Keynote Speakers

Alicia Bárcena Ibarra

Alicia Bárcena Ibarra is Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). She served as the Chef de Cabinet to former Secretary-General Kofi Annan before serving as the Under-Secretary-General for Management. Earlier in her career, Ms. Bárcena Ibarra served as Deputy Executive Secretary of ECLAC, and in this capacity she contributed substantively and increased inter-agency collaboration to provide a regional perspective on the Millennium Development Goals and on Financing for Sustainable Development, connecting issues of inequality, poverty, economic development and sustainability with the required fiscal policies needed to address extreme poverty. As Chief of the Environment and Human Settlements Division of ECLAC, she heightened the profile of the Regional Commission in the areas of climate change, sustainable energy, fiscal policies and environment. She previously served as Coordinator of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), as well as Adviser to the Latin American and Caribbean Sustainable Development Programme in the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Previously, she served in the Government of Mexico as the first Vice-Minister of Ecology and as Director-General of the National Institute of Fisheries. Ms. Bárcena Ibarra holds a Bachelor of Science in biology from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University.

Roberto Gargarella

Roberto Gargarella is Professor of Constitutional Theory and Political Philosophy at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and a researcher for CONICET in Buenos Aires and at the Christian Michelsen Institute in Norway. He will shortly take up a post as Leverhulme Trust Visiting Fellow at the Institute of the Americas, University College London. A distinguished Argentine lawyer and sociologist, he holds doctoral degrees from Universidad de Buenos Aires (1991) and University of Chicago (1993) and is a past recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Grant, a Harry Frank Guggenheim Grant and a Fulbright Scholarship. He has taught at numerous universities, including the New School for Social Research, Columbia University, Bergen University, and Southwestern University. He has published widely on issues of legal and political philosophy, including social and economic rights. In recent years, Professor Gargarella has specialized in comparative American Constitutionalism and published a number of articles and books on US and Latin-American consitutionalism. Recent publications include The Legal Foundation of Inequality: Constitutionalism in the Americas, 1776-1860(Cambridge University Press, 2010), and Latin American Constitutionalism, 1810-2010: The Engine Room of the Constitution (Oxford University Press, 2013).

Renana Jhabvala

Renana Jhabvala has been associated for over 30 years with the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) a trade union in India of 1.7 million members of women in the informal economy. She is also known for her writings of issues of women in the informal economy. She was awarded the Indian Padma Shri Award in the year 1990. She worked as elected Secretary of SEWA in Gujarat under Ela Bhatt, the founder of SEWA, for many years during which time she initiated SEWA across India. She was Chair of SEWA Bank and was instrumental in forming SEWA Bharat a National Federation of SEWAs now in ten States of India and is presently President, SEWA Bharat. She is known for her advocacy for women workers and was responsible for formulating the ‘Street Vendors Protection’ Act and the Act for ‘Social Security for Informal Workers’. She has initiated a number of studies on Unconditional Cash transfers towards basic income, in India and is active in advocacy with the Government and UN agencies. Renana Jhabvala has been active at the international level and represented SEWA at the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and other international forums. She has written many articles and some books on SEWA and on informal economy, including most recently Social Income and Insecurity: A Study in Gujarat (co-authored with Guy Standing, Jeemol Unni, and Uma Rani; Routledge, 2010), Empowering Women in an Insecure world: Joining SEWA Makes a Difference (co-authored with  Sapna Desai and Jignasa Dave; SEWA Academy, 2010).

Stanislas Jourdan

Stanislas Jourdan is a journalist and activist for basic income in France. As a journalist and blogger, his many writings on basic income caught the attention of a growing number of readers. Since 2012, he joined the organisation committee of the European Citizens’ Initiative, for which he played a key role in coordinating the campaign. In 2013, he co-founded the French Movement for Basic Income and adopted a nomadic lifestyle which allowed him to foster basic income local initiatives and online communities. Aside from being an activist for the basic income, Stanislas is also co-editor for OuiShare, a worldwide community for the collaborative economy. Stanislas’s areas of interest also include monetary system, debt crisis, and the sharing economy.

