People

Albert Janssen is the dedicated server sysadmin for TNI since 2007. He's a passionate open source advocate since 1995, and helped TNI to migrate from Microsoft Windows to Linux on the desktops. When he's not behind a computer screen for work he likes to talk to his cat, play chess, work in the garden or meet with friends. Recently he started his own little company aimed at web and email hosting for non profit organisations.

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 of the Party of Labour, and advisor to the Chairperson of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia.  Previously, he was a student of art criticism and was imprisoned for two years for 'anti-Soviet' activities.

Cecilia Olivet is a political scientist who specialises in the European Union's trade and investment agenda, the international investment regime and regional integration issues.  Cecilia 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. In 2005, she joined TNI where she contributes to the Economic Justice, Corporate Power and Alternatives team with research, analysis, campaigning and network facilitation.

David Fig is a South African environmental sociologist, political economist, and activist. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics, and specialises in questions of energy, the extractive industries, and corporate accountability. He chairs the board of Biowatch South Africa, which is concerned with food sovereignty and sustainable agriculture, and works closely with various environmental justice non-government organizations. Recent publications include work on the nuclear and shale gas industries, and the Biowatch legal battle with Monsanto.

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 Southern African Peoples Solidarity Network (SAPSN), the key coordinator of the Southern African Social Forum (SASF); as well as the continent-wide Africa Trade Network (ATN); and the international Our World is Not for Sale (OWINFS) network.

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.

Gisela Dütting is an independent researcher and activist, based in the Netherlands. An anthropologist by training, she specializes in social movements, gender equality and economic justice. She is an affiliated researcher at Aletta, the Institute for Women’s History, and is conducting research on independent entrepreneurs in Europe. She is also member of the Board of LOVA, Netherlands Association for Gender Studies and Feminist Anthropology.

Herman Wissink volunteers as the TNI handyman since July 2012. Originally from Tukkerland, he moved to the Amsterdam area in 2007. After many jobs in construction his most recent workexperience was in social services helping people with deb restructuring. 

Hilde van der Pas joined the 'Economic Justice, Corporate Power and Alternatives' programme in July 2011. She has a BA degree in journalism and a MA in International Relations from the University of Amsterdam.

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 (Germany), Hippler is also a consultant working on Cultural Dimensions of Globalization; Inter-cultural Dialogues, and Violent Conflict and War.

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). 

He is also the co-author of 10 books and numerous articles on the global economy, including Development Redefined: How the Market Met Its Match (2008, Paradigm Publishers), written with Robin Broad.John has a BA from Dartmouth College and a MA from Princeton University.

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 economy, politics and modern history including the politics and economics of sanctions, conflict and occupation. His other interests include economic policy in Arab countries; Middle East agriculture and the socio-economics of agrarian change.

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 universities in Brazil and abroad. He is a facilitator for the Gaia Education Program and is active in the Ecovillage and the Transition Towns movements.

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 increasingly recognized as one of, if not the, outstanding strategists in terms of how international institutions deal with drugs and drug policy."

Associate Fellow 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 investor strategies has sparked many international campaigns.

With an M.Phil in International Relations from Cambridge, Myriam's research is particularly focussed on the financial, food and supermarkets sectors, and the corporate strategies and services liberalisation related to these.

Pauline works globally as an independent consultant and advisor to producer organisations, social businesses, donors, banks and corporations on fair trade, sustainability, partnerships, branding, finance and labor rights in supply chains - mainly in agriculture. She is a non-executive director of several non-profits and social businesses include the Friends of the Moscow School for Social and Economic Sciences, the Pluto Educational Trust (launched in 2011 - http://www.plutoeducational.org) and Divine Chocolate.

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, though her participation with the Programme dates further back.

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 Council for Social Development, Delhi, affiliated to the Indian Council for Social Science Research. 

A happy TNI colleague since recently, Rozemarijn formerly worked in culture; project- and office management in design, arts and film.

She was an environmental activist and active in the youth environmental movement in Japan in the 1990s. She began working with TNI in 2003, at the time of 3rd World Water Forum held in Kyoto, Japan. TNI successfully organized a seminar on Alternatives to Water Privatisation, which was the starting point of the Water Justice Project. In 2005, the Reclaiming Public Water (RPW) Network was created with the contributors to the book 'Reclaiming Public Water'. TNI serves as the coordinating hub of the RPW network and Satoko is the coordinator of the network.

Sol Trumbo is an economist and political activist working for TNI since November 2012. He is focussing on the construction of a pan-European social movement to resist and provide alternatives to the current neoliberal EU policies. Sol has a BSc degree in Economic science from the Universidad de Valencia in Spain and a MSc in International Relations from Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain.

Susan George is one of TNI's most renowned fellows for her long-term and ground-breaking analysis of global issues. "How to win the Class War - The Lugano Report 2" is the newest of her sixteen widely translated books. She describes her work in a cogent way that has come to define TNI: "The job of the responsible social scientist is first to uncover these forces [of wealth, power and control], to write about them clearly, without jargon... and finally..to take an advocacy position in favour of the disadvantaged, the underdogs, the victims of injustice."

Started as a volunteer at the Transnational Institute and is now member of the regular staff.
If you have questions about the newsletter or the website you can contact her on webmaster [at] tni.org

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 union activist. His specialty is the study of large-scale, long-term social change and world-systems analysis. 

He is currently working on a book "Lawyers, Guns & Money: Wall Street & the American Century"