Julie-Anne Boudreau holds the Canada Research Chair on Urbanity, Insecurity, and Political Action at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS) in Montréal (in Canada). She has been Director of the Laboratoire Ville et Espaces politiques (VESPA) since 2006. Her research focuses on the relationship between political mobilisation, urbanisation and state restructuring processes. Her most recent book is Changing Toronto: Governing Urban Neoliberalism (2009, co-authored with Roger Keil and Douglas Young).

Maria Kaika is Professor in Human Geography at the University of Manchester (in the UK). She holds a DPhil in Geography from the University of Oxford, and an MA in Architecture from the National Technical University of Athens as well as professional qualifications as an architect. Until 2007 she was University Lecturer at Oxford, and Fellow of St. Edmund Hall. She is author of City of Flows: Modernity, Nature and the City (2005) and co-editor of In the Nature of Cities: Urban Political Ecology and the Metabolism of Urban Environments (2006).

Simon Parker is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of York (in the UK). He is the author of Urban Theory and the Urban Experience: Encountering the City (2004), and most recently, Cities, Politics and Power (2010). His research focuses in particular on urban social and political theory and comparative urban governance and governmentality.

Talja Blokland is professor of Urban and Regional Sociology at Humboldt University in Berlin (Germany). Her research interests are in social and relational theory, urban sociology, race and ethnicity, and social policy. In the broad field of urban studies, Blokland is especially interested in urban inequalities and marginalization processes, place making, neighborhood change and neighborhood cohesion. She is author of Urban Bonds: Social Relationships in an Inner-City Neighbourhood(2003) and co-editor of Networked Urbanism: Social Capital in the City (2008).

Yuri Kazepov is professor of Urban Sociology and Comparative Welfare Systems at the University of Urbino ‘Carlo Bo’ (in Italy). He is a founding board member of the Network for European Social Policy Analysis (ESPAnet) and the President of RC21 of the International Sociological Association. His publications include an edited volume, Cities of Europe: Changing Contexts, Local Arrangements and the Challenge to Social Cohesion (2005) and Rescaling social policies towards multilevel governance in Europe (2010). IJURR will be publishing in due course an ‘editorial statement’ by this new editorial team.