Anna Reid

Dr. Anna Reid (MD, CCFP-EM) is the Past President (2013–2014) of the Canadian Medical Association. Dr. Reid was a rural and community family practice locum from 1988 to 1995 in the NWT and BC. From 1995 until 2000, she practised comprehensive family practice in Nelson, BC, enjoying in particular palliative care and geriatric work. During this time she had a large HIV practice and served on the board of AIDS Network Kootenay Outreach and Support Society. Between 2001 and 2008, Dr. Reid was an emergency and intensive care unit physician at Kootenay Lake Hospital in Nelson. In 2008 she was recruited to Stanton Territorial Hospital in Yellowknife, NWT, where she practises emergency medicine and hospitalist work. Dr. Reid served as Chief of Staff of Kootenay Lake Hospital in 2002–2003 and President and Chair of the Medical Advisory Committee in 2006. She was also Chair of the Quality Assurance Committee for several years. In Yellowknife she serves on emergency and critical care committees. She is on the Stanton Hospital mental health working group and planning team, and participates in the NWT Medical Directors’ Forum.

Enno Schmidt

Enno Schmidt is co-founder of the Initiative Basic Income in Switzerland and president of the Cultural Impulse Switzerland Foundation. Born 1958 in Osnabrück (Germany), he studied painting and art theory at the Academy of Fine Arts in Frankfurt am Main. Enno is a recipient of the Frankfurt Art Prize. He became a Managing Director and shareholder of the Enterprise Economy and Art – Extended GmbH and a Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford Brookes University. He contributed to creating the Future Foundation Social Life under the umbrella of the Trusteeship Office of the GLS Bank in Bochum, Germanyand held a teaching position at the Institute of Entrepreneurship, University of Karlsruhe. Living in Basel, since 2006 Enno works for the Initiative Basic Income in Switzerland as spokesman for the initiative, author, filmmaker and presenter. His film Basic Income – a Cultural Impulse from 2008 has had a major influence in the basic income debate.

Joe Soss

Joe Soss is the inaugural Cowles Chair for the Study of Public Service at the University of Minnesota, where he holds faculty positions in the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, the Department of Political Science, and the Department of Sociology. His research and teaching explore the interplay of democratic politics, societal inequalities, and public policy. He is particularly interested in the political sources and consequences of policies that govern social marginality and shape life conditions for socially marginal groups. He is the author or editor of Unwanted Claims: The Politics of Participation in the U.S. Welfare System (2000), Race and the Politics of Welfare Reform (2003), and Remaking America: Democracy and Public Policy in an Age of Inequality (2007). His most recent coauthored book, Disciplining the Poor: Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race (2011), was selected for the 2012 Michael Harrington Award (APSA, New Political Science) and the 2012 Oliver Cromwell Cox Award (ASA, Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities), and was named a 2012 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title (American Library Association). In 2010, he received the campus-wide Outstanding Faculty Award from the University of Minnesota’s Council of Graduate Students (COGS). In 2013, he was named Dale T. Mortensen Senior Fellow at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark, a position he will hold until 2016.

Guy Standing

Guy Standing is Professor of Development at SOAS (since October 2012), and was previously Professor of Economic Security at the University of Bath (July 2005 to January 2013) and Professor of Labour Economics at Monash University in Melbourne (September 2005 to June 2009). Before that, he was Director of the ILO’s Socio-Economic Security Programme (1999-2005) and before that Director of the ILO’s Labour Market Policies Branch. An economist with a Ph.D. from Cambridge University, he is a founder and co-President of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), an NGO promoting basic income as a right, with members in over 50 countries. Besides an extensive research career, he has been adviser to many international agencies and governments. In 1995-96, he was director of research for President Mandela’s Labour Market Policy Commission, when he co-authored, with John Sender and John Weeks, Restructuring the Labour Market – The South African Challenge. Recent books are The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (Bloomsbury, 2011), Social Income and Insecurity in Gujarat, with J.Unni, R.Jhabvala and U.Rani (Routledge, 2010), and Work after Globalization: Building Occupational Citizenship (Elgar, 2009). He is currently working on pilot basic income schemes in India and has recently completed a follow-up book to The Precariat.