Speakers
Gazeta Wyborcza PL
Adam Michnik is Editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, the biggest daily in Poland. Historian, co-founder of KOR (Committee for the Defense of Workers) 1976, detained many times during 1965-1980, a prominent "Solidarity" activist during the '80ties, spent a total of six years in Polish prisons for activities opposing the communist regime, member of the Round Table Talks 1989, member of the first non-communist parliament 1989-1991, editor-in-chief of the first independent Polish newspaper - Gazeta Wyborcza. laureat of many prizes and titles: Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, The Erasmus Prize, The Francisco Cerecedo Journalist Prize as a first non-Spanish author, Grand Prince Giedymin Order; Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur; recipient of a doctorate honoris causa from The New School for Social Research in New York, from the University of Minnesota, University of Michigan, from Connecticut College; honorary senator of the University of Ljubljana, honorary professor of the Kyiv Mohyla Academy, in September 2011 awarded with the Goethe Medal by the Goethe-Institut. In 2012 he received the degree of doctor honoris causa of the University of Klaipeda and the University of Ljubljana. For support for the freedom of Lithuania and Lithuanians support in the fight against Soviet aggression Lithuanian Parliament unanimously awarded him the prestigious Freedom Award (13 January 2015). In September 2015 he received the Adam Mickiewicz award granted for contribution to the development of French-German-Polish cooperation within the framework of the Weimar Triangle. Author of books: Kościół, Lewica, Dialog (Church, the Left, Dialogue), Paris 1977; Z dziejów honoru w Polsce. Wypisy więzienne (from the History of Honour in Poland. Prison Notes), Paris 1985; Między Panem a Plebanem, Warszawa 1995; Wściekłość i wstyd, Warszawa 2005; W poszukiwaniu utraconego sensu, Warszawa 2007.
University of Torino and EUI IT
Prof. Alessandra Venturini is Deputy Director of the Migration Policy Center(MPC), Florence, and Professor of Political Economy at the University of Turin. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the EUI, and has held senior academic positions at various Universities She has been honored as a visiting professor at the Institute of Development Studies (Sussex University), at Brown University, at the International Institute of Labor Studies (at the ILO in Geneva) and COMPAS (Oxford). She conducted joint research projects with organisations ranging from the OECD migration section and the World Bank, to the European Commission and the CEPR Migration Research program. She is a fellow of IZA and IMISCOE. Her research interests are include labor economics, with a focus on the demand of caregivers in an aging society, the assimilation of migrants and their effect on the labor market and their role in the EU innovation process. She has also written extensively on the effect of remittances, and highly-skilled migration in sending countries and on circular and irregular migration.
Vice-Rector for Research Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica
Alexandra Bitušíková is an Associate Professor at Matej Bel University (UMB) in Banská Bystrica and a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Ethnology, Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava, Bratislava. She received PhD in social anthropology from Comenius University in Bratislava. She worked in various academic management positions (Director of the UMB Research Institute, Head of Scientific Committee, currently Vice-Rector for Research). She was a visiting scholar at Cambridge University, UK; University College London, UK; and Boston University, U.S. (Fulbright). She participated in several European Framework Programmes and H2020 research projects and is author of more than 100 publications on urban anthropology, diversity, gender, social and cultural change in Central Europe, and doctoral education in Europe. In 2001, she was seconded to the European Commission, DG Research in Brussels. From 2003 to 2008 she worked at the European University Association (EUA) in Brussels in the field of doctoral education reform and young researchers’ careers in Europe, since 2008 she has been a Senior Adviser for EUA-Council for Doctoral Education. She is the Slovak national delegate in the H2020 SC6 Programme Committee and the national delegate in the Helsinki Group on Gender Equality in Research and Innovation.
University of Vienna AT
Andre Ginrich is an Austro-American anthropologist with regional specializations and extensive ethnographic fieldwork experience in the Middle East and in Central Europe. His book publications include studies on neo-nationalism in Europe an beyond (co-ed.,Berghahn), on identity formations in various cultural settings (co-ed., Berghahn), and on methodological issues such as qualitative comparison and disciplinary history. He currently directs the Austrian Academy of Sciences' Institute for Social Anthropology (ISA) and also is a Full Professor for Social Anthropology at the University of Vienna. From 2008 till 2013, Gingrich served as Panel Chair in SH2 of the European Research Council's Advanced Scholars' Program. Gingrich also is a Full Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (since 2002), an International Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (since 2007), and since 2013, a Fellow of The World Academy of Sciences.
ERC BE
Angela Liberatore is Head of Unit on Social Sciences and Humanities at the European Research Council Executive Agency. Prior to this, she worked in DG RTD of the European Commission in the international cooperation programme with focus on the European Neighbourhood –including the Middle East, and, earlier on, in the Social Sciences and Humanities programme on citizenship, governance, conflict resolution, and in the Environment programme with focus on climate change. Publications include 'Climate Change, Security and Peace: The Role of the EU'; ‘Balancing security and democracy. Biometric politics in the European Union'; 'Democratising Expertise, Expertising Democracy'; 'The Management of Uncertainty: Learning from Chernobyl. Angela holds a PhD in Political and Social Sciences (European University Institute) and a degree in Philosophy (Bologna University).
