TNI people

TNI is made up of its Fellows (activist researchers from around the world), its staff working in different projects, and contributors (key allies from social movements and institutes worldwide).

Achin Vanaik , Fellow

Retired Professor of International Relations and Global Politics from thë University of Delhi, Achin Vanaik is an active member of the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (India). His books and writings range from studies of India's political...
Adriana Rossi , Contributor

Adriana Rossi coordinates Centro del Sur, the Center for Study and Research on Drugs and Drugs Trafficking of the Universidad Nacional de Rosario (UNR) in Argentina. She is a contributing member of the Drugs & Democracy team. Rossi also accompanied...
Amira Armenta , Staff

Amira Armenta (Colombia/Netherlands) has a degree in Latin American history from the Université de Jussieu (Paris).
Atilio Boron , Contributor

Atilio Boron is Director of the Latin American Programme of Distance Education in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and a collaborator of TNI's New Politics project. He is also ex-Secretary General of CLACSO – an academic umbrella body for Latin America.
Barry K Gills , Contributor

Barry K Gills is Professor of Global Politics at Newcastle University and editor of Globalizations journal, and 'Rethinking Globalizations' book series.
Beatriz Martínez , Regular Consultant
Ben Hayes , Fellow

Ben Hayes is a TNI fellow who has worked for the civil liberties organisation Statewatch since 1996, specialising in EU Justice and Home Affairs law, police cooperation, border controls,...
Boris Kagarlitsky , Associate

Boris Kagarlitsky is a well-known international commentator on Russian politics and society. Boris was a deputy to the Moscow City Soviet between 1990-93, during which time he was a member of the executive of the Socialist Party of Russia, co-founder...
Brian Ashley , Contributor

Brian Ashley has been an activist for many years in South Africa and is editor of Amandla magazine. He was former director of the Alternative
Information and Development Centre, a partner organisation of TNI.
Brid Brennan , Staff

Brid has put Transnational Institute at the heart of dynamic international networks from every continent campaigning against trade liberalisation. She is co-founder of the European Solidarity Centre for the Philippines and most recently, RESPECT, a...
Cecilia Olivet , Staff

Maria Cecilia Olivet is Uruguayan, has a BA degree in International Relations from Universidad de la República in Uruguay and an MA in International Politics and East Asia from Warwick University, UK.
Chaohua Wang , Contributor

Chaohua Wang was a member of the standing committee of the Beijing Autonomous Association of College Students in the spring of 1989, and after 4 June was on the Chinese government’s most-wanted list. She has frequently participated in TNI events on the...
Costas Lapavitsas , Contributor
Cynthia Enloe , Contributor

Cynthia Enloe is a prominent feminist writer based at Brown University. She worked with TNI's Feminism Project, and has mobilised academics in support of the international no-bases network.
Daniel Chavez , Fellow

Daniel Chavez is a Uruguayan anthropologist specialising in Latin American politics and urban social and political movements. With an intimate knowledge of Latin American left politics and an advisor to various local governments on participatory local...
Daphne Wysham , Contributor

Daphne Wysham is a former TNI fellow and co-director of the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network of the Institute of Policy Studies.
David Fig , Contributor

David Fig is TNI's agrofuels researcher in South Africa.
David Sogge , Associate

Transnational Institute Board member, David works as an independent advisor for grant-making agencies, specialising in civil society. Research and other professional activities in Africa provided a basis for books and articles on Angola and Mozambique...
Denis Halliday , Contributor

Denis Halliday is part of TNI/Dag Hammarskjold's UN reform project, and a former UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq who resigned in protest at sanctions which he condemned as "genocide." He continues to be active on Middle Eastern affairs promoting...
Dot Keet , Associate Fellow

Dot Keet is a South African academic and activist involved in many national, African and international networks resisting corporate "free trade" agreements. She is an active member of the national South African Trade Strategy Group (TSG) and the...
Edgardo Lander , Fellow

Lander is one of the leading thinkers and writers on the left in Venezuela, both supportive and constructively critical of the Venezuelan revolution under Chavez. He is actively involved in social movements in the Americas that defeated the Free Trade...
Ernestien Jensema , Staff

Ernestien Jensema (1971) is a social anthropologist who researches and analyses the UN drug control system, Dutch drug policy and the Drugs and Democracy Programme’s Asia project.
Fiona Dove , Staff

Fiona Dove has been Executive Director of TNI since 1995. She holds degrees in Development Studies and Industrial Sociology, and a post-graduate Diploma in Monitoring and Evaluation Methods.

