- Ms. Natalija Kazlauskienė

Director, DG REGIONAL POLICY, European Commission



Name : Natalija Kazlauskienė
Nationality : Lithuanian
Degree : University degree in applied mathematics and system analysis
Ph.D. Social Sciences

Working experience :

September 2005 – Present : Director, DG REGIONAL POLICY, Directorate C : Policy development
March 2004 – August 2005 : Ministry of Finance in Lithuania : Secretary of the Ministry (Deputy Minister equivalent in the international system)
November 2001 – March 2004 : Ministry of Finance in Lithuania : Advisor to the Minister (as National Aid Coordinator)
August 1999 – October 2001 : Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations : Deputy Regional Representative for Europe (D-1 Step 3)
December 1996 – June 1999 : Ministry of Agriculture in Lithuania : Vice minister
January 1996 – December 1996 : Independent consultant
January 1993 – January 1996 : Ministry of Agriculture in Lithuania : Head, Market Information and Trade Agreements Unit; Head, International Trade Development Unit
June 1992 – December 1993 : Centre for Agricultural and Rural Development, USA : Visiting assistant Professor
September 1979 – June 1992 : Junior, Senior, Lead Researcher

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- Ms. Margery Austin Turner

Vice President for Research
The Urban Institute (Washington, DC)



Margery Austin Turner is Vice President for Research at the Urban Institute, where she leads efforts to frame and conduct a forward-looking agenda of policy research. A nationally recognized expert on urban policy and neighborhood issues, Ms. Turner has analyzed issues of residential location, racial and ethnic discrimination and its contribution to neighborhood segregation and inequality, and the role of housing policies in promoting residential mobility and location choice. Much of her recent work has focused on the Washington metropolitan area, investigating conditions and trends in neighborhoods across the region.

Ms. Turner served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research at the Department of Housing and Urban Development from 1993 through 1996, focusing HUD’s research agenda on the problems of racial discrimination, concentrated poverty, and economic opportunity in America’s metropolitan areas. During her tenure, HUD’s research office launched three major social science demonstration projects to test different strategies for helping families from distressed inner-city neighborhoods gain access to opportunities through employment and education.

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- Mr. Paul Kantor

Professor at Fordham University, Ney York City



Paul Kantor (Ph.D. University of Chicago) is Professor of Political Science at Fordham University in New York City. His teaching and research interests include American and comparative politics and public policy, urban politics in the United States and Western Europe, and urban political economy.

Kantor is author of numerous articles and reviews in the Urban Affairs Review, Journal of Urban Affairs, British Journal of Political Science, Polity, and International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, and other leading academic journals. Paul Kantor co-authored Cities in the International Marketplace: the Political Economy of Urban Development in North America and Western Europe (Princeton University Press, 2002). This book won the 2003 award for the Best Book in Urban Politics from the American Political Science Association. His other books include American Political Parties: Decline or Revival? (CQ Press, 2001), co-edited with Jeffrey Cohen and Richard Fleisher; The Dependent City Revisited: The Political Economy of Urban Development and Social Policy, (Westview, 1995); The Dependent City: The Changing Political Economy of Urban America, ( Little Brown-Scott, Foresman, 1988); With Dennis R. Judd he also co-edited Enduring Tensions in Urban Politics, Macmillan, 1992; The Politics of Urban America, (Longman, 1998, 2002); American Urban Politics: The Reader (Longman, 2006); and American Politics in a Global Age (Pearson Longman, 2008). Paul Kantor’s most recent research focuses on comparative regional politics, including the forthcoming World Cities: The Political Economy of City Regionalism in Paris, London, New York, and Tokyo.

Professor Kantor was the Fulbright John Marshall Distinguished Chair in Political Science (Hungary) for 2005-2006. He has lectured extensively in the USA, China, South America, and throughout Western Europe. He served as Fulbright Senior Specialist Scholar at universities in Italy and the Netherlands, and was a visiting research professor at the Amsterdam Institute for Metropolitan and International Development Studies (AMIDST), University of Amsterdam, 2004. Professor Kantor is on the editorial boards of several journals in political science, American studies and urban affairs, and is on the advisory board of the European Urban Research Association (EURA). He was President of the American Political Science Association Urban Politics Section in 2000-2001 and is currently on the Section’s Executive.

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- Mr. Sergio Zermeño García-Granados

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México



PhD in Sociology from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Paris, France, Dr. Zermeño is a full-time researcher at the Social Research Institute from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He is part of the National Research System (Level III). His research interests include: the analysis of social change, citizen participation and regional development. Currently, he is the project coordinator of the initiative entitled México: Las Regiones Sociales en el Siglo XXI (Pro-regiones) (Mexico and its social regions in the XXI century). His most recent publications include:

• La desmodernidad mexicana y alternativas a la violencia y a la exclusión en nuestros días (2005).
• Desolation: Mexican agriculture and peasants in the 21st century (2008).
• Resistencia y cambio en la UNAM. Las batallas por la autonomía, el 68 y la gratuidad (2008).

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- Ms. Cynthia Ghorra-Gobin

Director of Research at the CNRS, Professor at the Institute of Political Studies (Paris, France)



CGG holds a Ph.D. in urban planning (UCLA) and a doctorat d’Etat ès Lettres in geography (University of Panthéon-Sorbonne). She is affiliated with the CNRS (national scientific research Council) where she is director of research. She is professor at the Institute of Political Studies (Paris) and at the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne.

Her research focuses on the “urban question” in terms of a spatial and material construction associated with social processes and cultural practices which are themselves inextricably linked to political dynamics. Her interest in the comparative approach stems, admittedly, not only from a university career that spans both France (Europe) and the United States but also an awareness of the comparative analysis as a methodology for generating knowledge in the social sciences at a time when the influence of cross-national socio-economic processed linked to the globalization of the economy is becoming paramount. As a geographer she is also interested in the politics of scale and since 2000, her publications deal with the leadership and political responsibilities of cities (through public policies) in addressing global issues with a sustainability perspective. Among her recent publications, Les Etats-Unis entre local et mondial (Paris, Presses de Sciences po, 2000) [The United States between local and global), La ville insoutenable (ed. with Augustin Berque) (Paris, Belin, 2006) [The unsustainable city], La Théorie du “New Urbanism (Paris, Ministère Equipement, 2006) [The theory of New Urbanism in favor of smart and green growth] and Dictionnaire des mondialisations (ed.) (Colin, 2006) [Dictionary of globalizations].