KoWi DE
Since May 2016 Angela Schindler-Daniels is the deputy head of the European Liaison Office of German Research Organisations (KoWi) and head of its Bonn office. Her responsibilities include leading the NCP ERC team at KoWi, the MSCA team and monitoring and consulting on Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) in Horizon 2020. Previously, she was the Coordinator of the Social Sciences and Humanities Programme at the DLR Project Management Agency. In addition to coordinating the German SSH NCPs, she served as German delegate to the EU SSH Programme Committees in FP 5/6 and she as the German national expert in FP 7 and the Horizon 2020 Societal Challenge 6 (SC6) "Europe in a Changing World" Programme Committee. She has extensive experience in the preparation and management of EU research framework policies and programmes, particularly regarding the European dimension of SSH research funding and the challenges it involves. From 2008 to April 2016 she was the coordinator of the SC 6 NCP network "Net4Society". Prior to her involvement in EU research policy and management, Angela worked as an "Economic" and "Global Affairs"specialist with the US Embassy in Bonn, Germany. She holds a master’s degree in Political Science, American Literature and Business Administration.
EUI IT - GR
Anna Triandafyllidou is Professor at the Global Governance Programme (GGP) of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS), European University Institute in Florence. Within the GGP she coordinates the Research Area on Cultural Pluralism. Before joining the Programme, she was part time professor at the RSCAS (2010-2012). During the period 2004-2012, she was Senior Fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) in Athens where she headed a successful migration research team. She has been Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges since 2002, and is a member of the Spinelli Group. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies.
Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava
Gabriel Bianchi conducts research in several fields of social sciences interconnected via the main focus on deliberative democracy, public participation, and intimate citizenship. His research reflects issues of trans/national identity, gender equity, science-and-technology innovations, as well as sexual health. His specific asset is on the epistemology and methodology in social sciences, in particular the use of qualitative methods.
CAS BG
Daniela Koleva holds a PhD in Sociology from Sofia University. She is associate professor at the Department for History and Theory of Culture, Sofia University, and an academic associate at the Centre for Advanced Studies Sofia. Her research interests are in the fields of oral history and anthropology of socialism and post-socialism, biographical and cultural memory, politics of memory and heritage. She has published a monograph on the ‘normal life course’ in socialist Bulgaria and a number of book chapters and articles in peer-reviewed international journals. She is the (co)editor of 20 Years after the Collapse of Communism: Expectations, Achievements and Disillusions of 1989 (Peter Lang 2011), Negotiating Normality: Everyday Lives in Socialist Institutions (Transaction, 2012), Ageing, Ritual and Social Change: Comparing the Secular and Religious in Eastern and Western Europe. (Ashgate, 2013), From Literature to Cultural Literacy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). D. Koleva was a member of the Programme Committee for the Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities in FP7, and of the COST Domain Committee ‘Individuals, Societies, Cultures and Health’.
University of Bologna IT
Daniela Piana is professor of political science at the University of Bologna and associated fellow at the Institut des Hautes Etudes sur la Justice of Paris. She carries on extensive research activities on rule of law, quality of justice, quality of democracy, and judicial training, as well as on the quality of the law and the law making processes. Daniela has been appointed in 2014 member of the Observatory on the judicial reforms set up by the Minister of Justice and recently member of the national coordination committee on IT innovations in the Italian court system. She has published recently Networking the Rule of law (with Cristina Dallara), and in 2010 Judicial accountabilities in New Europe, both with Ashgate. She is part of Athena - Comité d'orientation - and of the Comité scientifique de perspective of the French Agency of National Research. She has coordinated several funded projects, among them Menu for Justice, engaging 48 universities, under the LLP European financial program.
University Paris -1 Panthéon-Sorbonne FR
Didier Georgakakis is Professor at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, European Centre for Sociology and Political science (CNRS). Previously a Professor at Sciences-Po Strasbourg, Didier Georgakakis is since 2012 a Professor of political science at University Paris1 - Panthéon Sorbonne where he chairs the Sorbonne Master degree in European public affairs and the joint Md on policies in Europe with the French national school of administration (ENA). One of the founders of the historical and political sociology of the EU, his research deals with theoretical perspectives on the political sociology of European integration and transnational field theory as well as empirical studies on the professionals of EU policies and governance. Among numerous books and articles on these subjects, he recently edited, Le Champ de l’Eurocatie. Une sociologie politique du personnel de l’UE (Economica, 2012, revised for an English version with J. Rowell in The field of eurocracy, mapping EU staff and professionals, Palgrave 2013), and publishes The Euro-civil service in (times of) crisis. The changing power of Eurocrats (forthcoming at Palgrave). A Vice-president of the ‘Association Française de Science Politique’ and the European Confederation of Political Science Associations, Didier Georgakakis belongs to the founding members’ board of the European Alliance for Social Sciences and Humanities, which represents the SSH community at the European level.
