William Gois is the current regional coordinator of Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA), a regional network of grassroots organizations, trade unions, faith-based groups, migrants and their families and individual advocates in Asia working together for social justice for migrant workers and members of their families represented in 26 countries in Asia and the Middle East.

Mr. Gois is the former chairperson of the Global Coalition for Migration (GCM) , a coalition of regional and international networks of migrant associations, migrants rights organizations and advocates, trade unions, faith groups and academia, covering every region around the world.

Over the last twenty years, he has been at the forefront of international advocacy efforts engaging and influencing international and multilateral processes to promote rights based migration and development policies. He was the co-chair of the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) Civil Society Days (CSD) in 2011. He represents MFA in the International Organization for Migration (IOM) International Recruitment Integrity System (IRIS) Advisory Committee.

He is also a member of the World Bank led Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development (KNOMAD), a global hub of knowledge and policy expertise on migration and development issues.

He is also a member of the steering committee of the Metropolis Asia, a group of migration and development experts that aims to establish a framework for dialogue and cooperation among relevant stakeholders vis-à-vis international migration and development.

Mr. Gois is also a member of the steering committee of the Asia Democracy Network (ADN) and the regional executive committee of the Asia Pacific Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD).  

At the regional level, Mr. Gois represents MFA in the Abu Dhabi Dialogue Steering Committee on the Comprehensive Information Orientation (CIOP) and the thematic working groups of the Colombo Process.

Ms Ivana d'Alessandro holds a degree in international law (Università Federico II – Napoli, Italy), and a Master in Human rights (Universidad Carlos III, Madrid) during which she specialised in migrants and refugees’ rights. She works at the Council of Europe since 2004 where she first integrated the Roma and Travellers Division, focussing on the access of Roma minority to social rights through the elaboration and monitoring of National Action Plans. At the same time, she devised, launched and implemented the Council of Europe “Dosta!” communication campaign to fight deep-rooted stereotypes against Roma people.

In 2009 she integrated the General Directorate of Democracy where she headed the Biodiversity Unit; a year later she was appointed Executive Secretary of the Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats, a treaty binding 51 States to ensure a sustainable use of a common natural heritage.

In February 2016 Ms d’Alessandro integrated the Intercultural Cities Unit were she becale the head of the main Council of Europe programme to assist local and regional authorities in the conception and implementation of intercultural integration strategy.

Since 2020, she is also the Secretary of the Working Group on Intercultural Integration (GT-ADI-INT), the first internationally recognised multilevel body in the field of migrant integration. Composed of a mix of local and national authorities, the GT-ADI-INT helps the Council of Europe Steering Committee on Anti-discrimination, Diversity and Inclusion, to steer intergovernmental work in the field of migrant integration and positive diversity management, and to mainstream the principles of intercultural integration at the national level.

Marie McAuliffe is the head of the Migration Research Division at IOM headquarters in Geneva and Editor of IOM’s flagship World Migration Report. She is an international migration specialist with more than 20 years of experience in migration as a practitioner, program manager, senior official and researcher.

Marie has researched, published and edited widely in academic and policy spheres on migration and is on the editorial boards of scientific journals International Migration and Migration Studies, and is an Associate Editor of the Harvard Data Science Review. She edits IOM’s World Migration Report in partnership with leading migration researchers (2018 edition with Prof Martin Ruhs, 2020 edition with Prof Binod Khadria and the forthcoming 2022 edition with Prof Anna Triandafyllidou).

Marie is a Senior Associate (non-resident) at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), senior fellow at the Global Migration Centre at the Graduate Institute in Geneva and a Sir Roland Wilson Fellow at the School of Demography at the Australian National University (ANU). She co-chairs the World Bank’s KNOMAD thematic working group on migration data and demography (with Rainer Muenz), is a member of MIT’s Global Technology Review Panel, IUSSP’s panel on international migration and curates the World Economic Forum’s Migration Transformation Map. Marie is also on the board of directors of the Academic Council on the UN System (ACUNS). She has been regularly called upon to advise Ministers, senior officials and CEOs on migration and displacement, including former UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, in his capacity as Chair of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State.

Marie has led research, analysis and policy teams in government and previously consulted to IOM, ILO as well as in the private sector, including in South Korea, Russia, Central Asia and Turkey. For three years (2012–2014), Marie directed the $6.5 million Australian irregular migration research program involving 31 applied/academic researchers in 12 fieldwork countries to deliver 20 complex research projects. In addition to government briefings, academic workshops and conferences, a government-research high level strategic dialogue series and 22 research occasional papers, the program resulted in an ANU Press book edited by Marie (with Khalid Koser). In late 2014 Marie was awarded a Sir Roland Wilson scholarship to complete doctoral research at ANU on irregular migration (approved late 2017). She is the 2018 recipient of the Charles Price Prize in demography for outstanding doctoral research in migration studies.

