Roberto Rocco is an Associate Professor of Spatial Planning and Strategy at TU Delft's Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment. With expertise in governance for the built environment and sustainability transitions, his research focuses on the intersection of spatial justice and social sustainability. Trained as an architect and spatial planner, he holds a master's from the University of São Paulo and a PhD from TU Delft. His significant contributions include authoring the UfM Strategic Action Plan for Sustainable Urbanisation in the Mediterranean and editing the Routledge Handbook on Informal Urbanisation. Rocco has extensive experience in both Global North and South contexts, having worked as a consultant for the Union for the Mediterranean and published widely on informal urbanization, spatial justice, and sustainable urban development. His work particularly emphasizes the integration of socio-spatial justice with sustainability transitions in urban planning and design education.

Zorica Nedović-Budić is Professor Emerita of the University of Illinois @ Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and Visiting Professor at University College Dublin (UCD). She received a PhD degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and was a faculty member at UIUC for 15 years, Professor Chair of Spatial Planning at UCD for 7 years, and a professor and department head at the University of Illinois @ Chicago until her retirement in 2021. Prof. Nedović-Budić’s work is about spatial planning, cities and technology. From 2011 to 2016 she was the principal investigator on a 30-partner, Euro 9 million European FP7 project Transitioning Towards Urban Resilience and Sustainability (TURAS). As the principal investigator (PI) and co-PI in over 40 projects, she received approximately $2 million in research grants, excluding partner funds. She has published extensively in books (20+ chapters) and peer-reviewed journals (60+ papers); co-edited three volumes and wrote over 50 research reports and articles in conference proceedings; and made hundreds of presentations at various events. She served on editorial boards of several journals, including the ASCE’s Journal of Urban Planning and Development and the Journal of the American Planning Association (JAPA) Book Review. Prof. Nedović-Budić was a member of the Board of Directors of the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA) and the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS); the Executive Committee of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP); the Governing Board of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP); the AESOP-ACSP liaison; and the American Planning Association (APA) Education Committee. She currently chairs the AESOP’s Best Congress Paper Award, and serves as an advisory member of the 6th World Planning Schools Congress (WPSC) Steering Committee, following her co-chairing the 5th WPSC in 2022.

Christian Lamker is Assistant Professor Sustainable Transformation & Regional Planning at the University of Groningen (Netherlands). He obtained his PhD on uncertainty and complexity in planning processes at TU Dortmund University (Germany) in 2016 and has worked in Groningen since 2019. His current research and teaching within the Department of Spatial Planning and Environment focuses on roles in planning, post-growth planning, citizen engagement, planning instruments, and sustainable transformation. He has studied and worked on spatial planning in Dortmund, Aachen, Auckland, Detroit and Melbourne and coordinates the Master programme Society, Sustainability and Planning (SSP) in Groningen since 2019. Within AESOP, he is co-coordinator of the thematic group on Planning and Complexity and is one of the national representatives for the Netherlands in the Council of Representatives (CoRep).

Duygu Cihanger Ribeiro is an Assistant Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning, Faculty of Architecture, Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara, Turkey. She graduated as an urban planner from METU in 2010 and earned her master’s degree in the Urban Design Program there in 2013, during which she also worked as a research assistant. In 2018, she received her Ph.D. from Ghent University in Belgium with a dissertation examining the relationship between spontaneity and design in urban space. She later held a position as an assistant professor at TED University (2019) and undertook visiting and postdoctoral research roles at Ghent University (2021), Lisbon University (2023), and Aveiro University (2024). She has organized and participated in numerous national and international academic events including conferences, workshops and exhibitions while collaborating with various independent art collectives. Since 2012, she has held administrative positions at the UCTEA Chamber of City Planners promoting urban planning practices and education while advocating for sustainable urban development policies in Turkey. Her research explores the intersection of social life and the morphology of urban space, focusing on informal urbanism, public space, everyday life, inclusive urbanism, migration, and urban sociology.

Melis Oğuz Çevik is an Associate Professor at Gebze Technical University, Department of Urban and Regional Planning. After graduating from Sankt Georg Austrian College in 2001, Oğuz Çevik completed her bachelor's degree in Urban and Regional Planning (2005) and Sociology (Double Major Program, 2006) at Middle East Technical University. Oğuz Çevik received her master's degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Social Policy. In 2016, she completed her PhD on migrant women's use of public space and urban mobility within the scope of the Double Doctorate Protocol of the Technical University of Berlin and Istanbul Technical University. She received her associate professorship in 2021. Before joining Gebze Technical University she was a faculty member at Istanbul Beykent University, Department of Industrial Design (English), and served as the head of the department for three years. In addition to her academic studies, she has been the coordinator and host of “Mekân ve İnsan”, a weekly discussion program on urban research and studies on Medyascope for more than six years. She continues to conduct academic and scientific research, projects, and workshops within the scope of urban sociology. Her research interests include gender, urban transformation, digital technologies, disaster, migration, and social sustainability.

Deniz Ay is an urban scholar working at the University of Bern’s Institute of Geography. Her research interests sit at the intersection of urban redevelopment, land policy and land use planning, and social reproduction feminism. She teaches undergraduate and master’s level courses on land policy, social reproduction and urban commons, and a master’s studio on planning for postgrowth society. She has supervised/co-supervised several master’s and PhD students conducting thesis research on planning and urban geography across a range of national contexts. Deniz received her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's Department of Urban and Regional Planning. She also holds an MSc. in Economics degree from the London School of Economics and a BA in Economics from Sabanci University, Turkey. She has published in leading urban studies and planning journals including Habitat International, Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, City, Land Use Policy, and Planning Theory & Practice.