Clarissa Freitas is a Full Professor at the Institute of Architecture, Urbanism and Design at the Federal University of Ceará (UFC), located in Fortaleza, her hometown. Through her position as faculty of the core Planning and Architecture program at UFC, she works professionally for the cause of the right to the city through action-research initiatives cooperating with urban social and environmental movements, often generating geographic data and urban models to highlight territorial injustices produced by mainstream urban design projects. She worked on the Popular Plan of the ZEIS of Bom Jardim, on the Land Regularization Plans of 3 informal settlements in Fortaleza, and on a few Participatory Municipal Master Plans in the Brazilian state of Ceará. She has been using the knowledge produced through her professional experience to engage with some theoretical strands about possibilities of transformative approaches to urban planning and design, such as Insurgent/Radical/Popular Planning. Since 2022, she has been recognized as a “Research Productivity Scholar” by Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, CNPQ.

Dr. Gilbert Siame is a lecturer and researcher specializing in urban planning and development. He coordinates the MSc in Spatial Planning at the University of Zambia and leads the The Centre for Urban Research and Planning (CURP). His research involves a broad spectrum of intersecting components in urban systems and planning, including climate change adaptation in African cities, co-production of urban spaces and services, urban food systems, the dynamics of urban informality and urban infrastructures. He has authored several peer-reviewed publications and scientific reports. He currently serves on two UN-WMO-expert groups: Urban-PREDICT Project and Societal and Economic Research Applications (SERA) working group.  He has contributed significantly to applied urban research projects including the Future Resilience for African CiTies And Lands (FRACTAL), The CLARE MECHANICS (Methods to Enhance Adaptation Resilience and Climate Information Services), Capacity Strengthening for NbS in African cities, linking school feeding in African cities with sustainable urban agrifood-food systems, urban governance and  decentralisation, community-led climate resilient settlement upgrading approaches, among other projects. He is a regular keynote speaker at major international conferences focused on sustainable and inclusive urban futures in Africa.  His conference speaking focuses on diverse urban futures in Africa.

Manja Hoppe Andreasen is an Associate Professor of human geography at the Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management at University of Copenhagen. Her research is concerned with the drivers and dynamics of urban expansion in rapidly urbanizing low- and middle-income countries. Her research examines the motivations and logics of the diverse actors involved in land transactions, investments and property development in urbanizing peripheries and how urban governance arrangements shape the dynamics of peri-urban transformation. Her research offers insights with implications for urban policymakers and planners seeking to foster inclusive, resilient and sustainable cities and engages with key urban policy agendas, including land formalization, settlement upgrading, infrastructure expansion, sustainable transport systems and climate change resilience. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in Tanzanian and Ghanaian cities. While strongly bent towards qualitative methodologies, she has an aptitude for integrating insights from qualitative, quantitative and spatial methodologies.

• Patrick joined the University of Melbourne as a Lecturer in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning in 2019. Patrick was with the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology Ghana in 2016 and Charles Sturt University in 2011, and worked in the areas of urban planning and management, urban resilience, environmental management, regional planning, natural resource management, climate change and development of research packages to guide urbanisation and sustainable environmental development in Africa focusing on Ghana. He has also contributed to collaborative projects with researchers at University of Michigan, USA, University of Waterloo, Canada, Georgia State University, USA, Griffith University, Australia, and Wuhan University, China. He is a member of the Planning Institute of Australia (PIA) and the Ghana Institute of Planning (GIP), University of Michigan Presidential Scholar, a Visiting Scholar at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) at Stellenbosch University, Cape Town South Africa, Global Young Academy Fellow, Ghana Young Academy Fellow, and an Adjunct Research Fellow of the Institute for Land, Water and Society, Charles Sturt University. Patrick has published widely in his research area. He serves as the Senior Associate Editor (Africa Region) for the Journal of Urban Affairs, and serve on the editorial boards of Urban Studies, Habitat International, and Tourism Planning and Development.

Rita Lambert is an urban development planner and architect originally from Ethiopia. She has over twenty-five years of experience in academia, research, and professional practice across Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Her work is grounded in feminist political ecology, socio-environmental justice, and systems thinking, and seeks to make visible the historical legacies and contemporary processes that keep people and ecosystems in conditions of vulnerability, while identifying pathways towards more equitable and sustainable urban futures. She examines a range of life-sustaining issues, including water, energy, housing, food, and ecological systems, and explores how policies and everyday practices interact. Urban land has been a central lens in her work, and she has made significant contributions to debates on peripheral urbanisation, land governance, informality, and urban and environmental planning. Through her research, she has examined the violence embedded in planning and land management systems, as well as the mechanisms through which informal and illegal forms of land acquisition become legitimised. She also investigates the reproducion of environmental injustice across cities and regions, exposing low-income communities and ecosystems to heightened vulnerability, risk, and dispossession. Rita has extensive experience leading multidisciplinary research teams as Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator and working in close partnership with civil society organisations, NGOs, community groups, and public authorities. She consistently bridges research, policy, and practice to support socially just and environmentally sustainable urban development.

Prof Wilbard Kombe is based at the Ardhi University, Institute of Human Settlements Studies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He holds a PhD in urban land management from the Technical University Dortmund (TUD), Germany. He has worked extensively in low income settlements in several African cities. His main areas of research include: Urban poverty, informality; urban land governance, the nexus between urban poverty, land and livelihoods of the urban poor, urban inequality and access to basic infrastructure services. Kombe has won several international grants and has successfully executed several collaborative research projects over the last 10 years. The impact of some of his research works includes direct inputs into Tanzanian national policies such as the Urban Development Management Policy (2015); the National Human Settlements Development Policy (2018); the National Land Policy (2018) and the National Housing Policy (2018). Prof. Kombe is a board member of various professional and public bodies. In 2005/2006, he worked for the Human Science Research Council (HSRC), Pretoria South Africa as a Chief Research Specialist. He has also supervised research projects on variety of research issues. These research projects were executed by MDP Harare and funded by the Netherland Government.