Professor Paul James is Director of the UN Global Compact Cities Programme. Paul is also Director of the RMIT Global Cities Institute, his academic expertise is in Globalisation and Cultural Diversity and he is the author or editor of 24 books.

Paul has been invited to deliver addresses in over twenty countries including Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cuba, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Israel-Palestine, Japan, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Portugal, Taiwan and the United States. He has been an advisor to a number of agencies and governments including the Helsinki Process, the Canadian Prime Minister G20 Forum (2004), the National Economic Advisory Council of Malaysia, and the Commission on Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor and the Papua New Guinea Minister for Community Development. Paul’s awards include the Japan-Australia Foundation Fellowship, an Australian Research Council Fellowship, and the Crisp Medal by the Australasian Political Studies Association for the best book in the field of political studies.

Elizabeth Ryan is  the Manager of the UN Global Compact Cities Programme. She is responsible for international liaison and partnerships, city engagement, development of the Programme, its communications and resource base.

Elizabeth has a background in partnership management and business development, with particular expertise and interest in facilitating cross sectoral partnerships for the benefit of society and the broader whole.

Prior to her current role, Elizabeth held a partnership management position in RMIT’s International and Development portfolio, supporting the delivery of the (then) new industry engagement strategy for the University (2007 to 2010); developing partnerships and programs to support improved education and employment outcomes for young people in Melbourne’s north (2004 to 2007); and communications and research coordinator for the Equity Research Centre, an advisory body to the Victorian State government (2001 to 2003).

Carrie Hall is Head of Communications for the United Nations Global Compact and is the New York arm of the UN Global Compact Cities Programme’s International Secratriat.

In her role with the UN Global Compact, Carrie oversees a broad range of communications from stakeholder communications to publications and policy papers and contributes to the broader UN-business agenda, including input to UN Secretary-General speeches and statements, as well as UN reports. Since joining the UN Global Compact in 2004, she has developed, launched and managed three key products for external audiences: the UN Global Compact Annual Review, the Compact Quarterly, and the Monthly Bulletin.

Prior to joining the United Nations, Carrie was a Vice President at Hill & Knowlton. She holds a Masters in Public Administration from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and a Bachelor of Science from Georgetown University.

Dr Liam Magee is responsible for the coordination and development of UN Global Compact Cities Programme’s research activities which are conducted to support, inform and add value to cities’ innovation projects and enhance knowledge from their methodology and outcomes. This role includes development of new research projects, submissions for funding and supervision of interns research activities.

Liam’s academic expertise and interest lies in the intersection between social research and new technology. The focus of his doctorate, awarded in 2010, was on the social construction of information systems, with a principal focus on the Semantic Web. Since joining RMIT in 2010, Liam has developed software to facilitate decision making in indicator selection, worked collaboratively with Accenture on the development of the Smart City Simulator and most recently, developing Fierce Planet, an urban simulation tool with a game interface. His current research interests are in using technology to model, analyse and visualise challenges in the urban environment.

Dr Andy Scerri is responsible for the coordination and development of UN Global Compact Cities Programme’s publications. He also supervises and mentors students in post-graduate research projects.

Dr Scerri’s focus is on city and metro-regional responses to the political challenges of sustainable development, in particular in relation to efforts to establish citizen-driven policy monitoring initiatives in Australia and Canada. His theoretical interests centre on understanding how political debate over sustainable development is shaping questions of citizenship, ideology and the state.

Andy is a Research Fellow in the Community Sustainability program at the RMIT Global Cities Research Institute and a member of the Globalism Research Centre.

Andy has authored and co-authored numerous articles, chapters and reports dealing with the theory and practice of citizenship, with community development, environmental reporting and methodological issues in the social sciences. Andy’s first scholarly book ‘Greening Citizenship: Sustainable Development, the State and Ideology’, will be published in 2012.

Dr Elizabeth Kath is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at RMIT University. Her research interests include Latin American and Caribbean society, politics and culture (esp. Cuba and Brazil), public heath (esp. maternal-infant health), informal and second economies.

In 2010 Elizabeth published a book, Social Relations and the Cuban Health Miracle, based on her study of the social and political dimensions of Cuba’s public health system, specifically its Maternal-Infant Health Program. Elizabeth co-authored the health components of the GCI’s ‘Sustainable Communities, Sustainable Development’ project in Papua New Guinea and is currently embarking on a research project considering the concepts of social inclusion and reconciliation in relation to health service delivery in disadvantaged communities. Elizabeth is a co-director of  ’Global Reconciliation’.

Izabela Ratajczak’s research interest is in politics of climate change and international development, focusing on climate policy, governance and finance for climate change actions in developing countries, multi-level governance and broad stakeholder engagement.

She has high level international relations experience, working with Stockholm Environment Institute on the newly established European Capacity Building Initiative (ECBI) within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), organising Oxford Seminars seminars in UK and Germany and regional capacity building workshops in Botswana, Kenya, Indonesia, Thailand, Germany and Poland.

Izabela is RMIT University’s focal point to the UNFCCC negotiating process. Her research work aims to support the Green Climate Fund and the Adaptation Fund (under the Kyoto Protocol) in the design and decision making process related to resources allocation mechanisms. She heads the climate governance research agenda with interests crossing local, regional, national, and international scales and organizes Melbourne Climate Roundtable seminars with the aim to strengthen the dialogue between the Australian delegation to UN climate negotiations and their sub-local and local governments. In addition, she contributes to research on emergency warning system in Australia.

Master of Arts in International Studies, International Relations, Oxford Brookes University, UK. Her first degree is in Pedagogy and she also holds a Diploma, in Environmental Protection: Water Management from Engineering and Environmental Protection Schools in Gdansk, Poland.

