Anna Marangou studied Archaeology and History of Art at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium and holds a Masters degree in History from the University of Cyprus. She is fluent in Greek, English, French and German. She has organised and curated a number of exhibitions both in Cyprus and abroad. She is the author of several books dealing with the history and culture of Cyprus as well as non-fiction books, scripts, theatre plays and children’s stories. She worked as Cultural Officer of the Municipality of Nicosia from 1979 to 1991 and she was a candidate for Mayor of Nicosia in 1996 and 2006.

Fatma Azgin was born in Nicosia. She has a degree in Pharmaceutical Studies from Istanbul University. She opened her own pharmacy in 1972 and she started being involved in the Pharmacist Association which was founded in 1959 but was inactive for many years. In 1975, she was elected as a representative of the association in the Parliament. She worked for two years, closely with the leftist group, in promoting democratic and progressive laws.

She devoted her life to activism through the Pharmacist Association, the Green Peace Movement and various women organizations. She has also founded the Turkish Cypriot Conflict Resolution Group with Dr Louise Diamond and together they organized numerous bi-communal workshops in Ledra Palace Hotel as well as abroad. She also received from Fulbright Commission a two months scholarship on Peace Building in San Diego State University. She is also an active member of Helsinki Citi- zen’s Assembly. Azgin is the author of the books Ulviye Mithat work for Feminism in the 1940’s and the Pharmacy Legislation Book, published in 1986.

She is married to journalist Dr. Bekir Azgin and they have two sons Mutlu and Bilge. She still runs her pharmacy in Nicosia and she is also teaching (part time) Pharmacy practice, Pharmacy Legislation Ethics and Deontology at the Cyprus International University.

Susana Elisa Pavlou holds a BA in Political Science from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and an MSc in International Politics with an area concentration in the Middle East from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London University. Susana is currently Director at the Mediterranean Institute of Gender Studies (MIGS). Susana has extensive experience in the coordination and management of projects, in gender equality training and education, and in gender research and analysis, with particular expertise on issues of gender and social policy, and violence against women. Susana is a Member of the Advisory Committee for the Prevention and Combating of Family Violence, National Expert for the European Network of Experts in Gender Equality, and Expert at the EWL Observatory on Violence against Women. She is serving a third term as Board Member of the European Women’s Lobby and is a member of the Executive Committee.

Magda Zenon has been a peace and human rights activist ever since she can remember and brings with her a perspective formed within the contexts of living in three countries: South Africa, Greece, and now Cyprus, where she moved to in 2000.

Since moving to Cyprus she has continued to be an active member of civil society within the peace and women’s rights movement with a focus on gender violence and women‘s participation and the integration of the gender perspective in the peace process and contributing to a culture of peace.  She is a founding and active member of Hands Across the Divide, the first island wide women’s organisation; of the Cyprus Women’s Lobby, that represents the Republic of Cyprus at the European Women’s Lobby and of the Gender Advisory Team, an ad hoc group of women that came together and developed specific proposals with a gender perspective on subjects such as citizenship and property that were passed on and discussed with the negotiators. A follow-up to these was the ‘Pathways towards Sustainable Peace: Building UNSCRes 1325 into the Cyprus Context’ conference held in November 2016.

Finally, Magda is a great believer in the power of story-telling and to this end has hosted a radio programme called ‘kaleid’HER’scope’ on MYCYRadio, an Internet based community radio for over 4 years. ‘Kaleid’HER’scope’ is a forum for women’s voice that perhaps might not have access to the traditional media and she has had conversations about peacebuilding, gender based violence, sexual and reproductive rights, trafficking and women’s participation in decision-making.

Hazal Yolga is a researcher for the Cypriot Community Media Research Programme of Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and a Project Coordinator at the Cyprus Community Media Centre (CCMC). As part of her role at CCMC, she manages funded projects focusing on media and human rights, the latest being “Unspoken: Creating Dialogue on LGBTI Rights in the Turkish Cypriot Community”. 

Hazal Yolga has collaborated on several video art installations and holds a masters degree in Communication, Culture, and Technology from Georgetown University.

Nikoletta (Niki) Christodoulou is Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction in the Department of Advanced Studies and Innovation, College of Education, Augusta University, Georgia, USA. She has recently returned to Cyprus to join the faculty of Education and Social Sciences at Frederick University. She holds a PhD in Education with a focus on Curriculum Studies and Instruction from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), Chicago, Illinois, USA; a Master’s in Education from UIC with a focus on Instructional Leadership; and a Bachelor’s in Pre-Primary Education from the University of Cyprus.

Besides Cyprus, her home country, she has also lived in the United States of America, and in Saudi Arabia and the United Arabic Emirates for several years. She was the Coordinator of the Cyprus Oral History and Living Memory Project at Frederick Research Center, Nicosia, Cyprus, and she worked with teachers for the implementation of oral history in schools. Currently, she is the Coordinator of The Central Savannah River Area Education Oral History Project. She has collaborated with universities in the USA, Europe, and India to help improve the quality and standards of teaching and introduce teaching, educational, and curricular innovations. Her publication record includes articles in peer-reviewed, educational research journals, book chapters, and books, including her Greek book titled Understanding Curriculum: A Field of Study and Research.

