Maria Jaschok (Ph.D. SOAS) is the Director of the International Gender Studies Centre (Dept of International Development, University of Oxford) and Lead Researcher in the ‘Women’s Empowerment in Muslim Contexts’ Research Programme Consortium (DFID, UK). She is also a NIAS Associate and a member of the Advisory Editorial Boards for Gendering Asia series, NIAS, for Berliner China-Hefte, Chinese History and Society, Berlin, and for the WAGRev electronic review journal. She co-founded the Women and Gender in Chinese Studies Network (WAGNet) and Women’s Initiatives on International Affairs in Asia (WIIAA). Her research and publications deal with religious feminisms, gendered constructions of memory, feminist ethnographic practice, and marginality and identity. She has written widely on women’s local traditions in the Chinese Muslim diaspora. Most recent publications: ‘Ethnographic “World-Travelling”: Of Passages and Boundaries, of Aspirations and Differences’ in Outskirts. feminisms along the edge (17) 2007; ‘Xingbie, Zongjiao, Xiao Chuantong’ (Gender, Religion and Little Traditions) in Gonghe Shidaide Zhongguo Funü, Taiwan, 2007; ‘Thinking the Unheard, Writing the Unwritten – Collaborating the Feminist Way’ in Fashioning Identities and Weaving Networks, Oxford, 2007.

Judith Okely graduated in P.P.E (Oxon) and was first Woman Member of the Oxford Union. Her Oxford doctorate is in Social Anthropology. She held lectureships in Durham and Essex and Professorships at Edinburgh and Hull universities. She has recently lectured in Taiwan, Vienna, Budapest, Malta, Madrid and Helsinki. For decades, she has engaged in research among Gypsies/Travellers. Her publications- translated into 8 languages- include: The Traveller-Gypsies, Simone de Beauvoir, Anthropology and Autobiography and Own or Other Culture. Her debate with G. Marcus in Social Anthropology (2007) and Knowing how to Know co-ed, (2008) continue long-term research into ethnographic methods, as in Anthropological Practice, to be submitted to Berg. This draws on dialogues with over 20 anthropologists of 16 nationalities with fieldwork experiences across the globe.

Anne Coles is a geographer who has combined university teaching and research with professional practice in the field of development, working for NGOs, governments and international agencies. As a senior social development adviser in the Department of International Development, she led on gender issues. Anne has a MA from St Andrews and a PhD from the London School of Economics. With a MSc in human nutrition from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, she has engaged in interdisciplinary studies on the links between food availability, public health and poverty. Anne has a long-standing interest in human responses to difficult environments. Her recent books include ‘Gender, Water and Development’ (Berg 2005), edited with Tina Wallace, and ‘Windtower’ (Stacey International 2007), co-authored with Peter Jackson. Anne’s other area of sustained research has been migration: ‘Gender and Family among Transnational Professionals' (Routledge 2007) edited with Meike Fechter, resulted from four IGS workshops.

Paula Heinonen holds BA and MA degrees in Human Sciences from the University of Oxford, a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Durham and a Diploma in Development Studies from Ruskin College Oxford. She co-ordinates the IGS Visiting Fellows Program and teaches anthropology and gender for the Human Sciences and Anthropology and Archaeology degrees. She is convenor and lecturer on research methods for the M St. in Women Studies degree and D.Phil supervisor for the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies. Her research interests are: the anthropology of children, street children, youth gangs, child prostitution, gender, feminisms, globalization, human trafficking, FGM, HIV/Aids, human rights, and social movements. Publication in press: ‘Youth Gangs and Street Children in Ethiopia: Identity, Reciprocity and Masculinity’.

Shirley Ardener obtained a B.Sc in economics, special subject sociology, from LSE, London, and has M.A. status at Oxford University. She was awarded the Welcome Medal for Anthropology, and honoured by an O.B.E. She was the Founding Director for several years of the CCCRW, and continues as an active honorary member of the IGS. Her first fieldwork in Nigeria has been followed by a long association with Cameroon, especially with the national Anglophone archives office which she helped establish, and with the University of Buea. Her numerous publications (see Bryceson, Okely and Webber 2007) include studies on gender, microcredit, modes of communication, Cameroon culture and history. Her recent publications are Changing Sex and Bending Gender (edited with Alison Shaw) and Professional Identities; Policy and Practice in Business and Bureaucracy (edited with Fiona Moore) both published by Berghahn Books.

