NFU Conference 2010

James Putzel: Professor of Development Studies and Director of the Crisis States Research Centre in the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He heads the Centre’s research programme on Crisis States. His research and publications range from work on the politics of financial crisis, to work on nationalism, political Islam, comparative politics of development in Southeast and East Asia, democratic transition, developmental states, the role of foreign aid in development and Politics of the HIV/AIDS crisis. His current research is focusing on politics and governance in crisis states including work in Africa and Asia on Understanding ‘Fragile States” and the political economy of state-building and development.

Jeffrey Haynes: Associate Dean of the Faculty of Law, Governance and International Relations, and Director of the Centre for the Study of Religion, Conflict and Cooperation, London Metropolitan University. Among his more recent books are: Religion and Politics in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa (editor, Routledge/ECPR Studies in European Political Science, 2010), The Handbook of Religion and Politics (editor, Routledge, 2008) and Religion and Development: Conflict or Cooperation? (Palgrave, 2007). He is also convenor of the European Consortium for Political Research's Religion and Politics Standing Group and Vice-chair of the International Political Science Association's Research Centre on 'Religion and Politics'.

David Satterthwaite: Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and Editor of the international journal Environment and Urbanization. A development planner by training with a Doctorate in social policy, he also teaches at the Development Planning Unit, University College London. His recent books include: The Earthscan Reader on Sustainable Cities (editor), Earthscan, 1999; Environmental Problems in an Urbanizing World (with Jorge E. Hardoy and Diana Mitlin), Earthscan, 2001; and Adapting Cities to Climate Change (co-editor with Jane Bicknell and David Dodman), Earthscan, 2009.  He contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the Third and Fourth Assessments (1998 to 2007) on urban adaptation and is contributing to the Fifth Assessment that is currently underway. In 2004, he was awarded the Volvo Environment Prize and made an Honorary Professor at the University of Hull.

Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona: United Nations Independent Expert on the question of human rights and extreme poverty appointed by the Human Rights Council in May 2008. She is also a Research Director at the International Council on Human Rights Policy in Geneva. Magdalena holds a Ph.D in International Human Rights Law from Utrecht University and has worked as a staff attorney at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and as the Co-Director of the Department of International Law and Human Rights of the United Nations affiliated University for Peace in San Jose, Costa Rica. She also served as a consultant to the Department of International Protection of UNHCR and more recently to the Norwegian Refugee Council in Colombia. She is Associate Research Fellow at the Norwegian Center for Human Rights.

Marit Haug: Research Director at the Department for International Studies at the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research; emphasizing decentralization as a mechanism for resolving conflict and on social and political inclusion in post-conflict countries.

Stein Villumstad: Deputy Secretary General of Religions for Peace; formerly working with Norwegian Church Aid in different positions, including Assistant General Secretary at Norwegian Church Aid, in charge of Department for Policy and Human Rights, and Regional Representative in Eastern Africa. He has written Social Reconstruction of Africa: Perspectives from Without and Within (2005).

Karen O'Brien: Professor in the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo, Norway. She has been working on climate change research for over twenty years, with an emphasis on how interacting processes of global change affect human security. She leads the Norklima-funded PLAN project on The Potentials of and Limits to Adaptation in Norway, which focuses on adaptation as a social process. She is a coordinating lead author on the IPCC Special Report on Managing the Risk of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation.