Vijaya Krishnan (Ph.D.) is a demographer whose research interests include population health, research methods, and HIV/AIDS. At the time of writing, she was a lecturer at University of Botswana. She is now affiliated with the Grande Prairie Regional College. Her recent publications include: “Sexual risk behaviors and HIV/AIDS and STD risk perceptions of young people in Botswana” (monograph, University of Botswana, 2003); “The prevalence of child sexual abuse in Canadian Aboriginal communities” Child Suffering in the World (Sexual Trauma Center, 2000); “Impact of abortion on Canadian fertility rates” (with Karol J. Krotki), Canadian Studies in Population (1999).

Tahire O. Koçtürk is a physician and a nutritionist educated at the Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey, The University of Tennessee and the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden. Amongst her long list of credentials is an innovative analysis of the experiences of Turkish women immigrants (A Matter of Honour, London, Zed Books). Her more recent works focus on food habit changes of immigrant women from middle eastern and African origins.

June Larkin (Ph.D.) is undergraduate coordinator of Women’s Studies and director of Equity Studies, University of Toronto, St. George campus. She is coordinator of the Gendering Adolescent AIDS Prevention (GAAP) project housed at the Institute for Women’s Studies and Gender Studies, University of Toronto.

Claudia Mitchell (Ph.D.) is a professor in the School of Education at the University of Natal, South Africa. She has published extensively in the area of literacy, girls’ education, visual participatory methodologies and gender and HIV/AIDS. She is coordinator of the Gendering Adolescent AIDS Prevention (GAAP) project.

Aysan Sev’er (Ph.D.) is a professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. She teaches sociology of gender and family and writes extensively on sexual harassment, intimate partner abuse of women, link between separation and violence, cross-cultural forms of wife abuse and extreme violence against women such as “honour killings” and “dowry murders.” Her latest book on women who have left their abusive partners (Fleeing the House of Horrors, University of Toronto Press) has received the Canadian Women’s Studies Book Award (2004). She is also the founder and the general editor of Women’s Health & Urban Life journal.

Cheryl van Daalen (R.N., Ph.D.) is a feminist mental health nurse and faculty member with York University School of Nursing in Toronto. Her areas of interest and scholarship include women’s self- esteem, young women and anger, girl’s experiences with shame in physical education, children’s rights in health care, homelessness, feminist nursing practice, feminist pedagogy, eco-therapy, and the relationship between oppression and mental health. She is currently a volunteer street nurse in Toronto, has a private pro bono community health nurse practice and is a special advisor on children’s mental health with the Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children.

The Women's Health & Urban Life: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal is generously funded by the Wellesley Central Health Corporation and is permanently housed at the Sociology Department, University of Toronto. The founder and the first general editor is Aysan Sev'er, University of Toronto.