Mike Adamson is Chief Executive of the British Red Cross, the country’s leading voluntary crisis response organisation, and part of the worldwide Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
Mike is responsible for all of the British Red Cross’ UK and International work. Prior to his current appointment, he held several other senior positions within BRC, including Managing Director of Operations. Mike has also worked as a Director of Commissioning in the NHS and spent five years as Managing Director for Services at another national charity. He began his career as an economist in management consultancy.
Mike is currently:

• Chair of Voluntary & Community Sector Emergency Partnership
• Trustee of National Emergency Trust
• Member of the NHS Prevention Board
• Trustee of Catch 22
• Member of the Foreign Secretary’s Human Rights Advisory Panel
• Trustee of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC)
• Member of CASS External Advisory Panel for Charities Masters

Mike also chaired the NCVO review on how charities enable donors to give consent.

In June 2021 Mike has been awarded a CBE honour for services to the humanitarian sector and the Red Cross Movement.

He lives in Gloucestershire with his wife Lorna and two daughters Eleanor and Sophie. In his spare time he likes to run, cycle and read – he is also a founding member of his local film club.

Mike has an MPhil in economics from Oxford University and an MBA with distinction.

Richard is Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Head of the College of Social Sciences.  An academic geographer and Professor of International Development, he is member of the Council of the Academy of Social Sciences, of which he has been Fellow since 2012.

Edward Sweeney is Professor of Logistics, based in the Operations Management & Logistics subject group and the Centre for Logistics & Sustainability at Heriot-Watt University. He has worked and lectured in over 70 countries in Europe, North America and Asia. Ed is an experienced researcher with over 200 publications including books and book chapters, papers in international peer-reviewed academic journals and articles in leading trade publications. He is a member of the international editorial boards of several leading academic journals including the International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management, International Journal of Logistics Management, the International Journal of Logistics: Research and Applications and the International Journal of Engineering Business Management. In 2015 he was elected by his peers as Chairman of the Logistics Research Network (LRN). LRN, part of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT), is the UK’s premier network for academics, researchers, practitioners and other interested individuals working in the area of logistics, supply chain and operations management. Ed has worked as an external examiner at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in numerous universities in the UK and overseas. In addition to his core teaching and research work, he has also worked with many of the world's leading companies over the years in various capacities. Ed is also a regular keynote speaker at supply chain events in the UK and internationally, and a regular commentator in the broadcast and print media on supply chain issues.

Professor Sarah Sharples is Chief Scientific Adviser for the Department for Transport. She is a Professor of Human Factors in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Nottingham and from 2018-2021 was Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Equality, Diversity & Inclusion and People. She has led research in transport, manufacturing and healthcare, and currently leads the EPSRC (Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council) Connected Everything Network Plus. She founded and is co-director of the EPSRC Horizon Centre for Doctoral Training, and has led research programmes examining implementation of new technologies in rail, highways and aviation. She was President of the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors from 2015-16.

Elaine Chase is Professor Education, Wellbeing and International Development at UCL Institute of Education.  Her teaching, research and writing explore the sociological dimensions of health, wellbeing and rights of individuals and communities most likely to experience marginalisation and exclusion. Current and recent research includes: the wellbeing outcomes of unaccompanied migrant young people becoming ‘adult’ in the UK: educational wellbeing in the context of mass displacement in Lebanon; the impacts of deportation measures on migrant communities in Mexico, Guatemala and the USA; the impact of COVID-19 on unaccompanied migrant young people’s access to legal and social care support in the UK; and how COVID-19 affects remittances, care practices and wellbeing of migrant communities in the UK.

Clive is Professor of Railway Systems and Head of the School of Engineering at the University of Birmingham.  He is Director of the University’s Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education, which has over 180 researchers. He works extensively with the railway industry and academia in Britain and overseas. 

Clive leads a broad portfolio of research aimed at improving the performance of railway systems, including leading the UK Railway Research and Innovation Network (UKRRIN) - a £92M academia/industry collaboration, as well as initiatives to encourage SMEs to work in the rail sector. In 2017 his group was awarded the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Further and Higher Education for supporting the UK and international railway industries. His main research interests lie in the areas of railway systems research including: railway simulation, future control strategies, traffic management and operations, condition monitoring, data integration and cybersecurity, power system design and energy efficiency, and overall system integration. In 2021 The University of Birmingham will take over the operation of the National College for Advanced Transportation and Infrastructure – an initiative that Clive has been instrumental is driving forward.

