
The Netherlands
Sociologist, writer, she is Robert S. Lynd Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. Her fields of study include phenomena such as immigration, cities and changes in the liberal state as a result of current transnational conditions. Three key variables running though her work, inequality, gender and digitization, another fundamental aspect of her work lies in the studies on issues of power and inequality derived from globalization processes.
She is a student of cities, immigration, and states in the world economy, with inequality, gendering and digitization. She is the author of eight books and the editor or co-editor of three books. She has received many awards and honors, among them multiple doctor honoris causa, the 2013 Principe de Asturias Prize in the Social Sciences, election to the Royal Academy of the Sciences of the Netherlands, and made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the French government.
E-mail: sjs2@columbia.edu

France
Yves Cabannes is an urban specialist, activist and scholar. Over the past forty years he has been involved in research and development on urban issues, people-led initiatives and local democracy with NGOs and local governments in Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.
Since the early 1990s, he supports, researches, teaches on and advocates for participatory budgeting and planning, urban agriculture, community land trusts, housing rights in different regions of the world and has published widely on this topic. He became Emeritus Professor of Development Planning at the University College London / Development Planning Unit in 2015.
E-mail: y.cabannes@ucl.ac.uk

He is an architect, planner and senior researcher at the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra, Portugal. He coordinates the PhD "Democracy in the 21st Century" and is a visiting fellow at the Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg.
For the 2014-2019 mandate, he is co-chairman of the Independent Authority for the Promotion of Participation in Tuscany (Italy). He coordinates the International Project "EMPATIA: Enabling Multichannel Participation through ITC Adaptations" and a "Comunix" unit on rural communes.
As a consultant for the creation and management of participatory processes, he works as a consultant to the World Bank, the Council of Europe, United Cities and Local Governments.