Digital governance and marginalised communities

Ain Shams University  (ASU) - Egypt

Dr Hamza has years of professional and academic experience as an architect, urban designer, and researcher. She works as an Assistant Professor at ASU. Her research interests include energy transition, community energy and environmental planning. She received her MSc from Ain Shams University in 2014, with a thesis titled ‘Environmental Solutions as a Main Approach to Sustainable Neighbourhoods’. In 2020, she obtained her PhD from the Oxford Brookes University, UK, with a thesis entitled ‘Guiding the Renewable Energy Transition in Developing Countries: Towards an Integrated Model for Providing RE in Low-Income Housing in Egypt’. During her time in the UK, she participated in numerous teaching-related activities, including seminars, fieldwork, design studios, and lectures. She worked as an assistant lecturer on two modules related to urban design and planning. She also received the Associate Fellowship from Advance HE. 

ESIC Medical College and Hospital - India

Dr Palaniraja is an early career researcher from Pondicherry, South India. Having completed his post-graduation (Community Medicine) from Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER), he is now Assistant Professor at ESIC Medical College and Hospital. His areas of interest include non-communicable diseases, health inequity among marginalized communities, community-based health policy and systems research, and health promotion. He is currently working on developing and evaluating interventions to improve the health outcomes of vulnerable populations. He has been the principal investigator and co-investigator of several grant projects under the Government of India. He has published over 50 articles in indexed national and international journals. Dr Palaniraja was awarded a full scholarship to attend the prestigious International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) Summer School in Lyon, France. He has received a Best Proposal Award for promoting public health practices from the World NCD Federation.

Kenyatta University  (KU) - Kenya

As well as being an educator at Kenyatta University, Dr Otieno is an inaugural member of the Global Centre for Pluralism’s Educating for Pluralism Innovation Lab, in Canada. He holds a PhD in Educational Administration and teaches educational management and research, leadership, and IT for education. He has published peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on values-based leadership, digital literacy, blended learning, and virtual exchange. His current research focuses are internationalisation through virtual exchange, and pluralism, social justice and climate action. He is a UN certified virtual exchange facilitator for the Soliya Connect Program and the Sharing Perspectives Foundation. He has co-designed and implemented Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) programs, on decolonising higher education, with partners in Europe, Africa and the Americas. As lead consultant at the Center for Values Education, he advocates for equity, diversity and inclusion in workspaces.

Stockholm Environment Institute, University of York

Professor Ensor is a social scientist with research interests in processes that can lead to increasingly equitable human development. Frequently this translates into work alongside marginalised communities focusing on disaster risk reduction and environmental change, the governance and politics of technology and infrastructure, and how processes of contestation and learning can account for power and social justice in ‘resilient’ development. His most recent work has centred on how political capability, knowledge infrastructures and recognition justice can inform how we understand and respond to persistent marginalisation. He has a background in human rights development practice that informs his work.