Clive is a Visiting Professor at Beijing Jiaotong University and Universiti Tun Hussein Onn (Malaysia).  He is a Fellow of the Institute of Railway Signalling Engineers (IRSE) and serves on the IRSE Council, Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology and co-chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Railroad Systems and Applications. He is the founder of two university spin-out companies, both of which have proceeded to receive industry investment. He is a member of: the Advisory Board for the UK Railway Industry’s Technical Leadership Group and has contributed significantly to the 2020 UK Rail Technical Strategy. He is a member of the Technical Advisory Panel to the Board of SMRT (Singapore), and a Technical Advisor to Guangzhou Metro (China).

Lela Rekhviashvili is an early career researcher focusing on political-economy and urban geography with a regional expertise in post-socialist Eastern Europe and Eurasia, particularly South Caucasus and Central Asia. She has published widely on informal economic practices, urban transport and mobility, marketization and social embeddedness, contentious action and politics of public space. Her research increasingly focuses on contestations around infrastructure-led development and role of infrastructures in imagining and (re-)claiming socialist and capitalist modernities.

As an invited lecturer at Universities of Jena and Leipzig she teaches on ‘Regional Geography of Post-Soviet Eurasia’ and ‘De/constructing Europe: Multiple perspectives on Europeanisation’. She serves as one of the coordinators of research area ‘Self-Positioning of Eastern Europe in a New World Order’ at Leibniz Science Campus »Eastern Europe – Global Area« (EEGA).

Matthew Pencharz is Head of Policy for UK, Ireland and the Netherlands for Voi Technology, Europe’s largest shared micromobility operator, with schemes in 17 towns and cities in the UK.Previously he served as Deputy Mayor of London for Environment & Energy under Boris Johnson, where he was led the Greater London Authority’s environment, energy and sustainability work. Matthew has also consulted to companies delivering solutions to the environmental issues he faced while Deputy Mayor.

Mohamed Mezghani (57 years old) has been working for more than 30 years in public transport and urban mobility related fields. He is the Secretary General of the International Association of Public Transport (UITP) since 1/01/2018. He has been the Deputy Secretary General of the UITP from January 2014 to December 2017. Until then, he has worked at UITP as Senior Manager (1999-2001) and Knowledge Director (2001-2006) chairing the department developing knowledge-related services for UITP members: pro-fessional training, research projects, thematic studies, technical advice, conferences, networking activities, information centre, etc. From 2006 till 2013, he worked as an independent consultant and adviser to UITP on several technical assistance and training projects in Africa and the Middle East and managed a number of projects involving numerous experts and multidisciplinary teams. His main fields of expertise are:
• Urban mobility policies and travel demand management
• Trends and innovation in urban transport
• Institutional organisation and regulatory framework of public transport
• Relationships between public transport stakeholders
• Urban transport energy efficiency
Before joining UITP, M. Mezghani worked as a consultant in the French group, BCEOM, (from 1990 to 1999) more particularly in the urban mobility field. He has managed and carried out projects including policy definition, technical assistance and research acti-vities in several countries in Europe, sub-Saharan Africa and Arab countries. During his collaboration with the French Agency for Environment and Energy Management, ADEME, (from 1988-1990), M. Mezghani carried out actions aimed at identifying and evaluating transport energy efficiency projects likely to be financed by the Agency in France. With a Tunisian/French nationality, he graduated with a degree in Industrial Engineering (1987) from Ecole Nationale d’Ingénieurs de Tunis, Tunisia and has a Master in Transport (1988) from Ecole Na-tionale des Ponts et Chaussées, Paris, France.

Nando Sigona is a social scientist with over fifteen years research and teaching experience in migration, refugee, citizenship and ethnic studies. He is the Director of the Institute for Research into Superdiversity (IRiS) and a Research Associate at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre.

Professor Sigona’s work investigates the migration and citizenship nexus. This is achieved through in-depth examination of a range of experiences of societal membership including, but not limited to, those of: EU families; refugees; Roma, undocumented migrants, racialized minorities, unaccompanied minors, dual citizens, ‘failed’ asylum seekers, and stateless people.

Nando is one of the founding editors of Migration Studies, an international academic journal published by Oxford University Press and the editor of the book series Global Migration and Social Change by Bristol University Press.

His recent work includes Unravelling Europe’s ‘migration crisis’  (Policy Press 2017), Within and beyond citizenship (Routledge 2017), The Oxford Handbook on Refugee and Forced Migration Studies

(Oxford University Press, 2014) Sans Papiers: The Social and Economic Lives of Undocumented Migrants (Pluto Press, 2014). 

Since 2008 he maintains an academic blog - Postcards from... .

His work has been featured in a number of international media, incl. The Economist; BBC News; Al Jazeera; New York Times; AP; Reuters; Die Welt; RAI. He contributes regularly for magazines, newspapers and blogs (see recent media coverage), and is active on social media.

Follow Nando on Twitter @nandosigona