Ritt Bjerregaard (Lord Mayor of Copenhagen, Denmark)
Gosta Esping-Andersen (University Pompeu Fabra, Spain)
Peer Hull Kristensen (Copenhagen Business School, Denmark)
Patrick LeGales (Sciences Po, France)
Ruth Milkman (University of Califonia, Los Angeles, USA)
Jonathan Zeitlin (University of Wisconsin, USA)

Gosta Esping-Andersen is Professor of Sociology at Universitat Pompeu Fabra and has previously taught at Universita di Trento, the European University and at Harvard University. His research centers on social inequality, demographic issues and the welfare state. He is the author of Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies, and Why We Need a New Welfare State. 
Title of Presentation: How Families Create Human Capital Inequalities

Ritt Bjerregaard is the Lord Mayor of Copenhagen.  She was elected for public office for the first time in 1970, when she entered local politics in Denmark’s third largest city of Odense. The following year she was elected a member of parliament.  She quickly proved herself an unorthodox and highly independent politician, early on challenging the establishment in Danish politics and in her own party.  After only two years in parliament she became minister for education.  Ever since she has had a dominant position in Danish politics.  She has served as minister four times, and in 1995 she was appointed commissioner to the European Union for the environment.  She re-entered national politics in 1999, once again elected for parliament.  In 2005 she returned to local politics triumphing in a landslide election in Copenhagen, where she now is Lord Mayor.   Ritt Bjerregaard has especially led the political debate on issues later called “new politics”.  She is especially known as an advocate for environmental issues, women’s rights, education, and social politics.  In Copenhagen she is focusing on issues of integration and affordable housing.  Conditions for corporate creativity in Copenhagen are also a central part of her political agenda.
Title of Presentation: Large Cities and Globalization

Patrick Le Galès is Directeur de recherche CNRS at CEVIPOF, (Centre de recherches Politiques de Sciences Po) Professor of Politics and Sociology, Sciences Po Paris. He was educated at Sciences Po Paris, and then got an M.Litt in politics Nuffield College Univ Oxford, a Phd in Sociology Univ Nanterre Paris X, and an Habilitation at Univ Rennes I. He is the director of the Public Policy programme in the research master/Phd school and coordinates the  master “Urban strategies and public policies”, both at Sciences Po Paris. His main fields of research are comparative public policy,(France, UK, Italy, Finland), governance, urban sociology, political economy/economic sociology. He currently works on middle classes in European cities, the restructuring of the British state, corruption and governance in the Paris region and the instruments of public policies at the national and EU level (part of the NEWGOV Project).  He was a Stein Rokkan Prize winner for the book European cities, Social conflicts and Governance. He published or edited Politiques urbaines et développement local en France et UK ;  Les réseaux de l'action publique ; Regions in Europe, the paradox of power; Cities in contemporary Europe ; Local industrial systems in Europe, rise or demise ? ; The changing governance of local economies in Europe ; Developments in French Politics 3 ; Gouverner par les instruments.  

Ruth Milkman is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute of Industrial Relations at the University of California, Los Angeles.  She did her undergraduate work at Brown University and received her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.  Her research and writing has ranged over a variety of issues surrounding work and labor organization in the U.S.  She has written many articles and four books: Gender at Work:  The Dynamics of Job Segregation During World War II; Japan’s California Factories: Labor Relations and Economic Globalization; Farewell to the Factory: Auto Workers in the Late 20^th Century, and, L.A. Story:  Immigrant Workers and the Future of the U.S. Labor Movement.

Title of Presentation: Labor Revitalization and the Immigrant Workers’ Movement in the USA

Jonathan Zeitlin is Professor of Sociology, Public Affairs, Political Science, and History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is also Director of the Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy (WAGE) and the European Union Center of Excellence. His current projects include a cross-sectoral analysis of the new architecture of experimentalist governance in the EU and a collaborative study of the globalization of component supply chains in old-line manufacturing industries (funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation). Professor Zeitlin is Co-Editor of Socio-Economic Review, published for SASE by Oxford University Press. Recent publications include: Local Players in Global Games: The Strategic Constitution of a Multinational Corporation, (co-authored with Peer Hull Kristensen), The Open Method of Coordination: The European Employment and Social Inclusion Strategies; Governing Work and Welfare in a New Economy: European and American Experiments, Americanization and Its Limits: Reworking US Technology and Management in Postwar Europe and Japan, and "Supply Chain Governance and Regional Development in the Global Economy," special issue of Industry & Innovation.  

Title of Presentation: Learning from Difference: The New Architecture of Experimentalist Governance in the European Union