Meet the network

 is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics at the University of Manchester and Director of the University of Manchester’s Political Economy Centre. She specializes in feminist global political economy, with a particular focus on the gendered relations of finance, debt, development, and trade. She has been doing research and policy advocacy around gender and trade since the late 2010s, including for projects funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). She is author of several books, including A Feminist Political Economy of Trade: Beyond Free Trade Feminism (co-authored with S. Trommer) and Gendered States of Punishment and Welfare, and co-editor (with J. Elias) of the Handbook of International Political Economy of Gender and Feminist Global Political Economies of the Everyday. She is co-editor of the journal New Political Economy and the Routledge/RIPE book series.  

is Associate Professor (docent)  in Peace and Development Studies, She has a BA in International Relations from El Colegio de México and  a PhD from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (IEP), Paris, France. She worked for more than 30 years as lecturer in Latin American Studies, Gender studies and Global Political Economy at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg. During the last 20 years she has been working and publishing on the social and gender implications of NAFTA for Mexico, on gender issues related to citizenship, political participation, labour, transnational activism and free trade agreements  particularly in the case of Mexico, El Salvador and Bolivia. She is also part of GADIP (Gender and Development in Practice) has been member of the board of WIDE+, where she has been active for several years and nowdays coordinates the working group of Gender and Trade. Representing WIDE+ she is part of the Domestic Advisory Groups of the EU for the EU trade agreements with Central America, the Andean countries and Mercosur.

is a researcher, activist, and gender trainer. She is an associated researcher at the Centre for Gender Studies (European Humanities University) and co-founder of NGO ‘Adliga: Women for full Citizenship’; she is also an editor-in-chief of a Russian-speaking feminist almanac “Women in Politics: New Approaches to the Political’.

is currently WIDE+’s General Coordinator. She previously worked for several international and national NGOs, promoting secularism and peace in the Netherlands, the UK and Belgium. She founded an international humanist youth network in 2002 that currently exists as Young Humanists International. Within WIDE+, she has a special focus on feminist economic issues, including highlighting the interrelations between EU trade policy and economic gender discrimination, the discrimination faced by migrant women and digital discrimination. She has a bachelor in sociology and a master in international public policy from the United Nations University MERIT. She is currently also a local politician for Progressief Nederland in Meerssen, the Netherlands (fractievoorzitter GroenLinks-PvdA).

is currently secretary of the Working Group. She is a graduate with a Master’s degree in Human Rights and Multilevel Governance and a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and International Relations. Her academic research focused on the shrinking of the civic space in EU countries and on gender issues, with a focus on gender stereotyping, conflict related sexual violence and combating trafficking in human beings.

is a co-founder and Director of Karat Coalition for Gender equality, a network of women’s organizations from Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia countries. She is an activist involved in the Polish and European feminist and social movement since 1995.Areas of expertise: the situation of disadvantaged women in the labour market and women’s rights. Presently WIDE+ Board member.

is a Belarusian journalist, public figure, and politician. She is a member of the Belarusian Association of Journalists. She is part owner of Vitebsk Courier Publishing House CJSC. She founded the newspaper The Vitebsk Courier, registered in Russia. From March 2008 to March 2012, she was chair of the Vitebsk regional organization of the United Civil Party (UCP). She actively opposes Belarusian authorities, for which she is persecuted.

is an international consultant and advocate with more than 30 years of experience working on gender justice, equitable development, food sovereignty, trade, climate justice, and human rights, collaborating with international NGOs, grassroots movements, international financial institutions (IFIs), government institutions, and multi-stakeholder coalitions across Europe, Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the United States. Based in Amsterdam and originally from Mexico, she has worked as a consultant with WIDE+ on artificial intelligence and discrimination, and currently serves as the Secretariat of the Gender and Trade Working Group. Throughout her career, she has combined advocacy, coalition building, project management, and feminist policy analysis to advance more inclusive and socially just economic systems, grounded in the conviction that effective policy-making must remain connected to the lived realities of communities directly affected by social and economic policies.

