Keynotes
Speakers (in alphabetical order)
Prof. Vanesa Castan Broto
Delivering Innovation for Urban Climate Action
Vanesa Castan Broto is Professor of Climate Urbanism at the Urban Institute, University of Sheffield, UK. Her research studies the governance of climate change in cities. She currently leads the projects Low Carbon Action in Ordinary Cities (funded by the European Research Council) and Community Energy and Sustainable Energy Transitions (Funded by the UK Global Challenges Research Fund). She also co-leads the project RURBANISE, about building resilience in informal settlements in the Philippines (funded by the International Development Research Centre and the UK Foreign, Common wealth and Development Office). Professor Castan Broto has written and co-edited numerous articles and books, more recently the books Inclusive Urban Development in the Global South (Routledge, 2021) and Climate Urbanism (Palgrave, 2021). She won the 2021 AXA Prize in Climate Science and the 2016 Philip Leverhulme Prize in Geography. In 2013, her project won the UNFCCC Award of Lighthouse Activity for projects that contribute to improving the living conditions of the Urban Poor.
Prof. Ran Hirschl
Constitutions and the City: Comparative Reflections
Ran Hirschl (Ph.D., Yale University) is the David R. Cameron Distinguished Professor in Law and Politics at the University of Toronto. He is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on constitutional law and constitutional institutions and their intersection with comparative politics and society published in leading social science journals, law reviews, and agenda setting collections, as well as several key monographs, each one of which won a major book award: City, State: Constitutionalism and the Megacity (Oxford University Press, 2020)—recipient of the 2021 Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research, awarded by the International Science Council (ISC) and the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR); Comparative Matters: The Renaissance of Comparative Constitutional Law (Oxford University Press, 2014)—winner of the 2015 American Political Science Association (APSA) Herman Pritchett Award for the best book on law and courts; Constitutional Theocracy (Harvard University Press, 2010)—winner of the 2011 Dennis Leslie Mahoney Prize in Legal Theory; and Towards Juristocracy: The Origins and Consequences of the New Constitutionalism (Harvard University Press, 2004)—winner of the 2021 Lasting Contribution Award from the American Political Science Association’s Law & Courts Section. His forthcoming books include Deciphering the Genome of Constitutionalism: The Foundations and Future of Constitutional Identity (co-edited with Yaniv Roznai, Cambridge University Press, 2024), and Olympic Citizenship: The Interface of Nationality, Sports, and Transnational Law (co-authored with Ayelet Shachar, Oxford University Press, 2025).
Professor Hirschl has won academic excellence awards in five different countries, and has attracted over $7.5 million in competitive research grants, including a Killam Research Fellowship by the Canada Council of the Arts, and a coveted Alexander von Humboldt International Research Award—one of the most highly-endowed research award in Germany. He served as co-president of the ICON-S The International Society of Public Law, and held distinguished visiting professorships at Harvard, NYU, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Göttingen, and at the National University of Singapore, as well as prestigious fellowships at Stanford University, Princeton University, and with the Max Planck Society. Hirschl is the co-editor of Cambridge University Press book series on comparative constitutional law and policy. He delivered dozens of named keynote lectures in conferences and universities worldwide. His work has been translated into various languages (from French, Dutch and Spanish to Turkish, Hebrew and Mandarin), discussed in numerous scholarly fora, cited by jurists and in high court decisions worldwide, and addressed in leading media venues from the CBC, New York Times and Folha de São Paulo to Le Figaro, Deutsche Welle, and the Jerusalem Post.
As of 2014, he is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC)—the highest academic recognition in that country. The official citation describes him as “one of the world’s leading scholars of comparative constitutional law, courts and jurisprudence.”