Rômulo Barbosa is a Professor of Sociology at the State University of Montes Claros-MG, Brazil and Vice-Coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Socio-Environmental Research Group (NIISA). He received a Research Productivity Scholarship from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) in 2022.
Francisco Calafate-Faria is a Lecturer of Social Sciences at the London South Bank University, UK. He is the Principal Investigator of the project LIQUIT: Voices of the Territories, researching with communities affected by lithium mining in the Jequitinhonha Valley, MG, Brazil.
Melania Chiponda is Director, SHINE Collab, Zimbabwe and a visionary ecofeminist leader with over 20 years of experience advancing energy, climate, land, and water justice across Africa and globally. A recognised expert and published scholar, she holds a PhD in Development Studies from the Women’s University in Africa focused on renewable energy and brings extensive expertise in strategy, policy advocacy, and movement-building. Her leadership is grounded in feminist principles of care, collective wellbeing, and transformative justice, driving systemic change at the intersection of gender, ecology, and economic justice.
Gabriela Flores Zavala is a Communications Strategy Consultant at the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), Colombia. She earned her first degree at McDaniel College in the US and her master’s at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. Gabriela is a communications professional with over 20 years of experience in sustainable development and humanitarian assistance organisations, programmes, and initiatives. She specialises in participatory processes, stakeholder engagement, and multi-stakeholder initiatives and dialogue related to environment, natural resources, energy, supply chains, governance, and economic reform issues.
John Gaventa is a Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and a member of its Power and Popular Politics Cluster. He has written extensively on issues of power, citizen action, inequality, and most recently, just transitions. He is co-author with Gabe Schwartzman of Power and Just Transitions: Struggles for a Post-Coal Future in an Appalachian Valley (2026 forthcoming, University of Illinois Press).
Euclides Gonçalves is a social anthropologist and director at the Institute of Social and Economic Studies (IESE), Mozambique. He is also a co-founder of Kaleidoscopio – Research in Public Policy and Culture and a fellow at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER), South Africa. His research focuses on political and bureaucratic processes and expressions in popular culture.
Ana Carolina González Espinosa is Senior Director for Programs at the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), Colombia. She holds a PhD in Political Science and two master’s degrees – in Development and in Comparative Politics – from the Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po) in France, as well as a bachelor’s degree in Government and International Relations from Universidad Externado de Colombia. She leads NRGI’s global work on just energy transitions, with a focus on oil- and gas-producing regions, gender–just energy transitions, and advancing energy and economic systems beyond oil and gas.
Victoria Ibezim-Ohaeri is a Harvard-trained lawyer, and founder and Executive Director of Spaces For Change (S4C), a non-profit organisation headquartered in Nigeria that conducts cutting-edge research and advocacy. With over 20 years’ experience advocating for social and economic rights, she has travelled globally, leading research investigations, documenting and exposing human rights abuses, and developing and evaluating social and economic policies at the national, regional, and global levels. At S4C, Victoria leads the organisation’s knowledge-building and accountability initiatives encompassing advanced legal research, high-level policy and litigation campaigns, empowering under-served communities, and advising on and delivering technical assistance to private and public institutions.
Klemens Laschefski is a full Professor of Political Ecology and a member of the Study Group on Environmental Issues (GESTA) at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil. He holds a Research Productivity Grant (PQ) of the CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, Brazil). In 2002, he received his doctorate from Heidelberg University, Germany. He has professional experience in environmental consultancy and in non-governmental organisations. His publications (academic, in the press, and on television) focus on sociotechnical disasters and environmental conflicts related to mining, hydroelectric dams, biofuel, agricultural and forest monocultures, and multi‑stakeholder governance in supply chains.
Fabiana Soares Leme is Co-Coordinator of the Network of Defenders of Critical Ecosystems and Livelihoods in Minas Gerais, Brazil. She holds an MA in Theory, Production and Experience of Space from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG).
Anabel Marín is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), and at CONICET, Argentina (currently on leave). She specialises in the political economy of natural resources, innovation, and sustainable development. With a background in innovation and development studies, her work explores the interplay between extractive industries, economic development, governance, and justice – examining how policy, markets, and civic actors shape development trajectories. She combines academic research, policy advising, and activism on issues related to food security, structural change, technological development, industrial policy, and just transitions, with a particular focus on critical minerals in the context of global sustainability and geopolitical shifts.
Rosie McGee is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and is a member of its Power and Popular Politics Cluster and teaches on the MA Power, Participation and Social Change. Over her 27-year career, she has focused on power relations, participatory governance, and citizen participation and engagement, playing leading roles in research, evidence-building, and facilitating learning in major development aid and research programmes. Trained in interdisciplinary development studies, her methodological approach is rooted in political sociology and anthropology, including using power analysis, and participatory and action research for social change in diverse geographic and social contexts.