A second generation African of Anglo-Irish descent,...
Frank Slijper , Contributor

Frank Slijper is a senior researcher at the Dutch campaign against the arms trade (Campagne tegen Wapenhandel) and an associate of the Transnational Institute (TNI)....
Fred Halliday , Contributor

Fred Halliday, professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics, was TNI Fellow from 1975 till 2000.
Gonzalo Berrón , Associate Fellow

Gonzalo Berrón, TNI Associate Fellow, has played a leading role in coordinating Latin American movements resisting corporate "Free Trade Agreements." He has been an integral part of ongoing discussions with civil society and progressive governments on...
Hilary Wainwright , Fellow

Hilary Wainwright is a leading researcher and writer on the emergence of new forms of democratic accountability within parties, movements and the state. She is the driving force and editor behind Red Pepper, a popular British new left magazine, and has...
Howard Wachtel , Associate

Howard Wachtel is a former TNI fellow and an expert on the financialisation of the global economy who foresaw the financial crisis long before it struck in autumn 2008. His book in 2003 Street of Dreams. Boulevard of Broken Hearts: Wall Street's...
Hugo Cabieses , Contributor

Hugo Cabieses, Peruvian economist and specialist on drugs issues, is an associate researcher of TNI's Drugs & Democracy programme.
Janet Redman , Contributor

Janet is co-director of the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network at the Institute for Policy Studies, where she provides analysis of the international financial institutions’ energy investment and carbon finance activities.
Jennifer Franco , Regular Consultant

Jennifer Franco is a researcher working on land and rural politics issues. After receiving a PhD in politics in 1997 in the US, she began working with the Philippine solidarity group in the Netherlands, and with local peasant organizations, rural...
Joanna Cabello , Contributor

Joanna Cabello is a researcher with Carbon Trade Watch, a former project of the Transnational Institute
Jochen Hippler , Associate

Former TNI director (1993-95), Jochen Hippler is a specialist on the Muslim Middle East (mostly Arab countries) and Central Asian politics (mostly Afghanistan and Pakistan).

In addition to his fellowship at the University of Duisburg-Essen (...
Joel Rocamora , Associate

Former Co-Director of TNI, Joel Rocamora has been working for several decades on issues of democracy, governance, and social movements within the Philippines.

Rocamora coordinated TNI's early work on the Philippines while he was in political...
John Cavanagh , Associate

John Cavanagh has been Director of IPS since 1998 and a founding fellow of TNI. He worked as an international economist for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (1978-1981) and the World Health Organization (1981-1982). ...
John Gittings , Contributor

John Gittings is a former TNI fellow, long time Guardian foreign editor and an independent journalist specialised on China and nuclear weapon issues.
José Henrique Rodrigues Torres , Contributor

Judge of the Sixth Appellate Court of the High Court of Justice in Sao Paulo, Brazil
Juan Carlos Monedero , Contributor

Juan Carlos Monedero is Professor of Political Sciences at the Complutense University of Madrid and Research Co-ordinator at the Centro Internacional Miranda in Caracas, and a collaborator with the New Politics Programme.
Jun Borras , Fellow

Saturnino 'Jun' M Borras Jr. is a political activist and academic who has been deeply involved in rural social movements in the Philippines and internationally since the early 1980s. Borras was part of the core organising team that established the...
Kamil Mahdi , Associate

Kamil Mahdi is an experienced analyst of Middle Eastern politics and economics, in particular the political economy of oil-exporting countries. Mahdi is secretary of the International Association of Contemporary Iraqi Studies, researching Iraq's...
Kees Biekart , Board

Kees Biekart has co-ordinated TNI projects on and with the Central American peasant movement, and the politics of European NGO aid to civil society organisations in the South.