Head of Unit 'Open and Inclusive Societies' DG Research and Innovation EC
Elisabeth Lipiatou is Head of Unit 'Open and Inclusive Societies', Open Innovation and Open Science Directorate at Research and Innovation Directorate General. The unit deals with social and economic research. Previously, she was Head of Unit 'European Neighbourhood, Africa and Gulf', International Cooperation Directorate, contributing to the EU international cooperation policy objectives through on research and innovation. Until December 2010, she led the Unit of Climate Change and Environmental Risks, Environment Directorate and she was involved in climate science negotiations and international climate policy interface. Head of Unit since 2005 motivating and inspiring people, leading international initiatives, ensuring sound management of large budgets. Elisabeth Lipiatou has more than twenty-two years of experience at the DG Research and Innovation, in managing research-policy interface. Primary areas of responsibility included: research policy and international negotiations, climate change, marine sciences, technology and data, sustainable development, environment and health, natural hazards and risks, global earth observations, international cooperation policy and strategies, competence and capacity building, negotiation of association agreements, social and economic sciences, cooperation with Member States and international stakeholders, communication and dissemination. She has ten years of academic experience on environmental sciences in various universities and research centers, including the Centro de Investigacion y Dessarollo in Barcelona, Spain, the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, France, and the University of Minnesota, USA. Elisabeth Lipiatou received her Diploma in Chemistry from the University of Athens, her Master in Oceanography and Meteorology from the University Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris, and her Master in Computer Sciences applied in Chemistry and Biology from the University Paris VII. She became a Doctor of Sciences in Chemical Oceanography at University Pierre and Marie Curie, Paris, 1989.
European Alliance of Social Sciences and Humanities
Gabi Lombardo is the director of the European Alliance for SSH (www.eassh.eu), a disciplinary organisation focused on science policy. She also works as a consultant on global HE, funding and management. Previously, Gabi was a senior member of the Science Europe team, and she spent 2 years at the European Research Council (ERC) coordinating scientific evaluations. Gabi spent 10 years at the London School of Economics (LSE) where she studied for her PhD and worked in both academic and management positions, with a particularly emphasis in articulating and developing the LSE’s first International Strategy, alongside LSE Director, Lord Anthony Giddens.
ELTE HU
Gábor Sonkoly is a historian. He received Candidate of Sciences (CSc) from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1998, earned his PhD from EHESS (Paris) in 2000, and his Habilitation from the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest in 2008. He is Director of the Department of European Historiography and Social Sciences at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), a department founded by EHESS in 1988, and is Vice Director of the History Institute at ELTE. He is the Scientific Coordinator of the European Master’s programme “TEMA” Erasmus Mundus. He has written or edited nine books and presented at a hundred international colloquia. He received fellowships from several international foundations and institutions, and has been lecturing on the relationship between Cultural Heritage and Humanities/Social Sciences in many European universities as well as in India and in Brazil. He is a member of the International Committee of the European Association for Urban History since 2008. He is a Knight of the French Order of Academic Palms (2011) and has received the Palládium Prize (2001) and the Antal Cziráky Prize (2012) in Hungary.
CNRS and University of Paris I FR
Gisele Sapiro is Professor of sociology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and Research director at the CNRS (Centre européen de sociologie et de science politique, PSL), member of Academia Europaea. Her interests include the sociology of culture and of intellectuals, as well as the history and the epistemology of the Social Sciences and the Humanities. The author of La Guerre des écrivains, 1940-1953 (1999; English trans.: French Writers’ War, 2014), La Responsabilité de l’écrivain (2011) and La Sociologie de la littérature (2014 ; Spanish transl. 2016 ; Japanese in press), she has also (co)edited Pour une histoire des sciences sociales (2004), Pierre Bourdieu, sociologue (2004), Translatio (2008), Les Contradictions de la globalisation éditoriale (2009), L’Espace intellectuel en Europe (2009), Traduire la littérature et les sciences humaines (2012), Sciences humaines en traduction (2014, online). She is currently running the European collaborative project (FP7) INTERCO-SSH (International cooperation in the SSH) : http://interco-ssh.eu/en/.