has spent the last three decades working at the intersection of feminist policy, care and employment, sustainable livelihoods, and human rights – collaborating with UN organizations as well as women's rights organizations across the globe. She holds a PhD in Political Science and has conducted research on transformative policymaking for women's economic independence and self-determination. At the heart of her work is a deep passion for education and movement-building to equip activists and changemakers with the knowledge and tools to advance gender justice in social and economic policies.

holds a PhD in Sociology. She has worked as a guest professor in Kassel and as a lecturer at universities in Switzerland, Austria, Iran and India, where she did research and published articles on reproduction, care-extractivism and women´s struggles. Her focus of research is globalization and development, political economy and women’s work, women’s movements and international women’s policies, ecology and socio-ecological transformation. She has worked on a voluntary basis in the editorial team of the journals ‘beiträge zur feministischen theorie und praxis’ and ‘Peripherie’. She is a member of WIDE+ and of the academic council of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Germany.

is a feminist activist, community organiser and artivist. With a background in human rights and sociology, Dunia prioritises fostering caring environments and exploring the notion of feminist movement building in her work. She is currently the co-coordinator of WIDE Austria.

trained as a nurse in Oxford / UK and then studied Nutrition and Home Economics in Germany, followed by a Masters Degree «Gender and Development» at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) /UK. She worked in Bénin / West Africa as a Gender adviser for the Organisation Deutscher Entwicklungsdienst (DED) before moving to Switzerland where she still lives. With a family and plenty of carework to do, she started to work as a freelancer in the area of food systems and gender and founded «Café International» in 2011, a network for (not only) migrant women reaching out to the local community. This work interlinks with her commitment for WIDE Switzerland, a national network on Feminist Economics, member of WIDE+. She was a founding member in 2008 and still co-coordinates the two Working Groups «Economic Literacy» and «FairFood Feministisch». In WIDE+, Heike represents WIDE Switzerland in the Caucus and in the Working group «Feminist Economic Education».

graduated from the Technical University in Sofia as an Engineer in Automatisation and has a specialization in International Economic Relations from the Economic University of Sofia. In 1994, she set up one of the first NGOs in Bulgaria to work on gender equality issues, namely the Gender Project for Bulgaria Foundation, now known as the Center for Sustainable Communities Development (CSCD). CSCD is a member of the National Council on Gender Equality, the WIDE+ Coalition, and the Bulgarian Platform for International Development. Her organisation focuses on research, info spreading, training, networking to one day reach gender equality in practice.

is the secretary of the WIDE+ Feminist Popular Economic Education Working Group. She is currently completing a Master's degree in Peace, Humanitarian Action and Development at Sciences Po Lille, as part of a double degree with the University of Kent. Her thesis, conducted in partnership with the Refugee Women's Centre, examines how to introduce a gender-transformative approach in migratory transit, through the case of the Franco-British border in Calais and Grande-Synthe, an organisation she has also been involved with as a volunteer and field researcher. Her professional experience spans legal aid, humanitarian fieldwork, and community-based education. She interned with CODENAF in Spain, where she assisted asylum seekers and migrants in completing administrative applications for asylum, regularisation and appeals, conducted research on immigration law and procedures, and supported legal advisors in their casework, while also observing how the organisation's work translated into public policy at European, national and regional levels. She has also worked as a play worker with Project Play, supporting recreational activities for children in migratory contexts.

Maëlann first joined WIDE+ as an intern in 2025 and has since remained an active member of the Gender and Migration and Feminist Popular Economic Education Working Groups. Across all her work, she brings a sustained commitment to feminist and rights-based approaches to migration, humanitarian action, and popular education.

is an MSc student in Conflict and Development Studies at Ghent University with a background in International Relations. Her interests include civil society engagement, feminist activism, peacebuilding initiatives, and EU policy. She has been involved in research and advocacy initiatives across Europe and the Western Balkans through NGOs, academic research, and youth engagement projects.