Participants: Keynote Plenary Session

Keynote Speaker:

Jan Aart Scholte is Professorial Research Fellow in CSGR and former (Co-) Director of the Centre in 2003-7. He is also Professor in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick and Centennial Professor in the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics. Before coming to Warwick in 1999, he worked at the University of Sussex, Brighton and the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague. Jan Aart has also held visiting positions at Cornell University, the London School of Economics, the International Monetary Fund, the Moscow State University and Gothenburg University. Prof. Scholte is one of the most prolific and influential writers on Global Civil Society. He is author and editor of numerous publications on this emerging phenomenon, including Globalization: A Critical Introduction (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2005 second edition), Civil Society and Global Democracy (Polity, forthcoming) and International Relations of Social Change (Open University Press, 1993); co-author of Contesting Global Governance(Cambridge University Press, 2000); editor of Civil Society and Accountable Global Governance(forthcoming) and Civil Society and Global Finance (Routledge, 2002); and co-editor of The Encyclopaedia of Globalization (Routledge, 2006); as well as author of some 100 articles, chapters and working papers. He is also an editor of the journal Global Governance.

Discussant:

Dan Bitan, Israeli Co-Director, Israeli-Palestinian Science Organization (IPSO)

Dan Bitan, a historian of Israeli and Zionist mythology and an avid peace activist since 1968, is the Israeli Co-Director of the Israeli-Palestinian Science Organization (IPSO) since 2004, and the organization's representative in the Palestinian-Israeli Peace NGO Forum. Previously Dan was the executive director of The Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in the years 1990-1995, and in the years 1995-2007 served as the Coordinator of the Project “Cooperation and Coexistence, Joint Israeli and Palestinian Studies" of the Karev Foundation. For many years he is board member of HaMoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual.

Chair:

Eliezer Ya'ari, a journalist and author, has been with the New Israel Fund (NIF) since 1997. Since its inception in 1979, the NIF is the leading organization committed to democratic change within Israel, and has established some of the most prominent organizations and initiatives that promote social change and democracy in Israel.