University of Manchester UK
Hilary Pilkington is Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester and Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences. She has been coordinator or principal investigator of over a dozen large research grants involving multiple international partners including, most recently, the FP7 MYPLACE (Memory, Youth, Political Legacy and Civic Engagement) project which studied young people’s political engagement and activism in 14 countries of Europe. She has also been principal investigator on two (ESRC and Leverhulme Trust funded) projects studying Islam and Muslim identities and on two Economic and Social Research Council Research Seminar series projects on ‘Youth extremisms’ and ‘Right wing extremism’. Her own research focuses on youth and youth subcultures, youth political participation, activism and extremism and her recent empirical research has included ethnographic studies of youth activism in the anti-Islamist English Defence League and of racist skinhead and punk subcultures in Russia. Recent publications include: Pilkington, H. (2016) Loud and Proud: Passion and Politics in the English Defence League, Manchester: Manchester University Press; Pilkington, H. and Pollock, G. (eds) (2015) Radical Futures? Youth, Politics and Activism in Europe, Oxford: Wiley; and Pilkington, H., Omel’chenko, E. and Garifzianova, A. (2010), Russia’s Skinheads: Exploring and Rethinking Subcultural Lives, London and New York: Routledge.
TÁRKI Social Research Institute HU
István György Tóth, PhD in Sociology, Director of Tárki Social Research Institute, Budapest. He directed and co-directed a number of comparative research projects on social structure and inequalities in Europe, recently including Growing Inequalities Impacts (GINI), Poverty Reduction in Europe: Social Policy and Innovation (ImPRovE) and Inclusive Growth Research Infrastructure Diffusion (InGRID). Member of the Advisory Board to the Luxembourg Income Study and to the Research Centre for Economic and Regional Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He was co-editor of "Changing Inequalities and Societal Impacts in Rich Countries: Thirty Countries’ Experiences" published by Oxford University Press and he co-authored "Cross-country evidence of the multiple drivers of inequality changes in the OECD area" (in Atkinson A. B and F. Bourguignon’s Handbook of income distribution by Elsevier).
BISLA SK
Iveta Radičová is special advisor to the EU-Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality. She served as Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic from 2010 to 2012. As the Vice-Chairwoman of the Slovak Christian Democratic Union – Democratic Party (SDKÚ-DS) she has been responsible for social affairs and healthcare since 2006. In former positions, she served as deputy Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Social Affairs and Housing at the Slovak National Parliament (2006-2009), as Minister for Labour and Social Affairs of the Slovak Republic (2005-2006), as Minister of Defence of the SR (2011- 2012) and as an expert for social policy at the European Commission in European projects focusing on the coordination of social security systems and exchanging information about Member State’s social policies (MISSOC, TRESS, FRESCO). Iveta Radičová has devoted most of her professional career to social and family policies. In 1992, she founded the non-profit Social Policy Analysis Centre, which she headed until being appointed Director of the Slovak Academy of Science’s Institute of Sociology in 2005. She has taught as a visiting professor at universities in Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, Sweden, UK and the U.S.A. Iveta Radičová was a Fellow for the Media and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe project at Oxford University in 2013.She was a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow of the Robert Bosch Academy in 2015. She has advised various government bodies on social and family policies, participated in the approximation of European legislation in the area of employment and social affairs before Slovakia’s accession to the EU and has also carried out studies on poverty for the World Bank. She has published and edited numerous books and studies mapping the transformation of the social system in Slovakia and other post-socialist countries. Iveta Radičová holds a Professor in Sociology from Comenius University Bratislava (since 2005). She is a member of the World Leadership Alliance Club de Madrid and the Council of World Women Leaders. Awards: Women of the Year 2006 of Slovak Republic, Bratislava Leaders Magazine, 2006; Women of the Year Award 2010, Glamour Magazine, 8.11.2010, New York, USA; Pelikán Award, Czech Republic, 2011; Knight of the Foundation Linaje, 2012; Gold Biatec of the year 2012, Economic Forum of Economic Club, Slovak Republic, 2013; Freedom Award, The Fund for American Studies, Washington DC - Prague, 2013.
University of Zurich CH
Josette Baer is adjunct professor of political theory with a focus on Central and Eastern Europe at the University of Zurich UZH. She is a specialist in political theory, particularly the contract theories (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Rawls), political thinkers (Machiavelli, Morus, Montesquieu, Arendt, Berlin, Aron) and theories of democratization (Beetham, Poznanski, Kornai). Her main subject area is political thought (Nationalism, Liberalism, Socialism) in Slavic Central Europe, with a focus on the 19th century Czech lands and Slovakia and 20th century Czechoslovakia. She has also published on Belarusian and Russian politics and Bulgarian and Macedonian intellectual history. Currently, she focuses in her research on Slovak Communism in the first half of the 20th century. Among her latest books is the first biography of Vavro Šrobár (2014) and the volumes Seven Slovak Women (2015) and Seven Czech Women (2015).
Science-Leads BE – DE
Dr Julia Stamm is the founder and Director of SCIENCE LEADS – International Consulting Science, Policy & Leadership (www.science-leads.com). She has ten years of leadership and management experience in national and international academic institutions and international organisations. An adept research manager and science policy maker, Julia has held senior positions in national research institutes and European organisations, such as COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology), the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB) and the European Commission.
