Prof. Seema Purushothaman is an Ecological Economist and Professor with the School of Development at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, also affiliated with the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE). She holds an MSc in Agricultural Economics from Kerala Agricultural University, an MSc in Environmental Economics from the University of London, and a PhD in Land Use Dynamics in Tribal Lands of the Southern Western Ghats from the Forest Research Institute, Dehradun. Her work involves empirical, conceptual and action research spanning agrarian communities in peri-urban zones, rural landscapes, and forest peripheries, and she has co-authored the book City and the Peasant: Urbanization and Agrarian Change in Southern India. With nearly 25 years of research experience across government, corporate, and non-profit organisations, her teaching interests span sustainability as an agrarian, economic, and conceptual concern.

Dr. Enid Still is a feminist and interdisciplinary social scientist at the University of Passau, Germany, affiliated with the Chair of Critical Development Studies – Southeast Asia. Her research explores the role of affect in shaping socio-ecological relations, particularly within agri-food systems, critically unpacking discourses of ethical practice and sustainability to reveal not-so-visible power dynamics and histories that shape contemporary norms. She completed her doctoral dissertation titled Affective Roots: Memory, Emotions and Viscerality within Organic Agrifood Networks in Tamil Nadu, India in January 2025. She was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow under the European Union's Horizon 2020 programme, as part of the Feminist Political Ecology network WEGO-ITN. Her fieldwork has been centred in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, India, examining women-led agricultural collectives, organic food networks, and decolonial approaches to ecological ethics.

Dr. Iago Otero Armengol is a researcher and project officer at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Mountain Research (ICMR), University of Lausanne, Switzerland. He holds a PhD in Environmental Sciences from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (2010), and has previously held post-doctoral research positions at the Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems, Humboldt University of Berlin. His research interests span biodiversity conservation, wildfire, mountain social-ecological systems, interdisciplinarity, and sustainability transformations, with a focus on how pluralist nature valuation can inform biodiversity policy and conservation. At ICMR, he has played a central coordinating role in advancing interdisciplinary research on mountain-specific challenges including climate change, land planning, and economic vulnerability. He is also a contributor to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

Prof. Dr. Ing. Wiwandari Handayani is a Professor and Head of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Faculty of Engineering, Diponegoro University (UNDIP), Semarang, Indonesia, where she also serves as Scientific Lead as a core partner institution. She holds a bachelor's degree in Urban and Regional Planning from UNDIP, master's degrees in Urban and Regional Planning from ITB and Population Studies from the Australian National University, and a doctoral degree in Regional Development Planning from the University of Stuttgart, Germany. Since 2018, she has headed the Center for Urban and Regional Resilience Research (CURE) at Diponegoro University, and has been actively engaged in urban sustainability and resilience since 2011. Her research spans urban and regional planning, disaster risk management, climate adaptation, and governance, with deep engagement in networks including GCSMUS and NUPS, and research grants from the Australian, South Korean, and US governments.

Prof. Dr. Barbara Regeer is a Full Professor and University Research Chair in Transdisciplinary Research for Purpose-Led Transformation in Health and Environmental Sustainability at the Athena Institute, Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam. Appointed to the University Research Chair in September 2023, she focuses on transdisciplinary research practices that foster system transformations in domains such as urban food systems, mental health care, climate change, and youth protection, pioneering research on "meaningful measures" that support professionals to learn, reflect, and develop agency to act. Her research interests span multi-stakeholder processes, knowledge co-creation, social change, and mutual learning across areas including sustainable food systems, integrated rural development, mental health care, child and youth care, and disability mainstreaming. She has co-authored books on knowledge co-creation for sustainable development and her work has garnered over 3,700 citations globally.

Dr. Emma Emily de Wit is an independent researcher and former affiliate of the Athena Institute at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, with expertise spanning transdisciplinary research, mental health, child and youth development, and learning. Her published work includes research on participatory approaches to mental health in low-resource settings, suicide prevention in India, and WHO mh-GAP interventions with lay mental health workers in humanitarian contexts such as South Sudan. She has also examined alternative education approaches including unschooling among Indian middle-class families, and developed parenting support programmes addressing inter-generational concerns in Pune, India. Her research is characterised by a commitment to epistemic justice, inclusive knowledge co-creation, and the application of transdisciplinary methods to address complex social and mental health challenges in diverse global contexts. She has also worked as a research consultant for Save the Children in Nepal, India and Philippines.

Dr. Bobby Zachariah is a transdisciplinary researcher and practitioner affiliated with the Athena Institute for Research on Innovation and Communication at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His action research focuses on the application of Human Capacity Development and the SALT (Support, Appreciate, Listen & Learn, Team) methodology across diverse areas of programming, including community development, suicide prevention and survivor support, psychosocial support, community health, and organisational development. His recent work includes research on the impact of SALT-based suicide prevention peer education programmes on peer educators. Drawing on participatory and community-led approaches, his work bridges research and practice to foster inclusive development and mental wellbeing across low-resource and underserved settings, with a particular focus on India.

Dr. Jenia Mukherjee is an Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Kharagpur, with research expertise spanning environmental history, urban political ecology, transdisciplinary waters, and urban studies. She received the prestigious Carson Writing Fellowship (2018–19) from the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich, for completing her book Blue Infrastructures: Natural History, Political Ecology and Urban Development in India, published by Springer Nature. She has also been awarded the Salzburg Global and Nippon Foundation Fellowship, the World Social Science Fellowship on Sustainable Urbanization by UNESCO-ISSC, and the Australian Award Fellowship at Monash University, Melbourne. She is an active member of the Panta Rhei Network of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences and serves on the editorial boards of multiple international journals.