Mauricio (*1987) is from Medellín, Colombia. He studied architecture at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (UPB). His degree thesis “Sustainability Beyond Green Matters” approached the sustainable paradigm from a social and ecological perspective in terms of inhabitants’ adaptation to their daily places, both public and private. As he finished his career he presented the thesis in many research events in Colombia, then received invitations for showing it in Chile and Mexico. He worked with ephemeral architecture projects for his city and meanwhile attended national and international research events as an evaluating jury. He is passionate about understanding the world and the knowledge as a big network so that he tend to complement his career with topics such as gastronomy, biology and travels. After backpacking South America he is quite interested in learning and writing about history, identity and cultures.

Sally was born in Amman, Jordan in 1990. She graduated from the University of Jordan in 2013 with a degree in Architectural Engineering. Her graduation project, an urban regeneration project entitled “Jabal Al-Qalaa’: Regeneration through Community Participation” won second and third place awards respectively in two national competitions: the Jordan Engineers’ Association Award and the iSustain award. After her graduation, she practiced for one year in Paradigm DH, a small-scale local architectural office, where she mainly worked on the renovation of existing structures. In 2015, she joined the team of Alnasser + Partners, a multi-discipline engineering firm specialized in high-end large scale projects in Jordan & the gulf, gaining vast technical knowledge and collaboration skills. With a strong belief in continuous self-development, Sally always engaged herself in artistic, architectural, and urban theory workshops such as The Meeting of Design Students- Ireland, The Janet Abu Lughod Library Seminar-Amman, Design Road-Amman, UPENN Designing Cities online course, and the Zaatari Winterization Social Design Workshop- Amman.

Saumil studied architecture at the Institute of Environmental Design Gujarat India, where he discovered and explored his major interest in urban studies and sustainability. He continued to work in the same direction, which lead him to focus on left over spaces under flyovers as a graduation project. During his undergraduate studies he actively took part in several national competitions, which were majorly focused on issues of suitability and cities. Because of strong interest and to look closely into the architectural practice he started working in small private architectural firm in Ahmedabad India, where he handled diversified projects and developed furthermore understanding about socio-cultural and contextual aspects of buildings and sites.

Giancarlo (*1985) holds a Licentiate degree in architecture at the University of Costa Rica. His licentiate thesis focused in Academic Interdisciplinary Spaces. He has five years of working experience as a freelance architect which involved design, management and construction supervision of housing and commercial projects at a variety of scales in Costa Rica. From 2014 to 2015 he worked three semesters as a professor of the third and fourth year Design Workshop Module in the University of Costa Rica. From the year 2015 he has been involved working with local governments in the development of public spaces and recreational areas for vulnerable communities in his hometown Alajuelita.

Simone was born in 1993 and grew up close to Hanover. During high school, she participated in an exchange program and spent six months in Huelva, Spain. After graduating from high school in Hanover in 2012, Simone started the International Bachelor of Communication and Media at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. As part of her studies, she went to Córdoba in Argentina for one semester and did an internship at Houzz in Berlin for three months. In 2015 Simone received her Bachelor’s Degree in Rotterdam. Following her strong interest for urban design, she then came back to Hanover and worked six months assisting a project group concerned with refugee accommodation at the Regional Construction Office. Afterwards Simone did three months internship at a communicative planning office in Hanover, which focuses on public participation processes. Due to her background, Simone strongly believes in the combination of both, communication and urban design, playing a crucial role in making a change.

Kh M Abdullah completed his bachelor of architecture (2012) from Dhaka, Bangladesh. After working in an architectural consultancy firm for a year, he shifted his focus to participatory development projects and joined the London based studio ‘Paraa’. He was involved in a number of the research-based projects with ‘Paraa’. Research on the built environments in the refugee camps (Bihari Camps) in Dhaka, A shelter for street children, and a sustainable craft village were among the most successful ones. In 2014, Abdullah joined the ‘Urban Partnerships for Poverty Reduction’ (UPPR), a development project by United Nations in Bangladesh. With UPPR, he was conducting participatory workshops, mapping, analysis, design and supervising the construction of low-cost housings. Intended for people living in informal settlements of urban areas in different parts of Bangladesh. Later, he was awarded the ‘Perween Rahman fellowship’ to conduct an action-based research on community lead design by ‘Asian Coalition for Housing Rights’ (ACHR). At this point of his career, he felt the overarching need of methodical knowledge on sustainable design and participatory process. Eventually he joined the double degree masters program Integrated Urbanism and Sustainable Design (IUSD) in winter 2016.

Mennat-Allah (*1990, Egypt) received her Bachelor degree from Faculty of Engineering Cairo University Architectural Department in 2012. Since 2012, she worked as an architect and urban researcher in the Urban Training and Studies Institute (UTI) which affiliated to the Housing and Building National Research Center (HBRC), Egypt. Through (UTI), she had participated in different research studies and in reporting numerous of national, international training courses and argumentative workshops cooperated with various international organizations such as UN-Habitat, GLTN and Ecoplois Europa (The Netherlands). Addition to her work in (UTI), she also worked as teaching assistant in different universities such as Arab Academy for Science, Technology & Maritime Transport. Besides, she had participated in international workshops with Brandenburg University of Technology (Germany) and University of Thessaly (Greece) that discussed different topics concerning sustainable design, informal areas, community development and public spaces. Working in varied environments and dealing with civil societies and young students, had enabled her to learn new perspectives of thinking and new approaches to deal with complexity of urban issues.

Nojoud Ashour graduated from the University of Jordan in 2013 with a Bachelor degree in Architecture. During the last year of her studies, she participated in “Mappig Jabal Al Natheef “workshop. This was a turning point which shifted her interest in architecture and spatial planning to a new perspective, where humanitarian and architecture fields meet. That inspired her to work with Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in Irbid city, where she was involved in an Urban Shelter Project and in a School Construction Project, which allow her to understand the challenges Syrian refugees are facing in the urban context. Nojoud aims to further expand her knowledge through this master’s degree in “Integrated Urbanism and Sustainable Design”. She plans to carry on working in the humanitarian architectural field afterwards.