University of Warsaw PL
Justyna Olko is researcher at the University of Warsaw's Faculty of "Artes Liberales" and Head of the Research Unit "Encounters Between the Old and New Worlds". She obtained her doctoral degree in the humanities in 2005 from the University of Warsaw's Faculty of History and received her habilitation in ethnology from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan in 2016. She specializes in the ethnohistory, anthropology and linguistics of pre-Hispanic and colonial Mesoamerica, with special focus on Nahua language and culture, Nahuatl linguistics, and issues of European intercultural communication in general. In 2013 Justyna Olko initiated the monolingual editorial series Totlahtol [“Our Speech”] aimed at the restoration of literacy in Nahuatl. She is also involved in a program for revitalizing the Nahuatl language and works with researchers and activists committed to revitalizing dying languages spoken by ethnic minorities in Poland. She has written several books, including Turquoise Diadems and Staffs of Office. Insignia of Power in Aztec and Early Colonial Mexico (University of Warsaw, 2005), Meksyk przed konkwistą [Mexico before the Conquest] (PIW, 2010, Klio Prize 2010) and Insignia of Rank in the Nahua World (University Press of Colorado, 2014). She has received fellowships to conduct research at Dumbarton Oaks (Harvard University, 2001 and 2008), the John Carter Brown Library (Brown University, 2010) and Yale University (2015, 2016) as well as grants from the European Research Council (Starting Grant for the team project Europe and America in Contact. A Multidisciplinary Study of Cross-Cultural Transfer in the New World across Time, 2012, the first ERC grant in the humanities in Poland), the Foundation for Polish Science (FNP, Programmes: Focus, 2010; Idee dla Polski, 2013), the National Science Centre (NCN, 2008, 2011), the Ministry of Science and Higher Education within the National Program for the Development of the Humanities (NPRH, 2012) and the European Commission (Twinning Program, Horizon 2020; 2015). The last two projects focus on strategies for the revitalization of endangered languages within the broader approach of ‘engaged humanities’. She has been awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (2013) and a Burgen Fellowship by Academia Europaea (2013).
Matej Bel University SK
Kamila Borseková is a Head of the Research and Innovation Centre at the Faculty of Economics and Coordinator of Research at Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia. She is currently the project manager in several international projects and a member of several research teams in domestic and international projects. She is author, or co-author of more than 50 scientific papers, chapters and studies. In August 2016, in cooperation with Regional Science Academy, she organized successful international workshop and Advanced Brainstorm Carrefour - Smart People in Smart Cities. She was awarded by the Rector for excellent results in solving international research projects.
University of Amsterdam NL - GR
Katerina Rozakou is an anthropologist; currently a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the University of Amsterdam. She has received her PhD from the University of the Aegean in Greece and she has spent a year as a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University. Her research interests include political anthropology, civil society, NGOs and humanitarian aid, irregular immigrants and refugees, charity and solidarity. She has published in international and Greek academic journals and she has coedited a collective volume on civil society, patronage and violence. As part of the ERC research project "The social life of state deportation regimes" at the University of Amsterdam, she is responsible for the research conducted in Greece. She there explores the treatment of irregular immigrants during registration, detention, and voluntary or involuntary expulsion. Her research in Athens and on Lesvos focuses on the experiences of street-level state agents and civil-society actors.
DG Research and Innovation European Commission
Laura Hetel is a Policy Officer in the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation of the European Commission. She works on radical ideologies and societal polarisations as well as on migration. In the context of Horizon 2020 she coordinates the work programme for the societal challenge Inclusive, Innovative and Reflective Societies and has worked extensively on the integration of social sciences and humanities across various thematic areas. She holds degrees in political science, economics and cultural studies and a PhD on consumerism and national identity.
University of Poznan PL
Michal Buchowski is Professor of Anthropology at University of Poznan and European University Viadrina. He lectured as a Visiting Professor at Rutgers, Columbia and Warsaw Universities, and held several scholarships, among others Fulbright, Humboldt, Kosciuszko, and IAS in Budapest. His scientific interests comprise postsocialism, migration and multiculturalism. He served as President of the European Association of Social Anthropologists and chair of World Council of Anthropological Associations. Currently he is a president of Polish Ethnological Society. Honorary Fellow of Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.
Masaryk University CZ
Dr. Michal Vašečka (1972) is sociologist and he operates at the Faculty of Social Studies of Masaryk University in Brno since 2002, he lectures also at the Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts since 2015. As a visiting scholar he operated at the New School University in New York (1996-1997) and at the University of London (1998), in 2008-2009 he lectured at the Georgetown University in Washington, DC, in 2015 at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, in 2016 he was a scholar-in-residence in the ISGAP at Oxford University. In 2005-2012 Michal Vašečka lectured also at the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences of the Comenius University Bratislava and in 2013-2015 at the Institute for Social and European Studies in Kőszeg. Michal Vašečka is a founder of the Center for the Research of Ethnicity and Culture, he served a director of the CVEK in the period from January 2006 to May 2012. He operated at the Slovak think-tank Institute of Public Affairs as a researcher 1999 - 2005 and since January 2000 as a program director on expert analysis of the Slovak transformation process with a focus on national minorities and the state of civil society in Slovakia. He has been a consultant for the World Bank in 2000-2008 and in 2011-2012. Since September 2012 Michal Vašečka serves as a representative of the Slovak republic in the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), human rights body of the Council of Europe. Since 2012 he is a member of the Advisory Board of the Aspen Review Central Europe. He is a non-resident research associate at the European Centre for Minority Issues in Flensburg. Since 2014 Michal Vašečka serves as a Head of Executive Board of the League of Human Rights, Brno. Since 2010 he is a member of the Board of the Fulbright Commission in Slovakia (chairman of the Board since 2012).
Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts HR
Milena ŽIC FUCHS was born in Croatia. From 1958 to 1969 lived in London, New York, and Sydney. In 1977 she graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb having majored in English language and literature, and Ethnology. In 1982 received M.A. in Linguistics (Semantics) and in 1989 Ph.D. in Linguistics (Cognitive Linguistics). From 1978 she teaches various courses in Linguistics in the English Department, and at present holds position of Full Professor. From 2002 to 2011 Chair of Linguistics in the English Department, University of Zagreb. Her book entitled Knowledge of Language and Knowledge of the World (1991) was the first book in Cognitive Linguistics written in Croatian and is one of the most quoted books in Croatian linguistics. Her book Cognitive Linguistics and Language Structures: the English Present Perfect came out in 2009, for which she received the Croatian National Award for Science for 2011. In 2010 Milena Žic Fuchs was elected as a full member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts. In 2005 Milena Žic Fuchs became a member of the Standing Committee for the Humanities of the European Science Foundation. In 2006 she was elected member of the Core Group, and subsequently in 2009 she became the Chair of the Standing Committee for the Humanities of the European Science Foundation (2009 – 2012). From 2008 she was a member of the ERC Panel “The Human Mind and its Complexity” and from 2014 she chaired it. She is also a member of numerous Science Advisory Boards, as well as other European level bodies. Milena Žic Fuchs has also acted as an expert for the European Commission - as member of High-Level EC Expert Group for ESFRI (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures). From 2012 she has been a member of the Science Advisory Board of CLARIN – ERIC (Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure – European Research Infrastructure Consortium) and from 2015 member of the Research Advisory Board of the Europeana. In 2013 Milena Žic Fuchs was elected member of Academia Europaea.
MaxPo – Max Planck Sciences Po Center FR-DE
Olivier Godechot is an economic sociologist interested in the study of labor markets, especially finance and academic labor markets, as a means to understand the development of unequal exchange relations at work and their impact on the dynamics of inequality. He has studied the division of labor and ordinary rationalities in a trading room and compensation mechanisms in the financial industry. Extending his interest in labor markets to academia, he has also examined university hiring, in particular the impact of networks on recruitment. He has published five books on finance, labor markets, and traders among which Wages, Bonuses and Appropriation of Profit in the Financial Industry published in 2016 by Routledge.
Minister of Education Science Research and Sports SK
Peter Plavčan graduated from the Faculty of Management of the University of Economics in Bratislava in 1983. In 1994 he obtained the title CSc. (Candidate of Sciences) in the field of Pedagogy from the Comenius University in Bratislava and in 1997 he was awarded the academic title of Associate Professor in Economics and Business Management by Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica. In 2005 he was awarded the title of Professor in the field of Education Technology by the Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra. Between the years 1984-1990 he worked at the then Institute of Information and Prognoses of Education and since 1991 he has worked at the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic as Director of the Higher Education Department and General Director of the Higher Education, Science and Research Division. He was involved in the work of several International Committees under the Council of Europe, OECD and the European Commission. He was appointed to the position of Minister by the SNS political party (Slovak National Party).
Trinity College Dublin IE
Poul Holm is Professor of Environmental History at Trinity College Dublin, President of the European Alliance for the Social Sciences and Humanities, and a fellow of Academia Europaea. He is currently chair of the global Oceans Past Initiative, a programme aiming to understand human impacts on ocean ecology. Poul is the author of nine books and more than 150 research papers, including the recent Humanities World Report (Palgrave 2015). His current research interest is an ERC Advanced Grant-funded Environmental History of North Atlantic Fisheries c. 1400-1700.
