Drawing on many years of experience working as a social worker in the fields of adult mental health, child protection, and community development, Gloria is also an academic whose work has included leading undergraduate and postgraduate professional education programs in social work at Trinity College Dublin and the National University of Ireland (Maynooth).
Gloria is currently based in the Graduate School of Healthcare Management in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland where she works through education and research to promote excellence in healthcare management and leadership. Gloria’s research draws on her practice experience combined with her cross-disciplinary scholarship in the fields of social science, social work and law. A consistent theme in all her research is the amplification of excluded or silenced voices, seeking always to draw societal attention to the issues of importance for groups who are experiencing marginalisation or discrimination. Her research work is dedicated to finding solutions to research design barriers that prevent full research participation by people who are segregated, deprived of their liberty or autonomy or who are otherwise excluded and prevented from contributing their views on issues that affect their lives. Her recent work has included examination of participation by mental health service users in their personal experiences of diagnosis and treatment, the benefits of peer supports for mental health service users, and the problems of access to healthcare experienced by migrant populations.

Gloria has served voluntarily in a number of professional, community and NGO agencies over a period of many years. She is currently Editor of two international journals, Groupwork and also the Journal of Social Work Practice. She has served as guest editor for other journals including the Irish Association of Social Worker’s journal in 2017 with a special issue on research in social work in Ireland.

Professor Darja Zaviršek is Chair of the Department of Social Justice and Inclusion at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Work, and Professor at the Master's programme ‘Social Work as a Human Rights Profession’ at the University of Applied Science Alice Salomon Berlin. She was the Chair of Indosow- International Doctoral Studies in Social Work 2008-2014 and established the ‘Eastern European Sub-Regional Association of Schools of Social Work’ of IASSW in 2009. She is the president of the EEsrASSW and board member of IASSW and a member and mentor of the ‘Southeast European Academic Women's Leadership Initiative’. She was a member of the international teams for the development of social work education at the University of Banja Luka, BIH (2000-2005), Tbilisi State University, Georgia (2006-2012), Pristine University, Kosovo (2006-2010) and Kyiv Mohyla University, Ukraine (1996-2002). She has received several awards and fellowships, including: Honorary Professorship at Alice Salomon Hochschule Berlin (2002); Soros Foundation, SEP, Central European University, Senior Fellowship Grant (2005); Hong Kong Polytechnic University Fellowship (2009); Japan Society for the promotion of Science- JPPS Fellowship (2009); Tunghai University Fellowship (2014); Hokenstad Lecture Award, CSWE (2016), Excellency in Science Award, Slovenian Research Agency (2019), Eileen Younghusband Memorial Lecture (2022). Since 2009 she is the member of the ‘Academic Network of Disability Experts’ (now ‘European Disability Experts’) working with the European Commission. Since 2022 she is the chair of the ‘Research Unit for the Social work History’ at the Faculty of Social Work. She is the author, editor, and co-editor of more than 20 books and textbooks and has published over 200 articles in scholarly and professional journals on gender-based violence, disability studies, international adoption and family diversity, and social work history in Eastern Europe and anti-racist social work.

Julia M. Watkins, BS, MSW, PhD, served 9 years as the Executive Director of the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) in the US; she retired from that position in 2012. Prior to assuming the national leadership position in social work education, she served 10 years as the President of the American University in Bulgaria (AUBG). Watkins received an MSW and a PhD in educational psychology from the University of Utah. Before her tenure at the American University in Bulgaria, she was a professor of social work, dean of the college of social and behavioral sciences, and interim vice president for academic affairs at the University of Maine in Orono. She was a fellow of the American Council on Education Leadership Program and served a three-year term as an International Scholar with the Open Society Academic Fellowship Program, working in organizational and curriculum development with the Department of Social Work at the University of Sarajevo. Currently she is co-and founding director of the Southeast Europe Academic Women’s Leadership Initiative (SEEW).

Watkins has given numerous presentations and authored written works, including a book on social policy, as well as research and training grants in the fields of gerontology, social policy, and interdisciplinary training for health care professionals. Her most recent written contributions are in international social work. She has an extensive record of university service and has served on the boards of many nonprofit organizations, both domestically and internationally; Watkins served as president of the Association of American International Colleges and Universities from 1998-2000, as president of the Alliance of Universities for Democracy (2000-2002), as a founding member of the American Chamber of Commerce in Bulgaria, and as treasurer of the International Association of Schools of Social Work (2010-2014). She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in 2003 by the University of Maine for her work in Bulgaria. In October 2015, she was awarded the Partners in International Education (PIE) award by the Commission on Global Education of the CSWE and in 2019 she was elected as an NASW Pioneer.

Chaime Marcuello-Servós is professor of Social Work and Social Services in the Department of Psychology and Sociology at the University of Zaragoza. He teaches in the Master and PhD programs in Sociology of Public and Social Policies. He coordinates the Interdisciplinary Group of Teaching Innovation; he is a researcher of the Group of Social and Economic Studies of the Third Sector. He was chair of the committee on Sociocybernetics (2014-2018) of the International Sociological Association ISA. Editor of Current Sociology Monographs and SAGE Studies in International Sociology Books (2016-2023), co-director and co-founder of the Iberoamerican Journal of Development Studies and editor of Brill Research Perspectives in Sociocybernetics and Complexity (2019-...). Fellow of the Cybernetics Society (UK) and member of the Advisory Board, since 2020. Chair of the Aragonese Chapter of Internet Society