Alicia Chalabe was born in Jujuy, Argentina. She’s an independent lawyer who specializes in constitutional procedural law, with special interest in collective litigation. She studied in the National University of Tucumán, with postgraduate studies in several Argentinian and international academic institutions.

Over the last thirty years, she has worked on advancing the political rights of women in the province of Jujuy and has led the legal representation of: collective action before the Supreme Court of Justice in Argentina of indigenous communities of the Cuenca de Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc; the defense of the cultural and environmental heritage of the people of the Quebrada de Humahuaca - which got to be recognized as Natural and Cultural World Heritage site by UNESCO in 2002-; the defense of the cultural and natural heritage of the city of Purmamarca (Cerro de los 7 colores and Laguna precámbrica); among others.

During the last 12 years, she has been advising and supporting the fight of the 33 indigenous communities of Salinas Grandes in different ways: through legal advice, plaints, trainings, conflict resolution, international and national representation, the defense of their territories, and the compliance of their indigenous rights in different forums, to stop the advance of extractive activities such as the exploitation of lithium. Currently, she’s preparing the indigenous communities’ legal land claim of the Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc in the provinces of Salta and Jujuy.

Professor N. Bruce Duthu is the Samson Occom Professor and Chair of Native American & Indigenous Studies at Dartmouth College. An internationally recognized scholar of Native American law and policy, Duthu joined the Faculty of Arts & Sciences at Dartmouth in 2008. He served as Dartmouth’s associate dean of the Faculty for International Studies & Interdisciplinary Programs. Duthu earned his BA degree in religion and Native American Studies from Dartmouth College and his JD degree from Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans. Prior to joining the Dartmouth faculty, Duthu was professor of law at Vermont Law School where he also served as the law school’s vice dean for academic affairs and as inaugural director of the VLS-Sun Yat-sen University (Guangzhou, China) Partnership in Environmental Law. He served as visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School, the universities of Wollongong and Sydney in New South Wales, Australia, and the University of Trento in northern Italy.

Professor Duthu is the author of Shadow Nations: Tribal Sovereignty and the Limits of Legal Pluralism (Oxford University Press 2013) and American Indians and the Law (Viking/Penguin Press 2008) and was a contributing author of Felix S. Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law (2005), the leading treatise in the field of federal Indian law. His co-edited special volume of South Atlantic Quarterly, Sovereignty, Indigeneity, and the Law, won the 2011 CELJ (Council of Editors of Learned Journals) award for Best Special Issue. He co-produced the documentary feature film, Dawnland (2018) that focuses on state removal of Indian children from their families. In 2019, Dawnland received an Emmy award for Outstanding Research. Duthu has lectured on indigenous rights in various parts of the world, including Russia, China, Bolivia, Italy, France, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Professor Duthu is an enrolled tribal member of the United Houma Nation of Louisiana. He and his wife, Hilde Ojibway, have three children and four grandchildren.

Maristella Svampa is an Argentine sociologist and writer. She has an undergraduate degree in philosophy from the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba and a PhD in sociology from the École d’Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. She lives in Dinahuapi, Argentinian Patagonia, and is senior researcher at the Conicet (National Center for Scientific and Technical Research), and professor at the Universidad Nacional de la Plata (province of Buenos Aires). She is the coordinator of the Group of Critical and Interdisciplinary Studies on the Energy Problem and participates at the International Group of Alternative Development. She received the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Kónex award in Sociology (Argentina) in 2006 and 2016. In 2019, she received the National Award in Sociology.

Svampa has published and lectured in many countries including France, the US, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, England, Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Costa Rica, and Chile among others. She works on socioecological crises and socioenvironmental conflicts in Latin America. Among her books are Maldesarrollo. La Argentina del extractivismo y el despojo (Maldevelopment) (2014) and Debates Latinoamericanos. Indianismo, Desarrollo, Dependencia, Populismo (Latin American Debates: Indianism, Development, Dependency, Populism) (2016). In English, she has published Development in Latin America, Challenges, Resistances, Future (Fernwood Publishing, 2019) and Neo-Extractivism Dynamics in Latin America, Socioenvironmental Conflicts, Territorial Turn, and New Political Narratives (Cambridge University Press, 2019). She has also published novels. Her latest book is El colapso ecológico ya llegó. Una brújula para salir del maldesarrollo (The ecological collapse is here. A compass to get out of maldevelopment) (2020).

Michael B. Gerrard is Andrew Sabin Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia Law School, where he teaches courses on environmental and energy law and founded and directs the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. He is also a member and former chair of the faculty of Columbia’s Earth Institute. Before joining the Columbia faculty in January 2009, he was partner-in-charge of the New York office of the Arnold & Porter law firm; he is now senior counsel to the firm. He practiced environmental law in New York City full-time from 1979 to 2008. His practice involved trying numerous cases and arguing many appeals in federal and state courts and administrative tribunals; handling the environmental aspects of numerous transactions and development projects; and providing regulatory compliance advice to a wide variety of clients in the private and public sectors.

Gerrard was the 2004 – 05 chair of the American Bar Association’s 10,000-member section of environment, energy, and resources. He also chaired the New York City Bar Association’s executive committee and the New York State Bar Association’s environmental law section.

Since 1986, Gerrard has written an environmental law column for the New York Law Journal. He is author or editor of thirteen books, two of which were named Best Law Book of the Year by the Association of American Publishers: Environmental Law Practice Guide (12 volumes, 1992) and Brownfields Law and Practice (four volumes, 1998).

He received his BA from Columbia University and his JD from NYU Law School, where he was a Root Tilden Scholar.