Polish Academy of Sciences – Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities PL
Radoslaw Markowski, professor of political science, Center for the Study of Democracy (Director) at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities and PI of the Polish National Election Study. Specializes in comparative politics, democracy/democratization, party systems and electoral studies. He has published extensively in peer reviewed journals, among other in Electoral Studies, Party Politics, Political Studies. Main books: Post-communist Party Systems (Cambridge University Press 1999, co-author), Europeanising Party Politics? (Manchester University Press 2011, co-editor) and Democratic Audit of Poland (Peter Lang 2015, co-author)
University of Amsterdam NL
Rinus Penninx is emeritus professor of Ethnic Studies of the University of Amsterdam. He has been involved in the field of migration and settlement of immigrants in several capacities. His report `Ethnic Minorities’ (1979) formed the starting point for integration policies in the Netherlands. From 1978 to 1988 he worked in Dutch Ministries in research and policy making on integration of immigrants in the Netherlands. He founded the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies at the University of Amsterdam in 1993 and was its director till 2005. From 1999 to 2009 he was co-chair of the International Metropolis project. He was coordinator of the IMISCOE Network of Excellence (2004-2009) and the IMISCOE Research Network (2009-2014). His recent publications in English include `Migration Policymaking in Europe’ (with Giovanna Zincone and Maren Borkert), AUP 2011; `Integrating Immigrants in Europe: Research-Policy Dialogues (with Peter Scholten, Han Entzinger and Stijn Verbeek), Springer Open 2015 and `Integration Processes and Policies in Europe; Contexts, Levels and Actors’ (with Blanca Garces-Mascarenas), Springer Open 2015.
University of Sussex UK
Russell King is Professor of Geography at the University of Sussex and Visiting Professor of Migration Studies at Malmo University. For forty years, he has been teaching, researching and writing about migration, mostly within a European context. He has headed research projects on return migration, international retirement migration, international student mobility, migration and development, diaspora and identity, and European youth mobilities. From 2000 to 2013 he was editor of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. Amongst his recent books are Remittances, Gender and Development (I.B. Tauris, 2001, joint with Julie Vullnetari), Counter-Diaspora: The Greek Second Generation Returns 'Home' (Harvard UP, 2014, joint with Anastasia Christou) and Ageing, Gender and the Labour Market (Palgrave, 2016, joint with Aija Lulle); forthcoming is a co-edited book Return Migration and Psychosocial Wellbeing (Routledge, 2017, joint with Zana Vathi).
Zeppelin University DE
Sarah Glück holds a double degree in sociology and political science from the Technical University Darmstadt. She has experience as a young researcher in India, Vietnam, Turkey and Germany, currently working at her PhD in the research group EnergyCultures at the Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen. Sarah is involved in higher education and research policy development on the European level from a researcher’s perspective; here she focuses on the changing and challenged role of the Social Sciences and Humanities within the Research Framework Programmes of the EU. But she is also an activist for the right of higher education in the German Civil Society Organisation "Etudes Sans Frontieres – Studies Without Borders", of which she is president.
Masaryk University CZ
Slavomíra Ferenčuhová, Ph.D. is assistant professor at the Department of Sociology at the Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic). She specializes in urban sociology and she focuses in particular on history and theory of (post)socialist cities. She has published two monographs in this field (Sociologie města 20. a 21. století, SLON 2013) and Meno, mesto, vec (MUNI Press, 2011). She has also authored or co-authored articles in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Sociální studia, Český lid: Ethnological journal, and she contributed a chapter to the book Urban Theory Beyond the West (Routledge 2012). She has recently visited Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde in Leipzig (in 2015) as a researcher, and she has taught at the University of Vienna as an ERASMUS visiting teacher (2016).
Unit 'Open and inclusive Societies' DG Research and Innovation European Commission
Sylvie Rohanova is a Policy Officer in the Unit 'Open and inclusive Societies' of the Open Innovation and Open Science Directorate of the DG Research and Innovation. Sylvie Rohanova has doctoral degree in history from the Charles University Prague, Czech Republic and Master of Arts degree in European Public Affairs from the Maastricht University, The Netherlands. As a researcher in the Oriental Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences she specialised in modern history of India and South Asia. Since the beginning of the 1990s she was involved in managing various grants giving systems within the Soros Foundations - namely, in 1991-2002 she was the Director of the Research Support Scheme foundation for social sciences and humanities and in 2000-2002 she was also the Deputy Director of the Higher Education Support Programme of the Open Society Institute. She has been working in the European Commission since November 2005, starting in the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency and in the DG Education and Culture. In the DG Research and Innovation she has been working since October 2011 in the areas of SSH topics in humanities and internationally. She is also a unit's call coordinator for the Societal Challenge 6 of Horizon 2020.
Autonomous University of Barcelona ES
Teresa Sordé Martí received PhD degree from Harvard University. She is Serra Húnter Associate Professor of Sociology at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. Her research work focuses on social inclusion and inequalities faced by migrants and ethnic minorities, particularly in the case of Roma in Europe, and the role played by Romani women. She has participated in different European Commission funded research projects like WORKALO (FP5, 2001-2004) dedicated to Roma labour inclusion and INCLUD-ED (FP6, 2006-2011) centred on strategies for social cohesion from education, and is currently participating in IMPACT-EV (FP7, 2014-2017), aimed at developing a permanent system of selection, monitoring and evaluation of the various impacts of Social Sciences and the Humanities research. Her work has been published in Nature, Journal of Migration and Ethnic Studies, European Journal of Women’s Studies, Ethnicities among many others.
