Prof. Kapilashrami is an Interdisciplinary social scientist trained in Sociology and Public health and Professor in Global health Policy and Equity in the School of Health & Social Care at University of Essex.

Her work lies at the intersections of health politics and development praxis, with particular interest in understanding their interface with equity, human rights, and social justice. She has longstanding research interest and experience that spreads over twenty years in both academia and civil society/ development sector in South Asia and the UK. Her current work focuses on advancing an intersectional approach, conceptually and empirically, to examine health inequalities and structural determinants of health and well-being. She has published widely in these areas of health policies and inequalities (100+ publications) and led Knowledge exchange and capacity building initiatives in South Asia, Central Asia, the UK and Europe. She is advisor to the UK-REACH study into Ethnicity And COVID-19 outcomes in healthcare workers and leads the ICOPE consortium set up to examine health workers’ experiences of covid-management from an intersectional lens. She has also undertaken human rights assessment of the pandemic for the WHO and IPPPR, and developed technical guidance for engaging communities in priority setting processes.

She a is longstanding member of the People’s Health Movement, and convened its Scotland chapter (until 2019), Trustee on the board of Health Poverty Action and Founding Chair of the MigrationHealth South Asia network. Kapilashrami is on the Gender Advisory Panel for WHO’s Human Reproduction Programme, and the Editorial advisory board for the BMJ, PLOS Global Public Health and Lancet GRaCE.
 

Franca Brüggen is a young doctor in training, currently working in the paediatric department in a Hospital in Brandenburg. She studied medicine and social sciences in Berlin. She has been an active member of IPPNW (International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War) and ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons) since her early years at university. She was one of the International Student Representative of IPPNW from 2017 to 2021. 

She is particularly interested in medical peace work. She has worked with the medical peace work courses on different levels, including peer teaching classes, international workshops and exchange programmes. Last year she put the theory into practice by working in the medical team of the ROSA project in Greece. ROSA (Rolling Safespace) is a non-profit organisation that addresses the particular situation of women on the run by creating a saferspace. They have converted a truck into a mobile contact point, offering sports workshops, discussion groups, medical consultations, childcare and a space for mutual support. 

Yudit Namer is a clinical psychologist and researcher in mental health. She holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey. She worked as a psychotherapist in Istanbul for ten years; her practice was rooted in relational psychoanalytic, as well as existential psychotherapy traditions. With a number of LGBTQ+ non-governmental organizations in Turkey, Yudit Namer has contributed to developing training programs for mental health professionals in providing mental health care for LGBTQ+ clients to improve access to mental health care. She focused on marginalisation and health during her time at Bielefeld School of Public Health.

She currently works as an assistant professor at the University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands.

Stefan Wagler is a psychologist and licensed psychotherapist specializing in psychosis psychotherapy at a psychiatric hospital in Berlin. He is the Chairman of the Board of the German-speaking Chapter of the Association for for Contextual Behavioral Science (DGKV/ACBS), trainer for Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), coach for development professionals and trainer for community mental health approaches in the context of development cooperation.

His perspective is nourished by Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and is underpinned by his experiences as a community mental health consultant in the Middle East, freelance trainer, psychotherapist in acute psychiatry and in outpatient care. The methodological approaches he uses are rooted in mindfulness-based approaches, methods of ACT and interpersonal behavioral therapy, feminist psychotherapy, Schema therapy, the Do-No-Harm approach and others.