Her academic interests include curriculum studies, curriculum theory, democratic teaching and learning, teacher education and pedagogy, teaching and curricular innovations, teacher and student learning experiences, politics of education, narrative inquiry, (auto)ethnography and (auto)biographical research, qualitative research, oral history research and oral history education.

Faika Deniz Pasha works as a project coordinator / legal advisor for a local NGO, Refugee Rights Association in the northern part of the island. In 2012 she has authored a mapping report in relation to human rights of women, which has been published by Turkish Cypriot Human Rights Foundation.

She also participates in Queer Cyprus Association, an LGBTI rights organization, based in northern part of Cyprus; Platform for Women Held Captive by Force, based in Diyarbakır, Turkey, working for women from Yazidi and other ethnic and/or religious groups enslaved by ISIS in Iraq and Syria as well as Kyrenia Initiative, a grassroots movement opposing neoliberal reconstruction of the city and defending the right to city.

Katie Economides studied classical singing at the Ethnicon Odeon of Cyprus with Lella Symeonidou, and in London with Jane Hill. She continued her studies with Avra Shati and in 2001 she earned the Certificate of Voice Performance by the Guildhall School of Music and Drama of London (with Merit), and in 2003 the Diploma in Recital Performance (with Merit). She studied different kinds of Music with Sona Gargaloyan, and attended master classes with Prof. Georgia Michaelidou, of the Univ of Vienna.

She gave numerous performances of Italian arias and songs, German Lied, Sacred and Religious Music, Contemporary Greek Music and Musicals in Cyprus and abroad. She recorded for the CyBC and appeared on radio and television. She sang at the first bicommunal recital in Cyprus in 1995 at the Ledra Palace for the 50^th anniversary of the UN. She has been giving numerous recitals all over Cyprus and the UK for charity.

With her initiative, the Bicommunal Choir was founded in 1996 (with Salih Oztoprak). For the last 3 years, she’s been performing with The Bicommunal Music Trio (Fikri Toros piano, Eran Raman flute), all over Cyprus.

With a scholarship from USAID she studied Political Science and Philosophy at the American University of Beirut from where she graduated with a BA in 1981. In 1992-1993 with a Fulbright grant, she studied Conflict Management and Human Resource Development in the USA. In 1999, with a scholarship from the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office, she read at the London Center for International Relations (University of Kent) from where she graduated with a MA in International Conflict Analysis (with Merit).

Coming from a family whose most members were lost in the 1974 war, she devoted herself in Peace and Reconciliation in her country and internationally. She trained a number of bicommunal citizens’ groups of Women, Youth, and Professionals in Conflict Resolution and Mediation in Cyprus and abroad. With her initiative, the International Organization Women Waging Peace was founded in the US, the NGO Resource Centre in Nicosia, the Bicommunal Citizens Group for Peace in Cyprus, and the Hands Across the Divide (together with Sevgul Uludag).

She has been an active member of the Peace Center Cyprus, through which she participated in conferences and trainings internationally as a keynote speaker.

With her associate Dervish Baha, they earned the Stelios Award for their Mediation Initiative, the first bicommunal business of its kind. They earned it for the second time the year after for the project “Guided Tours all over Cyprus”.

With her classmates from Primary School, she founded the Charity Organization “Allileggyi”.

Besides Greek and English, she speaks Italian and French and has a basic knowledge of German and Turkish.

She is a multi-lingual Tourist Tour Guide.

She has been working at the HR Department and later at the Press Office of the Cyprus Tourism Organization since 1982.

She is married to Panicos Economides and has two daughters.

Maria Hadjipavlou has been an associate professor at the Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Cyprus (1995-2013). She is a feminist, and conflict resolution scholar/practitioner. She has founded or co-founded many non-governmental organizations and promoted reconciliation and peace across the divides in Cyprus. As a gender and conflict resolution trainer for UNFPA trained women in Afghanistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, Northern Ireland and Bratislava on gender issues and conflict resolution.

She has published in academic journals and edited books in the areas of conflict resolution, the Cyprus conflict, women and peace, ethnic stereotypes, the ‘crossings’ across the divide, women and migration, feminism, gender and 1325. Her book, Women and Change in Cyprus: Feminisms, and Gender in Conflict.(I.B. Tauris,2010) is used widely.

She is a member of various international associations, Cypriot NGOs and of the Cyprus Technical Committee on Gender Equality which promotes the integration of a gender perspective in the Cyprus peace negotiations and the future federal constitution.

Oya Akin  is a London born (1975) Cypriot actor, director, educator, facilitator, translator, peace activist, mum. Since 2003, she has taken part collaborated and/or led more than 100 bicommunal, multi communal, multilingual, multicultural theater, feature-short-documentary-tv film, literature and peace education projects.