(Listed alphabetically)

Deborah Alimi

With a background in development cooperation and governance support, Deborah Alimi is specialized in the study of illicit drug markets and global drug policymaking, with a keen interest in the linkages between sustainable development and illicit drug trends and policies. Member of the European Center for Sociology and Political Science, she dedicated her PhD research to the evolutions of UN drug policymaking in the last UNGASS cycle.

Committed to bridge research and policymaking, she engages as far as possible with both scientific and policy professional communities through publications, referee commitments and contributions to academic conferences and multi-disciplinary policy-oriented events and expert meetings. In this perspective, she worked as a policy analyst and a research fellow to governmental, international and non-governmental organizations, including the OECD, UNDP or the French government. Deborah also currently serves as an independent consultant working on illicit economies phenomenon and global development cooperation (governance and rule of law). Her expertise earned notably the trust of UNODC, the GIZ or the Global partnership on drug policies and development.

A graduate of Georgetown University, Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne and Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle, Deborah is originally from Paris.

Luciano Brancaccio

Luciano Brancaccio is Associate Professor in Political Sociology at the Department of Social Sciences of the University of Naples Federico II. His main research interests include organised crime, new forms of clientelism, urban politics and policies, ruling classes, social network analysis methods and applications. Some recent publications: The Camorras in Naples and Campania: Business, groups and families (with V. Martone), in Allum F., Marinaro I., Sciarrone R. (eds.), Italian Mafias Today. Territory, Business and Politics (2019); Violent Contexts and Camorra Clans, in Massari M., Martone V. (eds.), Mafia Violence. Political, Symbolic and Economic Forms of Violence in the Camorra Clans (2019); I clan di camorra. Genesi e storia (2017).

Shahrzad Fouladvand

Dr Shahrzad Fouladvand’s main research interests are in the areas of Transnational Criminal Law (TCL) and international criminal justice systems, particularly, International Criminal Court (ICC). Her research focuses on two forms of organised crime: human trafficking and Corruption. Particularly, she is interested in the ways in which these two wrongdoings are interrelated. Shahrzad uses responsibilisation and network analysis approaches in her research. Her work also raises issues about the extent to which co-operation is possible or desirable with criminal justice agencies tainted by corruption, whether outside the EU or within it. Shahrzad’s research centres on evidential problems relating to human trafficking and the relationship between human trafficking and corruption, with a particular focus on Albania.

Fausto Carbajal Glass

Fausto is a scholar and consultant on political risk and security. He holds a Master’s degree in War Studies from King’s College London, where he focused on strategic theory, counterinsurgency, and strategic communications. His professional career has been mainly in the Mexican government, particularly at the Ministries of the Interior and Foreign Affairs. He is member of the Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS), the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF), the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations (COMEXI), and a non-resident fellow of the Mexican Navy Institute for Strategic Research (ININVESTAM). He has contributed scholarly articles on the conflict-security-development nexus, governance without statehood, and a comparative analysis of public security policies, respectively.

Ramiro Serrano-Garcia

Ramiro Serrano-Garcia is an Associate professor at the University of Indianapolis, where Ramiro teaches Accounting courses in the School of Business, develop research in economic crime and money laundering, and actively participates in several academic committees as part of the service he provides to the University and the community of Indianapolis.

Ramiro Serrano-Garcia earned a Bachelor’s in Business Administration and an MBA at the University Autónoma de Madrid (Spain), and a PhD in Business Economics (Accounting) at the University of Alcala (Spain), where he was an Accounting professor for over 15 years before he moved in to Indiana with a scholarship to carry research on International Financial Reporting Standards at the University of Notre Dame. For the last 10 years, since his arrival to the States, Ramiro worked for two universities in the New York/New Jersey area, and became a Certified Fraud Examiner as well as a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist.

Douglas Poton

Douglas Mark Ponton is Associate Professor of English Language and Translation at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Catania. His research interests include political discourse analysis, ecolinguistics, discourse in interaction, applied linguistics, pragmatics, corpus linguistics and critical discourse studies. He has held teaching and research positions at the universities of Catania, Messina and Pisa. His most recent research projects concern representations of Russia in western media, the Montalbano effect on tourism in Sicily, processes of late industrialism and ecological questions in South-Eastern Sicily, and Sicilian dialect theatre. His main publications are For Arguments Sake: speaker evaluation in modern political discourse (2011), and most recently Understanding Political Persuasion: Linguistic and Rhetorical Analysis (2019). As well as politics, his research deals with a variety of social topics, including legal metaphor and crime, the discourse of mediation, migration, cross-cultural politeness, folk traditions including proverbs and, last but not least, the Blues.

Stoycho P. Stoychev

Stoycho P. Stoychev is Associate Professor at the Political Science Department of Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” where he teaches courses in quantitative methods and political risk analysis. His current research is focused on controlled voting and organized criminal networks. In recent years he has participated in various research projects assessing political risk connected with organized crime, high-profile political corruption and their policy-making solutions. He is the founder and lead researcher of the Laboratory for Electoral Systems and Technologies at the Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”.

@spstoychev @radosgados

Courtney A. Weid-Lindberg

Courtney A. Waid-Lindberg received her B.A. in psychology in 1997 from the University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY, where she was a four-year letter winner on the women’s swim team as well as an all-academic Southeastern Conference performer. From the fall of 1997 to the spring of 1999, she pursued her Masters in Science in Criminal Justice (MSCJ) at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, AL. Upon receiving her MSCJ, she enrolled in the PhD program in criminology and criminal justice at the Florida State University in Tallahassee, FL. She completed all requirements for her Ph.D. in the spring of 2009. In the summer of 2015, she completed training at the University of Montana to be certified as a victim advocate through the National Organization for Victim Assistance (NOVA).

Dr. Waid-Lindberg has been a member of the faculty in the Department of History and Social Sciences at Northern State University since the fall of 2013. In the fall of 2016, she received the Excellence in Teaching Award by the Great Plains Sociological Association. Additionally, she was named Northern State University’s Outstanding Faculty Member for the 2016-2017 academic year. She previously held faculty positions at North Dakota State University and Bemidji State University, and taught as an adjunct instructor at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University. In terms of practical experience, she has worked for the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (FDJJ) as a research associate, and the Smyrna, GA Police Department as a records clerk.

Yuliya Zabyelina

Yuliya Zabyelina is Assistant Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. She holds a PhD degree in International Studies from the University of Trento (Italy), where she studied the role of state failure in furthering opportunities for transnational organized crime. Before moving to the United States, she held a postdoctoral position at the University of Edinburgh School of Law and lectured at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic. At John Jay College, Dr. Zabyelina primarily teaches in the BA and MA programs in International Criminal Justice. Dr. Zabyelina’s research is grounded on an interdisciplinary qualitative approach that makes it possible to conduct analyses at the intersection of international relations, criminology, and security studies. In particular, her research has examined issues of global governance and failed states, foreign policy and international cooperation, transnational organized crime and corruption. She has published broadly in edited books, peer-reviewed academic journals, and specialized policy magazines and has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Academy of Criminal Justice SAGE Junior Faculty Teaching Award (2015), The Aleksanteri Institute Visiting Scholars Fellowship (2015), and the Donald EJ MacNamara Junior Faculty Award (2016).