Geoffrey is the manager of Zistinthe Farm and Community Garden in the Ntcheu District of central Malawi. He began his work in food security with the Permaculture Network of Malawi and as a counterpart to Peace Corps volunteers. Over the last two decades, he has been a research assistant and translator for researchers from numerous universities and development projects. Most recently, Geoff worked alongside medical students studying food security and examining the relationship between seasonality and exclusive breastfeeding of infants in rural Malawi. Geoff was born in Blantyre, the “industrial capital” of Malawi, and raised in Gowa Village, the site of this program’s rural homestay. He studied computing and information technology at Skyway Business College in Blantyre and enjoys being a catalyst in the learning and transformation students’ experience studying in Malawi.

Estefi is an urbanist and educator who worked as a Trustees’ Fellow in the International Honors Program Cities in the 21st Century. She is Executive Director of Balance Works to carry out educational programs and cultural exchanges. Estefi has a master’s degree in urbanization and development from the London School of Economics and a BA in policy studies and Latin American studies focused on education from Lafayette College. Her passion for food security merged with her dissertation at LSE, “Cities of Knowledge,” in which one of her main themes of study was the effect of urbanization on agricultural land and the livelihood of farmers in Ecuador. While in Ecuador, she worked as an urbanist specializing in emergency response and planning processes for cities suffering from disasters, particularly strong seismic events. Furthermore, she has developed within the social sphere inter-sectorial projects with international and local NGOs, public institutions, and private enterprise in Latin America. Estefi is an alum of SIT in Chile and Argentina (2009) and of IHP in Canada, India, and Mexico (2008).

Dr. Joseph Lanning is an educator, practitioner, and researcher active in sustainable development and food systems with a regional focus on southern Africa. His research focuses on the mixed livelihoods of rural Malawians as they navigate climatic, environmental, and economic risk and uncertainty in their efforts to achieve food security. He has conducted extended ethnographic research with farmers in Malawi examining agricultural decision-making. His recent collaborative research examined food insecurity and mental health among post-partum women in Malawi. Dr. Lanning is the chair of the Sustainability PhD program and oversees the Global Master’s program in Sustainable Development Practice and the undergraduate International Honors Program in Food Systems. He has been involved in teaching agroecology in Malawi with the Zisinthe Farm and Community Garden, where he serves as a planning partner.

See Dr. Lanning’s full list of publications

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Dr. Imraan Buccus has an undergraduate degree in education, a master’s degree in social policy from the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), and a PhD in political sociology that straddled Radboud Nijemegen University in the Netherlands and the University of KwaZulu Natal in South Africa. He is widely published in academic journals and book chapters and is the former editor of the journal Critical Dialogue. He is a columnist for South Africa’s most widely publication, The Daily Maverick, and is often called upon by television and radio stations to offer political analysis.

During apartheid, Dr. Buccus was active in student politics. In 2008, he was an Open Society Foundation Media Fellow and in 2009, he appeared on the prestigious Mail & Guardian list of South Africa’s 200 Leading Young South Africans. He worked as academic coordinator at Workers’ College, a progressive college for trade union members. He was involved in multiple international research projects and co-authored the National Framework on Public Participation for the South African government. During his time at the Centre for Public Participation, he led an initiative to bring policymaking spaces closer to ordinary people and led a project to assess participatory democracy in Namibia.

Dr. Tapu-Qiliho earned her PhD in Pacific studies from the University of Otago. She earned an MA with honors in Pacific studies and a BA in sociology and anthropology from the University of Auckland. She worked as academic director for SIT in Fiji from 2005 to 2011.

Dr. Tapu-Qiliho’s current research focuses on gender and development with particular reference to individuals with diverse sexual orientation and gender identity expressions. She has experience working in the CSO sector in Fiji and helped found two local NGOs that specialize in conflict transformation and peacebuilding in the Pacific. She also has experience working with the Pacific Conference of Churches as a lecturer at the Pacific Theological College. Her voluntary work has concentrated on issues such as HIV and AIDS, poverty alleviation, youth and women’s empowerment, and advocacy and community engagement.

