Jean-Michel Bonvin is Professor of Sociology and Social Policies at the Institute of Demography and Socioeconomics of the University of Geneva. His main fields of expertise include comparative social policies, sociology of public administration, sociology of work, as well as theories of justice, especially the capability approach. His research has been funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) and by the European Commission, among others. He is currently a member of the Management Committee of the Re-InVEST project (H2020) and of the NCCR-LIVES ‘Overcoming Vulnerability: Life Course Perspectives’.
Vando Borghi is Full Professor at the Department of Sociology and Business Law, University of Bologna. He currently teaches the courses of Sociology of Development and Sociology of Organization. His main research interests – pursued in different empirical fields such as labour and work, unemployment and vulnerability, active policies, urban cultural policies, metamorphoses of public realm, critique and social emancipation – can be summarized in terms of a general interest in the ‘social bases of democracy’. He edited (with Supriya Routh) Workers and the Global Informal Economy: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Routledge, 2016.
Jean De Munck is Professor at the Catholic University of Louvain. His work focuses on the epistemology of evaluative sociology, specially applied to institutions. He specialized in changes in normativity in contemporary societies. He applied his approach to legal sociology (labour law, public law). He has also conducted research on the critical discourse of consumerism and on a sociological account of participation inspired by a discussion of the capability approach of Amartya Sen and the communicative turn of Jürgen Habermas.
Steven L. Foster is an independent scholar and retired expatriate. He has been a union organizer/political activist/researcher, and held positions ranging from various labourer demands to technical consultant and project management in business contexts. He has been promoting activist causes such as a regional fight in the Chicago area for more equitable public-school funding through tax base sharing initiatives spearheaded by The Metropolitan Alliance of Congregations (over 100 churches, synagogues, and mosques aligning for this fight). Recent publications include essays written for The Hampton Institute-a worker’s think tank.
Rune Halvorsen is Associate Professor of Social Policy in the Department of Social Work, Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway. His research focuses on comparative social policies, disability policies, social movements and social citizenship.
Barbara Hobson Emerita Professor of Sociology at Stockholm University, Researcher at the Linnaeus Center on Social Policy and Family Dynamics in European, Stockholm University and Research Fellow at Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin (2017-2018). She has published numerous articles and books on gender and welfare states, addressing the themes of citizenship diversity, social movements, and men, masculinities and social politics. Over the past few years her publications have focused on sociological applications of Sen’s capability approach, including: Worklife Balance: The Agency and Capabilities Gap (OUP, 2015); ‘Two scenarios for European fathers: Adversity and risk? Opportunities and agency for a work family balance’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (2009): ‘Birthstrikes? Agency and capabilities in the reconciliation of employment and family’, Journal of Marriage and Family Review (2006) most recently: Migrants, Market and Domestic Work: Do welfare regimes matter? Care/domestic work in two institutional contexts, Journal of European Social Policy (2018). Her current research project on trans-national migrants and the Widening gap in capabilities within and across societies, with its multi level and mutli-dimensional framework, seeks to extend the theoretical and empirical borders of the capabilities approach further.
Bjorn Hvinden is Professor in Sociology and senior researcher at Norwegian Social Research, Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway. His main research interests are comparative and European social policies, social citizenship, climate change and welfare, disability, poverty and youth job insecurity.
Thomas Klikauer teaches MBAs at the Sydney Graduate School of Management at Western Sydney University (Australia). He has published books on management including Managerialism (2013). He is currently writing on a book entitled Media Capitalism.
Francesco Laruffa is Research Fellow at the University of Geneva, where he works on the RE-InVEST project. His research interests include: theories of social justice and their relationship with welfare reform; critical theory; neoliberalism; radical democracy.
Emilie Rosenstein has a PhD in sociology and is a Research Fellow at the University of Geneva. Her main research areas include social policies, especially in the field of disability and youth welfare, the capability approach and the life course perspective. She is a member of the NCCR-LIVES.
Bénédicte Zimmermann is Professor of Sociology at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris and Permanent Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg (Institut for Advanced Study) in Berlin. Her main research interests are in the changing role of work in the constitution of European societies and their social organization, with a comparative focus on France and Germany. She published, among others, Ce que travailler veut dire: Une sociologie des capacités et des parcours professionnels (Economica, 2011, 2nd edn 2014) and, together with Jean de Munck, La liberté au prisme des capacités: Amartya Sen au-delà du libéralisme (EHESS, 2008).
