Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Piet den Blanken is a documentary photographer and photo-journalist based in Breda (Netherlands). His reportages have been published in national and regional newspapers, trade union magazines and opinion journals. His photo-books include De Kleine Brabantse Dorpen (‘Small Villages  of Brabant’), Mores Leren (dealing with justice and imprisonment), El Salvador (on the civil war), and Grensgevallen, a 25-year retrospective. http://www.denblanken.com / piet@denblanken.com

Raj Chari is a Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Trinity College Dublin. A graduate of Queen’s University (Canada), he has published several articles on public policy and party politics in journals such as Government and Opposition, West European Politics, Journal of European Public Policy, Political Quarterly and Electoral Studies. He has co-authored Understanding EU Policy Making (2006) and Regulating Lobbying: A Global Comparison (2010). www.regulatelobbying.com <CHARIR@tcd.ie>

Patrick Clairzier ia a Haitian-American whose recent Master’s thesis examined the effects of IMF policies on the Haitian economy. He is currently working as a consultant at the United Nations Environmental Program in Paris. He is the co-author, with Joseph Beaudreau, of 'Neo-Liberal Democracy: A Contradiction in Terms' (http://www.spectrezine.org/neo-liberal-democracy-contradiction-terms). <pc2007twr@gmail.com>

Mario Kessler is Associate Professor of History at the University of Potsdam, Germany, where he is a member of the Center for Contemporary History. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Massachusetts, Yeshiva University, and Columbus [Georgia] State University). In 2010-11 he was Joan Nordell Fellow at Houghton Library, Harvard University. His books include biographies of the German refugee historian Arthur Rosenberg (2003) and the political scientist Ossip K. Flechtheim (2007) and, most recently, a history of Soviet studies in post-WWII West Germany. He is currently completing a biography of the former German communist leader and American anti-communist Ruth Fischer. <mariokessler@yahoo.com>

Karel Koster is a foreign policy adviser to the Socialist Party of the Netherlands, specialising in international security and nuclear proliferation. He worked in the anti-apartheid movement and the Dutch peace movement as an analyst on security issues and as an anti-nuclear-arms lobbyist. He has published articles on proliferation, missile defence, the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war, the CIA rendition issue, and NATO nuclear policy. His 2006 book on nuclear disarmament was published by the Netherlands section of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. More recently he has co-authored papers on foreign policy and NATO with Netherlands MP Harry van Bommel, foreign affairs spokesperson of the Socialist Party. <k.koster@inter.nl.net>

Steve McGiffen is an Associate Professor of International Relations at the American Graduate School in Paris. He has a PhD in US political history, a subject he has taught at the University of Manchester, England and the UK’s Open University. From 1986 to 1999 he was political assistant to a Member of the European Parliament, after which he joined the secretariat of the European Parliament’s United Left Group, representing the Socialist Party of the Netherlands, for whom he continues to work as a translator and occasional consultant. His books include Globalisation (2002), The European Union: A Critical Guide (2005), Biotechnology: Corporate Power vs the People's Interest (2006), Poisoned Spring: The European Union and Water Privatisation (2009, with Kartika Liotard), and a historical novel, Tennant’s Rock (2001).  He lives in rural France. <spmcgiffen@yahoo.co.uk>

Daniel Hillebrand O'Donovan is a post-graduate student and part-time Lecturer in Chemistry at Trinity College Dublin. His current line of research concerns the development of novel anticancer and antidepressant therapeutics. <odonovdh@tcd.ie>

Sanya Osha is a SARChI research fellow at the Institute for Economic Research on Innovation, Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa. His previous work has appeared in Transition, Research in African Literatures, African Review of Books and the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century Fiction. In 2010, the Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought published a series of his articles on knowledge. His latest book is Naked Light and the Blind Eye (2010). <babaosha@yahoo.com>

Stuart Shields teaches International Political Economy at the University of Manchester. He is the current convener of the British International Studies Association’s International Political Economy working group (IPEG) and is on the editorial board of Capital & Class. His edited volume Critical International Political Economy: Dialogue, Debate and Dissensus, has just been published by Palgrave, and his book The International Political Economy of Transition: Transnational Social Forces and Eastern Central Europe’s Transformation is forthcoming from Routledge. His recent work has appeared in the journals Global Society, Competition & Change, and International Politics. <stuart.shields@manchester.ac.uk>

Alexander van Steenderen is a policy analyst for the parliamentary group of the Socialist Party in the Dutch Parliament. He advises on all of the parliamentary group's dealings with the European Union. He has prepared numerous papers and speeches on the Lisbon Treaty and was co-editor of the SP manifesto for the European elections in 2009. Before working for the SP, he was an activist and a board member of the Dutch Social Forum. <a.vsteenderen@tweedekamer.nl>

Stine Vejlby recently received her Master’s degree in International Relations and Diplomacy at the American Graduate School in Paris, an affiliate of Arcadia University. Her thesis was on Danish foreign policy formulation in relation to that of the United States. Her current research interest is Hezbollah and Lebanese politics. <svejlby@ruc.dk>