
Elizabeth Mills trained as a social anthropologist in South Africa and has an interest in the relationship between gender, science and citizenship; she has an MPhil from Cambridge University and a PhD from the University of Sussex. Her research lies at the interface of political and medical anthropology, and has explored the intersection of embodiment, science and activism linked to the global development and distribution of medicine. Elizabeth convenes the Sexuality, Poverty and Law programme at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and she conducts research on gender, health, citizenship and masculinities in West and Southern Africa.
Diana Muthoni Ndung'u is an anthropologist and demographer. She has been involved in social research cutting across various issues such as health, food price volatility and education with the aim of helping communities come up with their own solutions to the different social problems they are facing. Recently, she has found a passion for activism. Diana is studying for a master's degree in Population Studies at the University of Nairobi.
Laura Neuman is the Director of The Carter Center's Global Access to Information programme, working to promote and advance the fundamental right to information in Latin America, Africa and Asia. She has developed a unique tool to assess access to information implementation and has established innovative programming to advance the right of access to information for women. She has written and presented widely on the passage, implementation, enforcement and use of access to information legislation for good governance and voice. Prior to joining The Carter Center, she was a staff attorney at Legal Action of Wisconsin.
David Calleb Otieno is a well-known grass-roots social justice activist and human rights defender, work he has been doing since his days as a student of range science at the University of Nairobi. He is currently the convener of the Coalition for Constitutional Implementation in Kenya, a grass-roots network seeking to ensure full and proper implementation of the 2010 Kenyan constitution, and was formerly president of the Bunge La Mwananchi (People's Parliament). He has also been involved in community organising and grass-roots mobilisation aimed at building a united front for change.
Joseph Pearce works to raise the standards of knowledge, evidence, practice and policy at the intersection of monitoring water and sanitation, and information and communications technologies (ICTs). With the International Water and Sanitation Centre, he supports government-led national monitoring systems in Ethiopia and Tanzania. He is on the Executive Steering Committee of the Rural Water Supply Network and coordinates their 'mapping and monitoring' topic. He led the design and development of the open-access software Water Point Mapper.
Tiago Peixoto is a Team Lead at the World Bank's Digital Engagement Unit. Prior to joining the World Bank, he worked for and advised various organisations, including the European Commission, the United Nations (UN), and the Brazilian and UK governments. Tiago is a Research Director of the Electronic Democracy Centre, University of Zurich and a faculty member of New York University's Governance Lab. He holds a PhD and master's degree in Political Sciences from the European University Institute, as well as a master's degree in Organised Collective Action from Sciences Po Paris.
Nyambura Salome is a lecturer at the Department of Educational Foundations, Kenyatta University. She attained her PhD in Education from the Leuven Catholic University. Previously she taught at graduate level and coordinated a postgraduate diploma at Uganda's Martyrs University. Her research interests include the intersection of information and communications technologies (ICTs), leadership, disability, gender, youth and peace education. She is also the chair of the advisory board at Children Peace Initiative Kenya, a non-profit working with pastoralist communities.
Patta Scott-Villiers is an IDS Research Fellow. Her work focuses on people and places in East Africa where subaltern and indigenous politics, institutions and cultures counter the mainstream direction of development. She uses action research and qualitative methodologies for and with people living on the margins of economic and state power.
Emiliano Treré is Associate Professor at the Autonomous University of Querétaro, Mexico and Research Fellow at Lakehead University, Canada. He has published extensively on digital activism, media ecologies, media practices, and the benefits and challenges of social media for contemporary social movements. He is co-editor of 'Social Media and Protest Identities' (Information, Communication and Society 18.8, 2015) and 'Latin American Struggles and Digital Media Resistance' (International Journal of Communication, 2015).
Katharina Welle is a political scientist by training with a PhD in Science and Technology Studies from the University of Sussex. Since 2014, she has worked as a senior consultant at Itad, a company that specialises in monitoring and evaluation in international development. Katharina's sector expertise is in water and sanitation. Over the last 12 years, her portfolio of work has included applied research, reviews and evaluations in the water sector related to politics and governance, aid relationships, and monitoring and evaluation. She also works for the Centre for Development Impact on emerging methodologies and designs for innovations in impact evaluation.
Jennifer Williams is an independent development consultant who works in the water and sanitation sector. This has included policy and advocacy roles with WaterAid, and research consultancies with Innovations for Poverty Action, Uganda Water and Sanitation NGO Network (UWASNET) and Itad. She has a postgraduate qualification in social research methods and is studying for an MSc in Global Health Policy with the London School of Hygiene.
Christopher Wilson manages the Norwegian Refugee Council's Norwegian Capacity (NORCAP) portfolio for expert deployment to humanitarian crises, and performs independent research on responsible data in the humanitarian sector. He co-founded the engine room in 2011, and co-led its development with a focus on support to large networks. Prior to this, Christopher worked as the communications focal point for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Global Programme on Governance Assessments, and as manager of the Global Forum on Freedom of Expression. Christopher has an MA in international human rights law (University of Oslo) and a BA in rhetoric (University of California, Berkeley).