Giovanni Abbiati: Giovanni is a PhD candidate in Labour Studies and is currently working on a thesis in social inequalities and educational reforms. His main interests deal with social stratification and public policy evaluation.

Endamawal Bati: Endamawal is a PhD student in Economics from Ethiopia at the Graduate School in Social, Economic, and Political Sciences, University of Milan. Currently he is working on his dissertation in the area of public investment, innovation, and economic growth in developing countries. Endamawal previously taught courses in economics at Addis Ababa University (College of Commerce).

Emily S. Channell: Emily is a graduate student in Anthropology at the City University of New York. She grew up in West Virginia and has traveled and lived in places such as France, Finland, Ukraine, and Washington, D.C. Her research interests focus on coal mining in West Virginia but extend to Nordic issues; post-socialism in Eastern Europe; sex, gender, and feminist studies; and critical pedagogy. She currently works with the Social Networks Research Group at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, where she also teaches in the Anthropology department.

Nicholas Alan Clayton: Nicholas is an independent reporter covering the Caucasus from Tbilisi, Georgia. Having studied NATO-Russian relations at Hertzen University in St. Petersburg, Russia in 2007, Clayton began blogging about the geo-politics of the former Soviet Union and initially came to the Caucasus as a multimedia stringer for the Washington Times in June 2009. He now freelances for various news services including National Public Radio and is the Caucasus correspondent for the Faster Times.

Mary Fee: Mary is an international development professional currently based in Rabat, Morocco.  Her interests include law, Africa, feminism, and namby-pamby relativism.

Lauren Golder: Lauren has studied the history of radical movements in the late 19th century at the University of Denver, and has worked as an archivist for the Rocky Mountain Jewish Historical Society and Penrose Library. Her interests include gender and sexuality, the history of radicalism, and issues in maintaining online freedoms. Lauren is currently working a menial retail job, but plans to pursue a PhD in history.

Lucia Green-Weiskel: Lucia works on climate change for a policy center in Beijing called the Innovation Center for Energy and Transportation. She is  also a student in the PhD Political Science program at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York.

Hannes Huett: Hannes studied Mathematical Finance at the University of Konstanz and Mathematics and Economics at the University of Arizona. He has worked in different positions at a number of leading investment banks and  currently lives in Zurich, Switzerland. His main research interests are on financial markets, modeling and  management of financial risks, global macro strategies, and monetary policy.

John McMahon: John is a PhD student in Political Science at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, specializing in political theory and international relations, and is pursuing a Certificate in Women’s Studies. He is interested in issues relating to men and feminism, the gendered practice of international relations, gender and political theory, questions of American state identity, and post-structuralism. You can find John on Twitter here.

Kristofer Petersen-Overton: A doctoral student at the CUNY Graduate Center, Kris studies the reconciliation of individual identity with collective atrocity. His work focuses especially on the (re)production of national identities in Israel/Palestine.

Taylor Ramsey: Taylor is a PhD student studying comparative politics and gender. She also has a Master’s Degree in education and considers it a privilege to be able to teach all levels of students to be more conscious of the politics of sexuality and gender. She’s particularly interested in the commodification of women’s bodies, issues of body image, queer theory and what makes women participate politically in the developing world.

William Seitz : Will is a PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Milan and a graduate of the International MBA program at the University of Denver. His research focuses on violent conflicts, natural resources and economic development. He is currently a visiting student with the Department of Economics at the University of Oxford.

Joshua Sperber: Joshua is interested in examining capitalism, imperialism, and popular culture through libertarian-communist, Frankfurt School, Post-Structuralist, and Situationist frameworks. He’s studied modern history at San Francisco State University and Columbia University and is currently a doctoral student in political science at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Alper Yildiz: Alper is a PhD student in Political Science at the CUNY Graduate Center. A Turkish citizen, he received a BSc in Business from Bilkent University, and a MA in Political Science at Sabanci University. His areas of interest include Middle Eastern politics, European party politics and political institutions, political culture, Turkish politics, and Turkish foreign policy.

Facile Gestures is edited and managed by William Seitz and John McMahon