International Institute of Social Studies (ISS-EUR)

ISS logoISS-EUR is the coordinator for the WEGO-ITN project. Professor Wendy Harcourt is the project coordinator and Sharmini Bisessar is the project officer.

wendy harcourt photo
Wendy Harcourt
is Professor of Gender, Diversity and Sustainable Development at ISS-EUR in The Hague.She is currently Chair of the Institute Council, member of the Research Committee, CIRI Research Group Coordinator and Coordinator of the Marie Curie ITN ‘WEGO’ project.
Prof. dr. Wendy Harcourt joined the ISS in November 2011 after 23 years at the Society for International Development, Rome as Editor of the journal Development and Director of Programmes. She has edited 10 books and her monograph: ‘Body Politics in Development: Critical Debates in Gender and Development’ published by Zed Books in 2009, received the 2010 Feminist Women Studies Association Book Prize. She is series editor of both the Palgrave Gender, Development and Social Change and the ISS-Routledge Series on Gender, Development and Sexuality, a member of the International Governing Council of the Society for International Development as well as actively involved in gender and development journal boards and civil society networks.
She is Coordinator of the Research Group on Civic Innovation, Chair of the ISS Institute Council as well as Coordinator of the EU H2020-MSCA-ITN-2017 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks (ITN) WEGO (Well-being, Ecology, Gender, and Community).
Sharmini Bissesar-Selvarajah
Sharmini Bisessar-Selvarajah joined the ISS in November 1998 as an Assistant Manager with the journal Development and Change. From 1999 until 2013 she supported the Office of Educational Affairs as programme manager for MA majors, diploma programmes, tailor-made trainings, short courses and refresher courses. From 2013 until 2017, she was the research programme manager for the Political Ecology research group.
In January 2018 she became the project officer for WEGO. In her over 20-year career at the ISS, she has worked with academic staff, PhD researchers, MA students, management, support colleagues and external relations. She is currently a member of the Institute Council of the ISS. She holds a Master’s degree in Children and Youth Studies, Master’s degree in Management and a professional certificate in total quality management. Her interest in anthropological research lies in children and young people, women, political ecology and sustainable development.
Julien-Françoise Gerber
Julien-François Gerber
is Assistant Professor at ISS-EUR in The Hague. Before that, he was a faculty in Bhutan, in India and at Harvard University.
He works on the relationships between economic systems, (un)sustainability, and the conditions for flourishing, alienation and resistance. He did fieldwork in Cameroon, Ecuador and Indonesia, and has published on the expansion of capitalism in the rural sphere, the property-credit nexus, environmental movements, (de)commodification, and degrowth.
Peter-Knorringa

Peter Knorringa has a PhD in Development Economics from the Free University, Amsterdam and is Professor of Private Sector & Development at ISS-EUR in The Hague. His main interest concerns the diverse roles and impacts of business on development.

He investigates to what extent socially responsible and environmentally sustainable forms of development are possible under capitalism. His empirical research focuses on global value chains, industrial clusters, private governance and labour standards, frugal innovation, informal sector entrepreneurship, and strategies to support survival businesses. He is one of the co-founders and the present Director of the Research Centre on Frugal Innovation in Africa, an initiative of Leiden University, Delft University of Technology and Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Rosalba-Icaza

Rosalba Icaza is Associate Professor in Global Politics, Gender and Diversity at ISS-EUR in The Hague.

Her research focuses on decolonial feminism and global politics and she recently published ‘Social Struggles and the Coloniality of Gender’ for The Routledge Handbook on Postcolonial Politics (2018).
Murat Arsel is Professor of Political Economy of Sustainable Development at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam. His doctoral education was at the University of Cambridge. He was a post-doctoral lecturer at the University of Chicago. He has held the Keyman Family Visiting Professorship at Northwestern University and is Adjunct Professor at Universidad San Francisco de Quito. He is  the Chair of the Editorial Board of Development and Change.
Situated firmly within development studies and informed by political ecology, heterodox economics, social theory, and agrarian political economy, his work focuses on the tensions between nature, capitalism, and emancipatory socio-economic change.