Izabel is a Member of Advisory Committee of Adaptation Fund NGOs and WeAdapt on-line initiative on Adaptation Fund (http://weadapt.org/organisation/40). She is also an Honorary Fellow at the Climate Change Adaptation Programme, RMIT Univeristy

Dennis Obel is an international development professional. His most recent role was in Timor Leste as a Technical Adviser with a HIV/AIDS program (3 years). Dennis has a Master of Project Management from the University of Southern Queensland and a Bachelor Arts from the University of Makere, Uganda.

Dennis has completed his internship with the Cities Programme. His time with the Cities Programme focused the development of the Ligingi community in Uganda, where he co-founded the Ligingi Community Learning Centre in May 2011. He also established an international support group to increase the resource base for local initiatives in Ligingi. These intiatives include a sports program, literacy and education program and a technology for sustainable livelihoods program.

Julia Laidlaw completed her internship with the Cities Programme as part of her Masters in International Urban and Environment Management with RMIT University. She is now employed as a Project Officer with the Cities Programme.  Julia has a Bachelor of Arts (International Community Development and Spanish) Victoria University, with a year of study at the Universidad de las Americas, Puebla, Mexico. She lived for a number of years in Latin America and is a fluent Spanish speaker.

The focus of Julia’s internship built on her keen interest in environmental conservation, social and cultural sustainability, particularly systems that enhance food security and integrate food cultivation into the urban environment and lifestyle. She is now gathering data on the international growth and applications of urban aquaponics, initially inspired and informed by the Milwaukee project, Sweet Water aquaponics. She is currently preparing to integrate this study into her Honours Thesis, with the aim to expand it to a PhD Research Thesis in the coming year.

Julia’s research is being supervised by Dr Liam Magee.

Ginger Ekselman completed her internship with the Cities Programme in May 2012 as part of her Masters of Social Science (International Development). Ginger has a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Social Work and also works as a Case Coordinator with Adult Migrant Education (AMES).

Ginger’s research project focused on city liveability and she recently co-authored and submitted a paper to a journal that is currently under review.

Her work was supervised by Dr Andy Scerri.

Adrian Thompson undertook his internship as a completion to his Master of Social Science (International Development) at RMIT university. He has a Bachelor of Social Sciences (Sociology, Community Development) from Southern Cross University.

Adrian has a long standing interest in international development and is currently working for World Vision International in Nairobi. He was a Volunteer Program Manager with Cambodian projects, Make Every Child Count (MECC) and Build your Future Today (BFT). He worked at World Vision Australia in their Support Service Group for two years.

As an intern with the Cities Programme, Adrian worked on the development of the new Cities Programme website as both research and project management projects. He developed a comprehensive survey of the original website as part of  a formal review and integrated the results of that review into an academic paper on the project. He also developed project management and web authoring skills building the profiles of participating cities for the new website.

Adrian’s work was co-supervised by Dr Liam Magee and Elizabeth Ryan.

Felicity Cahill completed her internship with the Cities Programme in December as part of her Masters program in International Development at RMIT University. Felicity is now employed as a Project Officer with the Cities Programme and also works as an Associate Lecturer at RMIT in Social Science Field Education. She has a Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Arts (Class I Honours) from the University of Queensland. Felicity has Advanced French language skills.

Felicity is conducting research related to the resettlement of the Chocolatao community in Porto Alegre, Brazil, mapping the history of the project and developing a paper ‘Multi-partnership Approaches to Slum Resettlement: Lessons Learnt from the Chocolatão Project’. Felicity had the opportunity to visit the Chocolatao community in June 2012 as part of a Cities Programme trip to South America for the Rio+20 Corporate Sustainability Forum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She also provided invaluable support to the development of a grant submission to the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) for a comparative study between Chocolatao and the Redfern indigenous community. 

Felicity’s research is being supervised by Dr Liam Magee.

Sam Barrett undertook his internship the Cities Programme during the final semester of his undergraduate Bachelor in Social Science (Policy & Research) studies at RMIT University. He completed his placement in October 2011, has just headed overseas on his first international trip and is hoping to commence Honors in 2012 furthering the study he commenced with the Cities Programme in 2011.

Sam’s research project with the Cities Programme centred around mapping urban indicator sets (follow the link for more on this valuable project). Sam worked under the supervision of Dr Liam Magee.

Felix Attard undertook his internship as part of his studies in middle eastern political science, international relations, history, law and economics at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques Paris. This was during his University’s summer break (June to August 2011).

Felix was the first of the Cities Programme interns and the inspiration for the establishment of our formal program. Crossing over only for one week with the new interns, Felix’s wise advice was to always have a team of  interns. Felix’s project was based on mapping the political, economic, ecological and cultural dimensions of the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre. Felix’s work was supervised by Prof Paul James.

Felicity Cahill completed her internship with the Cities Programme in December as part of her Masters program in International Development at RMIT University. Felicity is now employed as a Project Officer with the Cities Programme and also works as an Associate Lecturer at RMIT in Social Science Field Education. She has a Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Arts (Class I Honours) from the University of Queensland. Felicity has Advanced French language skills.

Felicity is conducting research related to the resettlement of the Chocolatao community in Porto Alegre, Brazil, mapping the history of the project and developing a paper ‘Multi-partnership Approaches to Slum Resettlement: Lessons Learnt from the Chocolatão Project’. Felicity had the opportunity to visit the Chocolatao community in June 2012 as part of a Cities Programme trip to South America for the Rio+20 Corporate Sustainability Forum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She also provided invaluable support to the development of a grant submission to the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) for a comparative study between Chocolatao and the Redfern indigenous community. 

Felicity’s research is being supervised by Dr Liam Magee.