As part of the new Scientific Board 2026–2030, GLOBELICS has established five working teams to strengthen the network’s ability to serve its community, respond to emerging needs, and create new opportunities for collaboration.
The teams are practical spaces for reaching out to the GLOBELICS community. They connect members, RegionalLICS and CountryLICS, early-career scholars, institutions and partners, while helping ideas, needs and opportunities circulate across the network.
Community members are warmly encouraged to contact the teams, share ideas and needs, propose activities, and bring forward opportunities where GLOBELICS can help connect people, knowledge and resources.
The Presidency Team: A shared approach to leading the network
The Presidency Team — José Miguel Natera, Glenda Kruss, Jun Jin and Danilo Spinola — works through a coordinated and shared leadership model, connecting the different areas of activity of GLOBELICS and supporting the strategic decisions required by the network.
Each member of the Presidency Team is linked to one or more working teams, helping ensure coordination across activities while keeping the Scientific Board collectively involved in the network’s direction. This distributed approach allows different perspectives, regions and areas of expertise to contribute to GLOBELICS leadership, while maintaining a common direction and strong coordination across the network.
The working teams are therefore not separate structures, but part of a shared and representative way of working, connecting the Presidency Team, the Scientific Board and the broader GLOBELICS community.
RegionaLICS & Internal Cohesion
The RegionaLICS & Internal Cohesion Team works to strengthen relationships between GLOBELICS, RegionalLICS and CountryLICS, and to facilitate connections across regions.
The team wants to hear about regional priorities, communication needs, opportunities for joint activities, and possibilities for South–South and cross-regional collaboration. Its role is also to help regional perspectives and experiences contribute actively to the global GLOBELICS community.
Team: Andrew Roberts Cummings and Isabel Álvarez, Coordinators; Jun Jin, Presidency Team liaison; Abdi Ahmad, Glenda Kruss, and Swati Mehta.
Early-Career
The Early-Career Team is a point of contact for doctoral students and emerging scholars across GLOBELICS and its regional communities.
Its role is to listen to their needs and help create opportunities around training, mentoring, mobility, visibility, networking and participation in GLOBELICS activities.
We particularly encourage early-career researchers to share their ideas about how GLOBELICS can become an even more supportive space for developing new generations of innovation and development scholars.
Team: Jana Schmutzler De Uribe and Abiodun Egbetokun, Coordinators; Danilo Spinola, Presidency Team liaison; and Isabel Bortagaray.
Events & Communication
The Events & Communication Team helps the community connect, share and give visibility to its activities through GLOBELICS conferences, academies, webinars, the website, newsletter and social media.
Members, RegionalLICS and CountryLICS are encouraged to share events, calls, publications, opportunities, news and ideas for new activities that may be relevant to the wider community. The team also seeks to make communication increasingly two-way, helping GLOBELICS communicate with its members while creating greater visibility for what is happening throughout the network.
Team: Martin Kang’ethe Gachukia, Coordinator; Glenda Kruss, Presidency Team liaison; Justina Adwoa Onumah, Swati Mehta, Jun Jin, and Keun Lee.
Partnerships
The Partnerships Team helps connect GLOBELICS with organisations, networks and institutions that can create new opportunities for the community.
This includes potential research collaborations, funding opportunities, policy engagement, partnerships with other academic networks, and relationships with public, multilateral and other relevant organisations.
Community members are encouraged to alert the team to potential partners, funding opportunities or initiatives where the GLOBELICS network could add value or help build stronger international collaboration.
Team: Roberta Rabellotti and Claudia De Fuentes, Coordinators; José Miguel Natera, Presidency Team liaison; Carlo Pietrobelli, Keun Lee, Glenda Kruss, and Isabel Álvarez.
Governance
The Governance Team supports the institutional functioning of GLOBELICS, helping make its processes clearer, more transparent and easier for the community to navigate.
Its role is to support the structures that allow the network to work effectively and sustainably, while helping identify organisational and resource opportunities that can strengthen GLOBELICS over time.
Members are also encouraged to raise questions or suggestions about how the network can improve its internal processes and collective functioning.
Team: Trina Fizzanty and Danilo Spinola, Coordinators; José Miguel Natera, Presidency Team liaison.
We want to hear from you
These teams are not simply internal structures of the Scientific Board. They are intended to be points of connection and service for the whole GLOBELICS community.
If you have an initiative, opportunity, challenge or idea that could benefit from GLOBELICS connections, please reach out and share it with us.
Our aim is to make GLOBELICS more connected, more representative, more responsive and more useful to the community that gives the network its strength.