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NIGD Board
NIGD operates on a project basis. Each project is supervised by a project supervisor who is in charge of the project budget. The project supervisor is directly responsible to the board.
NIGD was founded in 1997 by Reino Hjerppe, Veli-Pekka Niitamo, Heikki Patomäki, Katarina Sehm-Patomäki, Vappu Taipale, Riku Warjovaara, and Matti Wuori. The board is elected at its annual meetings. In 2007, membership includes 78 persons.
Board
Heikki Patomäki
Heikki Patomäki serves as NIGDs current chair. A founding member of NIGD and its Research Director since 1998. As a cosmopolitical activist, Heikki has focussed on furthering global taxes and building institutions of global democracy. He is the author of Democratising Globalisation. The Leverage of the Tobin Tax (Zed, 2001) and, with Teivo Teivainen, A Possible World. Democratic Transformation of Global Institutions (Zed, 2004), alongside with about dozen other books on various topics. He is also a professor of International Relations at the University of Helsinki in Finland and innovation professor of globalisation and global institutions at the RMIT University in Australia.
Raphael Hoetmer
Raphael is a Dutch activist and researcher, whose contributed to the construction and development of the Programme on Democracy and Global
Transformation in Lima over the past two years. He´se currently coordinator of this centre, which organizes debates, publications and
academic programs in the San Marcos University, and works with different social organizations in Peru. He is currently advancing his PhD research
on the situation of social movements in Peru in comparative perspective.
As an activist Rapha has been involved in different networks, collectives and social organizations in both Europe and Latin-America, engaged in the struggle against the privatization of services; the construction of solidarity networks in between European and
Latin-American social movements; and the refugeemovement in the Netherlands.
Francine Mestrum
Francine Mestrum has a PhD in social sciences and is a researcher on development, poverty and global governance. She teaches at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. She regularly participates in the world social fora and works for several social movements in Belgium. She started her career as a conference interpreter for the European institutions and is thus very familiar with European policies.
Ritu Priya
Ritu is a medical graduate with a doctorate in Public Health from Jawharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, where she is currently a faculty member. She has been active in the people's/alternative health movement since 1982 and is a member (currently convenor) of the Medico Friend Circle, an all-India network of socially conscious medicos and others with concerns about health of the poor and the rational practise of medicine. She is one of the coordinators of the Swasthya panchayat, working group on health of Lokayan and active in the Vasudhaiva Kutumbakm network. As an inter-disciplinary reseracher, she has written on issues of urban poor and planning, poverty nutrition and communicable deseases (especially TB and AIDS), epidemology, health systems research and health policy, dalits and backwards castes, NGOs in health, and linkages of democracy and health. Currently, she is also a member of the Working Group on Ecology and Dignity of the SADED, CSDS.
Ruth Reitan
Ruth Reitan teaches and researches on international relations theory,
critical globalization, transnational social movements, peace, and
security at the University of Miami’s Department of International
Studies. She is author of Global Activism (Routledge 2007) based on
several years of engaged research into the Jubilee anti-debt campaigns,
the post-Seattle Our World Is Not for Sale network, the Via Campesina,
the Zapatista-inspired People’s Global Action, and their involvement
with the World Social Forum. Previous research on transnational social
movements include The Rise and Decline of an Alliance: Cuba and African
American Leaders in the 1960s (Michigan State University 1999). She has
a Ph.D. in International Relations from American University’s School of
International Service in Washington D.C. Her current research is on
transnational mobilization of environmental, women’s, and the anti-war
movements.
Marko Ulvila
Since
his youth, Marko has been drawn to social movements working on global
challenges, such as, social change towards sustainable societies in the
North, and ways of interacting with popular movements in the South for
self-determination and human rights. In practice this meant voluntary
engagement in organisations such as Coalition for Environment and
Development and Friends of the Earth Finland, and studies in relevant
topics at the University of Tampere (anthropology, peace and conflict
research, development studies and environmental policy).
Marko's
first interest in the South was Tanzania, and later in South Asia where
he undertook a research project on development NGOs in Bangladesh and
Nepal. In India he was associated with the Centre for the Study of
Developing Societies and Lokayan. Recently Marko has also been engaged
with the Green Party in Finland, which briefly had him working as a
special adviser to the Minister for Development Co-operation. Currently
he is on parental leave taking care of his children so his wife can
pursue her studies
Jaakko Valli
Jaakko Valli has familiarized himself to the problematics of development cooperation, alike in the fieldwork and on the theoretical level. However, as an activist, he has mainly concentrated to make things happen and at the present moment he is actively planning and coordinating different projects, which support the objectives of organizations and movements aiming to extend the democratization process.