Social Science Research Council

Thandika Mkandawire

Thandika Mkandawire is the director of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD). He is an economist with a long experience in the promotion of comparative research on development issues. From 1986 through 1996, he was executive secretary of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), headquartered in Dakar. Mkandawire is a member of the editorial boards of Global Governance; Development and Change; Africa Development and the Oxford Journal of Development Studies, and has recently served on the executive committees of the International Institute for Labour Studies, the Swedish NGO Fund for Human Rights, the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP) of the International Social Science Council, Care International, the Steering Committee of the UNU Project on Intellectual History, and the African Gender Institute. Mkandawire, who was also Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Development Research in Copenhagen, took up his post as UNRISD Director in May 1998.


Mary Robinson

Mary Robinson is currently the executive director of a new project, the Ethical Globalization Initiative (EGI), whose goal is to bring the norms and standards of human rights into the globalization process and to support capacity building and good governance in developing countries, with an initial focus on Africa. Prior to this position, she served as United Nations high commissioner for human rights from 1997 to 2002, during which time she gave priority to implementing the reform proposal of Secretary-General Kofi Annan to integrate human rights concerns in all the activities of the United Nations. Robinson came to the United Nations after a distinguished seven-year tenure as President of Ireland, where she placed special emphasis during her presidency on the needs of developing countries, linking the history of the Great Irish Famine to today's nutrition, poverty and policy issues, thus creating a bridge of partnership between developed and developing countries. Before her election as president in 1990, Robinson served as a senator for 20 years. In 1969 she became the youngest Reid Professor of constitutional law at Trinity College, Dublin. Educated at Trinity College, Robinson also holds law degrees from the King's Inns in Dublin and from Harvard University. The recipient of numerous honors and awards throughout the world, Robinson is a member of the Royal Irish Academy and the American Philosophical Society and, since 2002, has been honorary president of Oxfam International.


Joseph Stiglitz

Joseph Stiglitz is currently professor of economics and finance at Columbia University. He has taught at Princeton, Stanford, MIT, and Oxford. In 1979, he was awarded the John Bates Clark Award, given biennially to the economist under 40 who has made the most significant contribution to the field, and in 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics. He was a member of the Council of Economic Advisors from 1993-95, under Clinton, and served as CEA chairman from 1995-97. He was chief economist and senior vice-president of the World Bank from 1997-2000. Stiglitz has made major contributions to macro-economics and monetary theory, to development economics and trade theory, to public and corporate finance, to theories of industrial and rural organization, and to theories of welfare economics and of income and wealth distribution. He has written textbooks that have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and he founded a leading economics journal, The Journal of Economic Perspectives. His book Globalization and Its Discontents has been translated into 20 languages and is an international bestseller. His latest book is entitled The Roaring Nineties.


José Antonio Ocampo

Ocampo is the current under-secretary-general for economic and social affairs at the United Nations. Prior to this, he served as executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). Before joining the UN, Mr. Ocampo was the minister of finance and public credit of Colombia, and held two other ministerial posts: minister of agriculture and minister of planning. Ocampo has been a researcher and director at the Centre for Studies of Economic Development (CEDE) at the University of the Andes, Colombia, as well as the Foundation for Higher Education and Development. He has undertaken a number of missions, including national coordinator for employment, advisor to the Colombian government on coffee affairs, head of the WIDER-SIDA mission to the government of Nicaragua, and advisor to Council for Foreign Trade of the government of Colombia. Ocampo has written and published very extensively on such topics as international financial and monetary issues, international financial architecture, foreign capital and investment, models of development, economic theory and Latin American economy, industrialization, international trade, employment, and Colombian economic policy and economic history. He is the author, co-author, editor or contributor to a number of books, monographs, scholarly articles, research studies, official publications, UN documents and newspaper articles. His most recent book in English was Globalization and Development (2003). Mr. Ocampo served on several editorial boards of academic journals, including The Journal of Development Economics and El Trimestre Económico.