Claudia Chwalisz is a consultant at the London-based reputation and strategy consultancy Populus, where she is bringing the long-form deliberative process to the UK in the form of Citizens Councils. She is the author of The Populist Signal: Why Politics and Democracy Need to Change (2015) and The People’s Verdict: Adding Informed Citizen Voices to Public Decision-making (forthcoming).

Maike joined the URBACT-Team in June 2017 as a Communication and Event-Intern and was very involved in the organisation of the URBACT City Festival 2017 in Tallinn. The internship is part of her Masters of International Development Studies in Wageningen (NL). Her interest lays in sustainable urban development in Europe, with a focus on urban agriculture. Before her masters, she worked as a campaign assistant in an environment and human rights organisation in her home country Germany and did her Bachelor in Cultural Anthropology in Frankfurt (DE).

Olga is a Russian in Paris, studying Geography at Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris and Urban planning at Ecole d’Urbanisme de Paris. She is currently working with European Alternatives on the Co-creation project, that aims to bring different urban stakeholders together and to co-create an understanding of addressing urban disadvantage.

Ilinca-Adela Margineanu contributes to the URBACT blog from Bucarest for the URBACT National Dissemination Point in Romania.

Mary Bogle is a senior research associate in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute. Her research focuses on policies and place-based interventions that help low-income parents surmount the economic, equity, and mental health challenges that often interfere with their efforts to create healthy, productive, and protective environments for their children. During her career, Bogle has worked for street-level human services organizations, been executive director of Grantmakers for Children, Youth, & Families, led the planning efforts for several comprehensive community change initiatives, and been a program specialist for the federal Head Start Bureau, where she played a pivotal role in designing and launching Early Head Start, the premier federal initiative for low-income families with infants and toddlers.