Biekart's latest works include The Politics of Civil Society...
Kees Kimman , Staff

Kees is in charge of finance, administrative, and personnel issues for TNI.
Kevin Smith , Contributor

Kevin Smith has been working with the environmental justice project at TNI since 2005, although he was more informally involved since it started out as Carbon Trade Watch in 2002. He has a degree in Human Sciences. He used to be the editor of the Green...
Larry Lohmann , Contributor

Larry Lohmann from the Corner House is a co-founder of the Durban Group for Climate Justice, together with members of TNI's Carbon Trade Watch.
Lucia Goldfarb , Contributor

Lucia Goldfarb received an MA in Development Studies with a minor in Environment and Development from the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague in 2006. In 2007-2008 she joined TNI as a Next Generation Scholar. Formerly co-coordinator of the CREPE-...
Luisa Mendonca , Contributor

Luisa Mendonca is a TNI researcher on agrofuels in Brazil.
Manuel Perez Rocha , Contributor

Manuel Perez Rocha is an Associate Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, and regular contributor to TNI's Alternative Regionalisms programme who has been associated with TNI since 1996 when he...
Marcos Arruda , Associate

Arruda is an economist and veteran popular educator, who has worked closely with Brazilian labour, co-operatives and solidarity economy movements for many years. Arruda has served as an advisor to local governments and as visiting professor in...
Mariano Aguirre , Associate

Mariano Aguirre is a journalist and analyst with considerable expertise on peacebuilding, crisis of the state, humanitarian action, conflict and development, and post-conflict rehabilitation.

Prior to his work for the Norwegian...
Martin Jelsma , Staff

Martin Jelsma is a political scientist who has specialised in Latin America and international drugs policy. In 2005, he received the Alfred R. Lindesmith Award for Achievement in the Field of Scholarship, which stated that Jelsma "is...
Michael Klare , Contributor

Michael Klare is a professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire University, a renowned analyst on oil politics and US defence policy and was TNI's first Phd graduate when TNI used to run an academic programme through a virtual US...
Myriam vander Stichele , Associate

Myriam Vander Stichele has been monitoring international trade negotiations and agreements since 1990, both at a regional and global level. She is an advisor to many NGOs whose indepth research on investment agreements and policies, and private...
Nick Buxton , Regular Consultant

Nick Buxton is a communications consultant, working on media, publications and online communications for TNI. He has been based in California since September 2008 and prior to that lived in Bolivia for four years, working as writer/web editor at...
Olivier Hoedeman , Contributor

Olivier Hoedeman (Dutch/Danish, MA Political Science), is the research and campaign co-ordinator at Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), an Brussels-based civil society group targeting the threats to democracy, equity, social justice and the environment...
Patrick Bond , Contributor

Patrich Bond is political economist and activist who directs the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. He is the co-editor (with Rehana Dada) of Trouble in the air: Global warming and the privatised...
Pauline Tiffen , Associate Fellow

Formerly Director of both the Third World Information Network (TWIN) and Twin Trading, Pauline Tiffen is an independent consultant based in Washington focused on helping small-scale producers in Africa and Latin America profit from the international...
Peter Weiss , Contributor

Peter Weiss, a vice-president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, was present at the creation of The Transnational Institute, is an ex fellow, and is now a member of TNI's International Advisory...
Philipp Terhorst , Contributor

Philipp Terhorst (PhD at the Water Engineering and Development Centre,
WEDC) is an activist researcher and collaborates with the TNI Water
Justice Project.
Phyllis Bennis , Fellow

Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of both TNI and the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC where she directs IPS's New Internationalism Project. Phyllis specialises in U.S. foreign policy issues, particularly involving the Middle East and United...
Pien Metaal , Staff

Pien Metaal is a researcher with TNI. She holds a Master of Arts Degree in Political Science and International Relations from University of Amsterdam. She has been a member of the Transnational Institute's Drugs and Democracy team since 2002,...
Pietje Vervest , Staff
Praful Bidwai , Fellow

Praful Bidwai is a political columnist, social science researcher, and activist on issues of human rights, the environment, global justice and peace. He currently holds the Durgabai Deshmukh Chair in Social Development, Equity and Human Security at the...
Ramón Fernández Durán , Contributor

Ramón Fernández Durán, Spanish activist and Global thinker, died on May 10 in Madrid after a long struggle for his health and life. Ramón has been a regular speaker at many TNI Conferences on different continents – to which he brought his incisive...
Ricardo Soberon , Contributor

