Thomas Hartmann is an Associate Professor at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. His expertise and research interests are in the area land and water governance, with a focus on risk management of river floods; land policies and planning instruments; and planning theory, with a particularly aspects of justice and ethics in cities. Land and its management are a common theme running runs through the way Thomas Hartmann approaches these topics, since addressing land and its social construction via property rights helps to put new and innovative perspectives on many areas of planning and governance. Lenka Slavikova is an institutional economist with a focus on environmental governance issues in Central and Eastern Europe. She is the Executive Director of research at the Institute for Economic and Environmental Policy (IEEP) at Jan Evangelista Purkyne University in Usti nad Labem, Czech Republic. In 2015, Lenka became an Associated Professor of Public Economics. She has published numerous papers on water and biodiversity governance, participation and market-based instrument implementation. Simon McCarthy is a Senior Research fellow at the Flood Hazard Research Centre at Middlesex University, London.
His teaching and expertise in social research focuses on the role of both public and professional social contexts in decision making, communication of flood risk and uncertainty and approaches to participatory interaction in flood risk and water management. Simon is a member of the Thematic Advisory Group on flood and coastal erosion risk management research and development for England and Wales; Defra, Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales.