John Forester, Professor & Director of Graduate Studies, Cornell University Department of City & Regional Planning John Forester’s research into the micro-politics of the planning process, ethics, and political deliberation assesses the ways that planners shape participatory processes and manage public disputes in diverse settings. He had served as a mediator for the Community Dispute Resolution Center of Tompkins County, has consulted for the Consensus Building Institute, and has lectured in the past several years in Seattle, Chapel Hill, Sydney, Melbourne, Helsinki, Palermo, Johannesburg, Aix en Provence, Amsterdam, and Milan. Forester's recent writing includes Dealing with Differences: Dramas of Mediating Public Disputes, and he has edited a manuscript with Ken Reardon for CRP’s New Orleans Planning Initiative. Forester spent the 2008–09 academic year as NICIS Scholar at the University of Amsterdam's Centre for Conflict Studies. Forester served as department chair from 1998–01, and is currently the director of graduate studies. He was associate dean from 1997–98. He received his B.S., M.S., M.C.P., and Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkeley.

Faranak Miraftab, Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Department of Urban and Regional Planning Faranak Miraftab’s research focuses on the social aspects of urban development. In this broad area, Professor Miraftab is interested in how low-income groups and women in particular access housing and basic urban services. Key concepts in her research include debates on community-based strategies and mobilizations, non-governmental non-profit organizations and grassroots social movements, participatory planning processes, empowerment, citizenship and development. A native of Iran, Ms. Miraftab completed her undergraduate education at the College of Fine Arts at the Tehran University. While in political exile in Trondheim, Norway, she graduated with a Masters degree in Architecture at the Norwegian Institute of Technology and then completed her doctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley in 1995. Over the years, Professor Miraftab’s research and teaching has spanned several countries including Chile, Mexico, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and the United States. Her teaching covers multi-cultural understanding of cities as social processes; community development and the role of grassroots mobilizations; transnational urbanism; migration and development nexus; the reconfigured state-society relations for provision of basic services and housing within the dominant global neoliberal policy framework. Ms. Miraftab also serves as the Director of the PhD program and the coordinator of the Transnational Planning Stream at the Department of Urban and Regional Planning.