Ricardo Soberón Garrido, member of TNI's Drugs & Democracy team, is a Peruvian lawyer and analyst on drug trafficking and counter-narcotics policies in the Andean region.
Ricardo Vargas , Associate Fellow

Ricardo Vargas Meza is a Sociologist with a Masters in Social Philosophy from the National University of Colombia. He is an author, among other texts of Fumigation and Conflict: Anti-drugs policies and the delegitimisation of the Colombian state...
Richard Falk , Contributor

Richard Falk is a former IPS/TNI fellow, an American professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, writer, and appointee to two United Nations positions on the occupied Palestinian territories.
Roberto Elissalde , Contributor

Roberto Elissalde is a Uruguayan journalist who served as editor of the Public Services Year book, assisted with the a TNI fellows’ seminar ("Selling US Wars") in Montevideo, a seminar on the Latin American left, and facilitated work for the...
Roger Burbach , Contributor

Roger Burbach is Director of the Center for the Study of the Americas based in Berkeley, CA. He is long time TNI friend who specialises in Latin American politics.
Ross Eventon , Contributor
Sarah Anderson , Contributor

Sarah Anderson is a Fellow of the TNI's sister Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C and head of the Global Economy Programme.
Satoko Kishimoto , Staff
Saul Landau , Associate

TNI Senior Fellow and former Director of TNI (1976), Landau is an award-winning filmmaker, journalist and author. Landau writes weekly on US politics and foreign policy and has produced more than forty films on social, political and historical issues,...
Susan George , Fellow

Susan George is one of TNI's most renowned fellows for her long-term and ground-breaking analysis of global issues. Author of fourteen widely translated books, she describes her work in a cogent way that has come to define TNI: "The job of the...
Sylvia Kay , Regular Consultant

Sylvia Kay joined the Agrarian Justice team of TNI in October 2011. She works as a research assistant on a wide range of issues including land grabbing, water, and agricultural investment. She...
Tamra Gilbertson , Contributor

Tamra Gilbertson is one of the founders of Carbon Trade Watch, a former project of the Transnational Institute (TNI), and co-author of Carbon Trading: How it works and why it fails. She has been active in the project since 2001 and was a...
Tariq Ali , Contributor

Tariq Ali is a novelist, historian, political campaigner and one of New Left Review’s editors.
Tessa Kersten , Staff

Tessa Kersten worked as customer service manager of several Internet Service Providers in Amsterdam before changing her career to not for profit work. She started as a volunteer at the Transnational Institute and is now member of the regular staff. Her...
Tom Blickman , Staff

Tom Blickman (1957) is an independant researcher and journalist, based in Amsterdam. Before coming to TNI he was active in the squatters and solidarity movements in Amsterdam. He worked for Bureau Jansen & Janssen, a research institute on...
Tom Kramer , Regular Consultant

Tom Kramer (1968) is a political scientist and with over 15-years of working experience on Burma and its border regions, which he has visited regularly since 1993.

His work focuses on developing a better understanding of the drugs...
Tom Reifer , Associate Fellow

Tom Reifer is currently Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of San Diego and publishes widely on global peace and social justice issues. He has also been a long-time activist in the anti-nuclear movement as well as a rank and file trade...
V Suresh , Contributor

Dr V. Suresh runs the Center for Law, Policy and Human Rights Studies, is advisor to the Supreme Court Commissioner on Food Security in Tamil Nadu, and an active collaborator on TNI's Water Justice project.
Walden Bello , Associate

Author of more than 14 books, Bello was awarded the Right Livelihood Award (also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize) in 2003 for "... outstanding efforts in educating civil society about the effects of corporate globalisation, and how alternatives to...
Wilbert van der Zeijden , Contributor

Wilbert van der Zeijden is a political scientist and former Coordinator of the International Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases. He works with the Dutch organisation IKV Pax Christi as researcher on nuclear issues
William Gumede , Contributor

William Gumede is a South African journalist, and gave TNI's Bhasker Vashee Memorial Lecture in 2007.
Zia Mian , Contributor

Zia Mian is a research scientist with the programme on science and global security, based at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He is a columnist of Foreign Policy in Focus, and contributor to TNI's...