Members of Alternative Regionalisms

Brid Brennan

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 Europe-wide anti-racist network for migrant domestic workers. 

Cecilia Olivet

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. She coordinates the initiative People's Agenda for Alternative Regionalisms (PAAR) and is involved in the work of networks such as Seattle to Brussels (S2B), Our World is not for Sale (OWINFS) and Bi-regional Network Europe-Latin America Enlazando Alternativas.

Cecilia is currently a member of a Commission established by Presidential decree to audit Ecuador's bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and investment arbitration cases. The new commission, known by its acronym CAITISA, was formally launched in October 2013. 

Dot Keet

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.

Edgardo Lander

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 Agreement of the Americas (FTAA).

He is a member of the Latin American Social Science Council’s (CLACSO) research group on Hegemonies and Emancipations and on the editorial board of the academic journal Revista Venezolana de Economía y Ciencias Sociales. He is currently part of the steering committee of the Hemispheric Council of the Social Forum of the Americas. 

Among other publications, Lander has written and edited: Contribución a la crítica del marxismo realmente existente: Verdad, ciencia y tecnología; La ciencia y la tecnología como asuntos políticos; Límites de la democracia en la sociedad tecnológica; Neoliberalismo, sociedad civil y democracia.

Gonzalo Berrón

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 building alternative just regional trade and financial architecture in Latin America. 

Berron worked as Coordinator of the Secretariat of the Hemispheric Social Alliance, and was until recently with the International Office of Central Única dos Trabalhadores - CUT (Unique Workers' Center), Brazil. Though Argentinian, he has been based in Brazil for many years.

Hilary Wainwright

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 documented countless examples of resurgent democratic movements from Brazil to Britain and the lessons they provide for progressive politics.

As well as TNI fellow, she is also Senior Research Associate at the International Centre for Participation Studies at the Department for Peace Studies, University of Bradford, UK and Senior Research Associate at International Centre for Participation Studies', Bradford University. She has also been a visiting Professor and Scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles; Havens Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison and Todai University, Tokyo. Her books include Reclaim the State: Experiments in Popular Democracy (Verso/TNI, 2003) and Arguments for a New Left: Answering the Free Market Right (Blackwell, 1993).

Wainwright founded the Popular Planning Unit of the Greater London Council during the Thatcher years, and was convenor of the new economics working group of the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly from 1989 to 1994.