Christina Baglietto – has over 15 years’ experience in alternative care and adoption. She has worked in post-illegal adoptions in Guatemala, where she contributed to implementation of new domestic laws and international standards, provided training and developed SOPs for the Central Authority's multidisciplinary team. She has also contributed to an assessment of the political, legal and policy responses in adoptions in Colombia. She has provided training and technical support notably in Cyprus, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Moldova, Panama and Romania. Fluent in English, French, German and Spanish, her solid experience will ensure a rigorous approach to the research.

Laurence Bordier – is a Swiss lawyer, with experience in corporate law and with the last decade focusing on children’s rights in alternative care and adoption. She specialises in comparative legal research, having drafted over 20 country situation analysis reviewing legislation and policy, as well as promising practices, with a critical objective of providing concrete tools to support professionals to improve their practices.

Mia Dambach – an Australian trained lawyer with 20 years’ experience of working on children’s rights, successfully leading multiple international inter-agency initiatives. She has provided technical support through evaluation missions (qualitative research) in Cambodia, Denmark, Egypt, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Sudan, Ukraine, Viet Nam etc., law reforms and training in over 20 countries focusing on alternative care and adoption. She has contributed to reforms in international standards, with a focus on their application, notably through comparative research on illegal adoptions, search for origins, risks of financial contributions, kafalah conversions into adoption and as an expert to the HCCH WG on illicit adoption practices. Fluent in English, French and Filipino, she brings with her leadership, project management and research skills to ensure the practical success of this project.

Philip Jaffé - Full Professor at the University of Geneva’s Centre for Children's Rights Studies (Valais Campus, Sion) is also Member of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. He has been involved in research, teaching and advocacy in the field of child rights and the protection of children for several decades. Most recently he is a co-applicant for the Cottier research and is currently responsible for an intermediary evaluation of the child protection reform of the Canton of Neuchâtel. His extensive experience in children’s rights and psychology will ensure an interdisciplinary approach to the research methodology, recommendations and outputs

Patricia Fronek – School of Human Services and Social Work, Griffith University, Australia. She is an international expert, brings expertise in project management, qualitative and mixed methods research, and a long history of research and practice in ICA and national adoptions and alternative care in international settings from a social justice and human rights perspective. She has worked closely with people who have been subjected to coercive practices including families and adult adoptees and the education of practitioners in these fields.

David Smolin – Law professor at Samford University, is considered a world leader on the topic of illegal adoptions, which include coercive practices, in light of international standards. He has served as an independent expert for the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH) on ICA issues, and has served as an external expert for the ISS/IRC. He has written extensively on the topic of illegal adoptions, with particular interest in India, the main State of origin for Switzerland.

Gaelle Aeby has a PhD in Social sciences and is a research associate at the University of Geneva and at the School of social work of Geneva. She is currently involved in the Cottier research on the experiences of children and parents in CAPA proceedings (see below) and she was recently awarded a project on foster families (Foundation Palatin). Previously, she worked on foster care institutions in Geneva, and on the transition to adulthood of care leavers. Overall, she has a strong interest in innovative research designs combining quantitative and qualitative methods, and interdisciplinary research.

Nigel Cantwell - a Geneva-based consultant on child protection policies, brings 40 years of international experience to the project. He coordinated civil society’s inputs into the drafting of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in the 1980s.  Later, at UNICEF's Innocenti Research Centre, he headed up analysis of child protection issues for six years and then became lead consultant for developing the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children. He remains UNICEF’s expert on children’s rights issues related to ICA. In 2017, the University of Strathclyde awarded him an honorary doctorate in recognition of his work.