Nancy is an expert in human rights, migration, transnational migration, and the search for missing migrants in Mexico and the U.S. She is recognized by the people and government of Oaxaca as one of the most dedicated and effective migrant human rights defenders. Nancy is co-founder of MANOS: Migrantes Apoyados, No Olvidados, a nonprofit organization in Oaxaca providing free legal services to refugees, migrants, and those who have been separated from their families due to unjust and inhumane U.S. immigration laws and policies. MANOS also implements educational projects that help civil society understand the migration phenomenon from an informed and humanistic perspective. Before co-founding MANOS, she was founder and director of Caminos A.C., a nonprofit organization dedicated to the search, guidance, and support of Oaxacan migrants and their families. She was also director of COMI, the only shelter in Oaxaca for Central Americans, and she worked for nine years giving guidance and information to refugees about the asylum process in Mexico.

She is co-author of the book “Herramientas para la Bùsqueda de Migrantes.” For three years, she was part of the Argentinian forensic team that specializes in the search for missing migrants through DNA testing. Nancy is member of the Justice in Motion network and the Activist and Defender network in Oaxaca. In 2018, she completed her BA in economic, social, and cultural human rights at the ProDESC School of Transnational Justice in Mexico City.

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Born in Oaxaca, Mexico, Dr. Núñez Méndez received a BA in Teaching English as a Foreign Language from Oaxaca State University and an MA in applied linguistics through a Fulbright Scholarship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He earned his PhD in the Languages, Cultures, and Literacies program at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. In 2007, he founded Ollin Tlahtoalli: Centro de Lenguas y Cultura Mexicana, a language and culture organization based in Oaxaca. At this organization, he has planned and implemented international education programs on indigenous histories, globalization, U.S.-Mexico relationships, migration, and more with universities in the United States and Canada. He has developed and implemented arts-based education programs for children and youth in Indigenous communities in Oaxaca aimed at contributing to the recognition and validation of Indigenous ways of knowing and being. He has done critical ethnographic research, collecting oral stories of elders in indigenous communities and of Mexican-American children and parents who are forced to return to Mexico after years of living in the U.S.

Dr. Núñez Méndez has taught at Oaxaca State University and provided intercultural awareness workshops for teachers in the U.S. and, most recently, to immigration attorneys providing legal assistance to undocumented women and children from Mexico and Central America. His research interests include transnational migration, identity theory, decolonizing methodologies, and critical literacies. In 2018 and 2019, he was the principal organizer of the International Assembly for Community Development Across Borders which brought together indigenous people, activists and local and international organizations to discuss social, political, and educational practices that have negatively affected marginalized communities and their environments.

Dr. Abid Siraj has been engaged in teaching, research, and program management in public health in India for the past 20 years. He has also been actively involved in rights to health advocacy work. His doctoral work focused on India’s trajectory in reproductive, sexual, and child health programs with special reference to family planning and population control from beneficiaries’ perspectives and perceptions. Besides his doctorate degree, he holds a master’s degree in social work from Central University of India-Aligarh Muslim University.

Dr. Siraj has worked with SIT since 2011, first as academic coordinator and later as the academic director of a public health program. Before joining SIT, he worked for a USAID-funded project to train the village heads of local self-governments to promote reproductive and child health in the villages of Aligarh district in Uttar Pradesh in India. District and state government officials have praised his work as the manager of a community-based distribution project of family planning methods for achieving the family planning targets and implementing a choice-based contraceptives program with the help of community volunteers.

Dr. Abid was part of a team that did pioneering work in thethe ‘National Rural Health Missio, the largest public health program initiated by the government of India in 2005. His proposed initiative for an emergency helpline for safe delivery to ensure the timely shifting of pregnant mothers to the nearest hospital was adopted in various states.