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The following content is the main page content.Convening Group
The convening group plays an overall facilitating and coordinating role in the Building Global Democracy programme. The ten conveners (five men and five women) are drawn from ten world regions and eight academic disciplines. The group furthermore reflects highly varying cultural experiences and ideological positions. However, uniting this diversity is a shared concern to enhance democracy in global affairs. Members have extensive collective experience in interaction with practitioner circles and the preparation of action-oriented research.
Amongst its activities the convening group: formulates, reviews and adjusts the programme design; agrees terms of reference for each of the projects; commissions studies for the projects; invites practitioner participants in the projects; introduces persons from their wide-ranging networks to the programme; attends all of the workshops; monitors programme impacts; and reflects on what is (and is not) being learned and accomplished in the programme.
Diana Brydon
Convenor for North America. Diana is currently Canada Research Chair in Globalization and Cultural Studies at the University of Manitoba and Director of the Research Centre for Globalization and Cultural Studies.
Jessica Byron
Convenor for the Caribbean. Jessica is currently Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Kingston, Jamaica.
Heba Raouf Ezzat
Convener for the Middle East and North Africa. Heba Raouf Ezzat has taught political theory at Cairo University since 1987 and at the American University in Cairo since 2006.
Alla Glinchikova
Convenor for Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Alla is currently Deputy Director of the Institute for Globalization Studies and Social Movements (Moscow) and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences.
Sitiveni Halapua
Convenor for the Pacific Sitiveni is the Director of the Pacific Islands Development Program in the East-West Center, Hawaii, USA, and the Secretary-General of the Secretariat for the Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders.
Anand Kumar
Convenor for South Asia. Anand is Professor of Sociology and Coordinator of the Global Studies Programme at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi.
Moema de Miranda
Convenor for Latin America. Moema is a trained anthropologist who works at the Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Research (IBASE) in Rio de Janeiro.
Alfred Nhema
Alfred is convenor for Sub-Saharan Africa. He is the Chief Executive Officer of the Pan African Development Center in Addis Ababa.
Peng Zongchao
Convenor for East Asia. Zongchao is Professor and Director of the Public Policy Institute in the School of Public Policy and Management at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Jan Aart Scholte
Convenor for Western Europe. Jan Aart is Professorial Research Fellow in the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation at the University of Warwick and Centennial Professor in the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics.
Laura Downey
The Programme Officer Laura comes to the Programme with an MA in Caribbean Literature, including a dissertation on World Literature. She has a background in events management and is committed to developing and delivering first class events and workshops.
Ura Martin
As Communications Officer for the Programme, Ura maintains the website & database and works on the newsletter and other communication material. Ura comes to the Building Global Democracy initiative with several years experience of communications and administration within the NGO sector including roles at ActionAid and Computer Aid International.