Peter Newell is a Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex, UK. He has worked at the universities of Sussex, Oxford, Warwick, and East Anglia in the UK and Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) in Argentina. He has undertaken advisory work for the governments of the UK, Ireland, India, Sweden, and Finland and for international organisations such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and the World Bank. His recent books include Changing Our Ways (2021, Cambridge University Press); and States of Transition (2025, Cambridge University Press).
Juliana Peña Niño is the Colombia Country Manager at the Natural Resource Governance Institute, Colombia. She holds an MSc in Social Policy and Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK, a postgraduate diploma in Social Economics from Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia, and a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Universidad Industrial de Santander, Colombia. She focuses on gender and social justice, just energy transitions, citizen participation and governance, social and environmental conflicts, and sustainable recovery.
Crescêncio B.G. Pereira is a researcher in Mozambique. He is a consultant at Athari, a Mozambican firm specialising in communication, monitoring, and research. He holds master’s degrees in Information and Communication Sciences (Université Lyon II) and in Health and Welfare (University of Évora, Portugal and Linköping University, Sweden). He is a PhD candidate at the University of Évora, in the Health and Welfare Policies programme, with a thesis project focusing on collective action against hunger in Mozambique. Since 2021, he has collaborated with the Mozambican Institute of Social and Economic Studies (IESE) as an associate researcher on a project related to energy transition and civic engagement.
Philip Proudfoot is a researcher and writer specialising in political movements, conflict, and ethnography. He has led major evaluations for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA), among others, and founded the Accountability Archive, a digital platform documenting incitement and denial of war crimes. He is the author of Rebel Populism (2022, Manchester University Press), a study of Syrian migrant workers and political aspiration. Philip also founded the Northern Independence Party, a political movement that sought to address deep-rooted regional inequalities by campaigning for the creation of an independent country in the North of England.
María Angélica Rojas Buitrago is Program Associate, Colombia at the Natural Resource Governance Institute. She holds two bachelor’s degrees, one in International Relations and the other in Political Science from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia, and two postgraduate diplomas in Collective Memory, Human Rights and Resistance from the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), and another one in State, Public Policy and Development from Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia. She has experience in research and projects related to citizen participation, social control, mining governance, peacebuilding, gender, and women’s rights.
Gabe Schwartzman is an Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee. A scholar of rural development and political ecology, he studies how rural livelihoods are shifting amid efforts for decarbonisation and in response to climate change. He has worked in the Brazilian Amazon and today largely studies the Central Appalachian coalfields. He is the co-author, with John Gaventa, of Power and Just Transitions: Struggles for a Post‑Coal Future in an Appalachian Valley (2026 forthcoming, University of Illinois Press).
Alex Shankland is a Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and has worked for more than two decades on Indigenous Peoples, civil society, accountability, and political representation, particularly in relation to health, land rights, and climate change in Brazil and Mozambique. He was Principal Investigator of the British Academy project ‘Making Space for Just Transitions in Africa’s Oil and Gas Producing Regions’, and his current research includes work on the politics of energy transition in Mozambique, the impact of critical minerals extraction, large‑scale renewable energy generation on traditional territories in Brazil, and the representation of local communities in climate change policy processes.
Aline Weber Sulzbacher is an Agrarian Geography and Political Geography Professor at the Federal University of the Jequitinhonha and Mucuri Valleys (UFVJM) and researcher in the Observatory of the Valleys and the Semi-Arid Region of Minas Gerais, Brazil.
Bruna Viana de Freitas is a Co-Coordinator of the Network of Defenders of Critical Ecosystems and Livelihoods in Minas Gerais, Brazil. She holds an MA in Power, Participation and Social Change from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS).
Hilary Wainwright has a DPhil in Sociology from Oxford University. Her research interests include international experiences of movements for and institutions of economic and political democracy. Her previous roles include Simon Fellow at Manchester University and Deputy Chief Economic Advisor to the Greater London Council. Her books include The Lucas Story: A New Trade Unionism in the Making (with David Elliott) (1984, Allison & Busby); Reclaim the State: Experiments in Popular Democracy (2003, Verso); and A New Politics from the Left (2018, Polity Press).
Junior Walk is an anti-coal-mining activist from southern West Virginia. Since 2009, Junior has been on the front lines of the fight against mountaintop removal in his community. He has been involved in the use of a diversity of tactics over the years, from getting arrested doing direct action work, to lobbying in Washington DC, to gathering scientific data and providing standing for lawsuits. These days, Junior has had great success in monitoring the coal mine operations in his community to find problems that will end up costing a coal company some money.
Jake Woodier is an experienced UK civil society leader working on economic justice and just transition. He is currently at the forefront of progressive tax reform campaigning in the UK, alongside researching the role of workers and industrial conversion in decarbonisation – hosted by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS). He previously worked on mass climate mobilisations and organising, which included co-organising the UK’s largest ever demonstration for climate justice with youth climate campaigners. Jake was an editor at Red Pepper Magazine, holds an MA from the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex, and graduated from the University of Essex.