Deborah Bryceson holds bachelor and master degrees in geography from the University of Dar es Salaam, and a D.Phil (sociology) from Oxford University. Her long-standing interest in rural and urban areas has involved extensive research into the interaction of livelihood, mobility and settlement in sub-Saharan Africa. Her early work spanned the topics of food security, staple food markets, agricultural policy, rural transport and gender divisions of labour. During the 1990s, she pioneered the comparative study of deagrarianization processes, focusing on rural income diversification and associated household and community responses. More recently, she has concentrated her research on urban economies, urban growth and mobility patterns. Her current interests embrace the comparative study of East Africa’s coastal cities, livelihood frontiers in Tanzanian mining and trading settlements, and the economic and social impact of HIV/AIDS on rural communities. Her recent books include African Urban Economies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) and The Transnational Family (Berg, 2002).

Sandra Burman holds a B.A. and LLB from the University Cape Town, and an M.A and D.Phil. from the University of Oxford. She has been a member of the CCCRW since it was established, and subsequently of the IGS. Since 2005 she has been Professor of Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Cape Town and Founding Director of the Centre for Socio-Legal Research there. Her research has concentrated on the position of women and children from a socio-legal point of view: for a list of her numerous publications, see the CSLR website at www.cslr.uct.ac.za

Red Chan obtained her D.Phil. at Oxford, an M.A. (with Distinction) from
Warwick and became a  member of the Institute of Linguists.  Her field is China, including Hong Kong.  Her interests include translation, interpreting
(academic and legal), and Chinese literature.  Her current research is on representations of China and Chinese Literature in the Anglophone World.
Her publications include 'Chinese Women Organizing', (2002,) co-edited with M. Jaschok, et al., 'Translation, nationhood and cultural manipulation: the
case of China' in S. Lawson (ed.) Europe and the Asia-Pacific: Culture, Identity and Representations of Region ( 2003).

Janette Davies holds a masters degree in social anthropology from the University of Oxford and a PhD in anthropology and health studies from Brunel University. During the late 1970s and 1980s she worked as a nurse/midwife on rural health development projects in Bolivia and Bangladesh and in a refugee camp on the Thai/Cambodian border. Her anthropological research on issues of health and illness in developing countries has led to studies of the impact of HIV/Aids in Zambia, and ageing from cross cultural perspectives in Tanzania and Sri Lanka. Her current research focuses upon illness and ageing and is linked with the University of Georgia, Tbilisi. Recent publications include ‘Necessary in-Betweens: Auxiliary Workers in a Nursing Home Hierarchy’ in Maynard, K., Medical Identities: Healing, Well Being and Personhood, (Berghahn 2007)

Janet Momsen has degrees in Geography and Agricultural Economics from Oxford, McGill University in Montreal and the LSE. She has taught at the universities of London (King’s College), Calgary, Leeds, Newcastle upon Tyne, Rio de Janeiro and the University of California at Davis. Her research interests focus on gender and rural development and gender and tourism. She has done fieldwork in Bangladesh, Brazil, Costa Rica, Mexico, Hungary and the Caribbean. In 2008 she worked as a consultant for the Fairtrade Foundation on Fairtrade bananas in the Windward Islands. Her most recent books are Environmental Planning in the Caribbean with Jon Pugh (Ashgate, 2006); Caribbean Land and Development Revisited with Jean Besson (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) and Gender and Development (Routledge, 2008).

Fiona Moore is an industrial anthropologist who received her B.A. from the University of Toronto and her M.Phil. and D.Phil. from the University of Oxford. She is currently Lecturer in International Human Resource Management at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her primary research focus is on identity in multinational corporations, with projects focusing on the use of ethnic identity as a strategic resource by German expatriates in the City of London, manifestations of gender, ethnic and workplace identity among workers and managers at an automobile plant, and of the use of gender and ethnic identity in the social adjustment of Korean migrants in and around London. She is currently exploring issues relating to hybrid identities among Anglo-Chinese managers in London. She is a member of the Steering Committee of the Women and Gender in Chinese Studies Network (WAGNet) and online editor of the WAGNet Review journal. Recent books of note include Transnational Business Cultures (Ashgate, 2005) and Professional Identities: Policy and Practice in Business and Bureaucracy with Shirley Ardener (Berghahn, 2007).

Josephine Reynell holds a Bachelor and Doctoral degree in Social Anthropology from Cambridge University. Her research focuses on gender and religion. Her early research examined the complex relationship between women’s religious practice and their socio-economic status among the Jain trading community in Jaipur, India. It was one of the first ethnographies on Jain women and has been used widely by subsequent researchers. Her more recent research focuses on the significance of religious identity within the Jain community in North London. She has also worked on Human Rights and Development Aid. She carried out applied research as a consultant for the World Food Programme, completing a socio-economic evaluation of the UN supported former Cambodian displaced people’s camps on the Thai-Cambodian border. The report initiated changes in both camp security and the ration system. She has worked as a consultant for Oxfam in Cambodia and Amnesty International in London. Her publications include: Political Pawns: Refugees on the Thai-Kampuchean Border. 1988. Oxford Refugee Studies Programme and ‘Religious practice and the creation of personhood among Svetambar Murti Puja women in Jaipur’, in Flugel, P. Studies in Jaina History and Culture. 2006. Routledge.

Lidia Dina Sciama is a former Director of the CCCRW and Senior Associate of Queen Elizabeth House. She has an MA (Cornell University) in English Lit. and a  D.Phil. in Social Anthropology (from Oxford). She studied at the Venice University, Ca' Foscari, Jerusalem's Hebrew University, and Oxford and Cambridge. She has lectured on Social Anthropology and Comparative Literature at Mount Holyoke College and the University of Ca' Foscari in Venice. She is a Research Associate at the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology, where she is a co-convenor of the Ethnicity and Identity seminar. Her research interests include Women's Labour, Narrative and Memory, Women in Academia, Fieldwork in Contemporary Europe. Her current research is on from underdevelopment to the formation of the State, and on English and African communities in Italy and Venice over time, as well as social closeness and cultural distance. Her many publications include 'The Problem of Privacy in Mediterranean Anthropology' in S. Ardener, Women and Space (1981); 'Ambivalence and Dedication: Academic Wives in Cambridge University' in H. Callan and S. Ardener, The Incorporated Wife (1984), "Beads and Beadmakers",  co-edited with J. Eicher, (1998) and "A Venetian Island: Environment, History and Change" in Burano (2003).

Cecillie Swaisland is a Common Room Member of Queen Elizabeth House. She has a BA (Soc) London; MSocSc Birmingham, a Post-Grad Cert. of Education, Cambridge, and an MLitt Oxford. She has done research in Nigeria and South Africa. Her publications include 'Forty Years Service: Women's Corona 1950-1990', (1992); ' Servants and Gentlewomen to the Golden Land, The Emigration of Single Women from Britain to Southern Africa 1820-1939', (1993); as well as 'Wanted - Earnest, Sacrificing Women for Service in South Africa; 19thC Recruitment of Single Women to Protestant Missions' in F. Bowie, D. Kirkwood and S. Ardener, Women and Missions (1993) and 'The Women's Movement: The Formative Years, 1850-1930',  in D. Bryceson, J. Okely and J.
Webber, Identity and Networks (2007).

Jacqueline Dee Waldren - After years of living in Spain and organising art exhibitions, archaeological excavations and summer research programmes, Jackie came to Oxford to study anthropology. Her research among locals and foreigners on a Mediterranean Island advanced tourism studies in anthropology. D Phil (Oxon) Social Anthropology. Tutor for Human Science degree; tutor and co-ordinator of Gender Option, Archaeology and Anthropology degree, Oxford University. Research Associate, Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology. Part-time lecturer at Oxford Brookes University. Director, Deya Archaeological Museum, Mallorca. Series Editor for Berghahn (New Directions in Anthropology) and co-editor of Centre's Berg series. Research Interests: Ethnicity and identity; women and religion; tourism, development and modernisation, immigration and transnationalism, children and identity. Current Research: Gender, immigration and identity. Publications include: Insiders and Outsiders: Paradise and Reality in Mallorca, Berghahn; Tourists and Tourism (co-ed), Berg; Anthropological Perspectives on Local Development (co-ed)

Tina Wallace has a life-long commitment to promoting the rights of women. She teaches and researches, usually on development in Africa, from a gender perspective. She established the gender unit at OXFAM. Cuurently she combines her academic and practitioner experience in areas such as water, and the new aid modalities and their impact. Tina works with NGOs in Africa and the UK (for example with Womankind), and recently completed work for DFID on their Gender Equality Action Plan.
She has published widely on the role of NGOs in the development process and new aid modalities (in 2007 she co-wrote the GAD Network report). She engages in many debates, including at high level donor forums in the UK, in order to stimulate them to 'think differently', to listen and learn especially around issues of inequality, power and patriarchy. She has published extensively.
Her numerous publications include ‘Rethinking gender mainstreaming in African NGOs and communities’ (co-authored with S. Wendoh) in Gender and development, Oxfam, (2005), Gender , water and development, jointly edited with Anne Coles, (2005), ' NGO dilemmas: Trojan horses for global neo-liberalism?' in L. Panitch and C. Leys, eds. The new imperial challenge (2004).