Slovak Academy of Sciences SK
Vladimir Balaz is a research professor with the Institute for Forecasting of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. Since 2012 Vladimír has been a member of the Learned Society of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. The Institute for Forecasting acts both as a research body and government think-thank for design of economic and social policies. It prepared number of studies commissioned by the European Commission, Slovak Prime Minister Office, Ministries of Economy and Finance. Vladimír Baláž has three major areas of research interest:
Innovation and R&D policies (national systems of innovation (NIS) and role of knowledge transfers particular sectors of NIS);
Migration and Regional Development (brain drain and brain gain, tacit knowledge transfers, impact of labour migration on regional development, regional disparities and cohesion policies);
Behavioural Economics and Finance (risk tolerance and pre-selection of migrants, complex decision making in migration and finance).
Director General of the Joint Research Centre European Commission
Vladimir Šucha is Director-General of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, its in-house scientific service. He was Deputy Director-General of the JRC between 2012 and 2013. Prior to that, he spent 6 years in the position of director for culture and media in the Directorate-General for Education and Culture of the European Commission. Before joining the European Commission, he held various positions in the area of European and international affairs. Between 2005 and 2006, he was director of the Slovak Research and Development Agency, national body responsible for funding research. He was principal advisor for European affairs to the minister of education of the Slovak Republic (2004-2005). He worked at the Slovak Representation to the EU in Brussels as research, education and culture counselor (2000-2004). In parallel, he has followed a long-term academic and research career, being a full professor in Slovakia and visiting professor/scientist at different academic institutions in many countries. He published more than 100 scientific papers in peer reviewed journals.
Wolfgang Burtscher is Deputy Director-General of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, responsible for Open Innovation, Open Science, Open to the World. An Austrian national, Wolfgang Burtscher acted before joining DG Research and Innovation as a Director in DG Agriculture of the European Commission since 2000. Before joining the Commission in 2000 Mr Burtscher was representative of the Länder at the Austrian Permanent Representation to the EU. From 1992 to 1996 he was Director of European Affairs in the Vorarlberg administration. Previously, from 1990 to 1992, he was a legal advisor at the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) in Geneva, at the time of negotiations on the European Economic Area (EEA). He focused particularly on the free circulation of goods and capital and on competition issues. Between 1983-1990 he was a lecturer in International and European Law at the University of Innsbruck. Wolfgang Burtscher holds a doctorate in law and also has a qualification from the Institut Européen des Hautes Etudes Internationales in Nice.
Uppsala University
John Östh is a senior lecturer at the department of Social and Economic Geography, Uppsala University, Sweden. His primary research interest is oriented towards Spatial Analysis and GIS, software development and quantitative analysis in population and economic geography with special focus on demography and migration, school choice and labour market opportunities, and more recently also the geography of human interaction on the Internet and through mobile phone usage. He published a large number of peer-reviewed papers in prestigious scientific journals and monographs.
Ivan Sokáč holds a Master and PhD degree from the Faculty of Economics at University of Matej Bel. After internship in the European Parliament and defending his PhD thesis in 2008, he moved to London and started working as a consultant for the UK National Audit Office. His job was to evaluate and increase the efficiency of spending public finance in projects worth hundreds of millions pounds. In January 2011 Ivan enrolled in an MBA programme at one of the leading business schools in Europe, Rotterdam School of Management. He was then selected for the only position in the exchange programme at the world’s top ranked business school, Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania. Upon receiving his MBA degree more than 4 years ago, he moved back to Slovakia and started working in private equity. He is currently a managing partner of IS Capital Group and runs an investment fund focused on alternative investments.
University of Barcelona ES
Lídia Puigvert is Professor of Sociology at the University of Barcelona, Fellow at CREA, Community of Researchers on Excellence for all. ). Marie S. Curie Fellow Professor at the Institut of Criminology -University of Cambridge during 2015-2016 and now a Visiting Scholar. She is actually responsible for the gender dimension of a large-scale EU project IMPACT-EV (2014-2017), focused on the development of a permanent system of selection, monitoring and evaluation of the various impacts of the SSH research. IMPACT-EV will develop indicators and standards for evaluating scientific impact of SSH research, especially evaluating their political and social impact. Lídia was responsible for gender issues and was one of the three members of the Coordination Team in FP6 project INCLUD-ED. Strategies for inclusion and social cohesion from education in Europe. This project was highlighted by the EC DG Research as one of the ten success stories in added value and innovation research (the only one in SSH). The results have been published in 71 articles in international peer reviewed multi-disciplinary scientific journals. She participated in a number of other projects including H2020. Selected publications: Women and Social Transformation (with J. Butler and E. Beck-Gersnheim). 2003. New York: Peter Lang Publishing; The Inclusion of Other Women: Breaking the Silence through Dialogic Learning. 2005, Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer (with De Botton, L. and Sánchez Aroca,M) and Contemporary Sociological Theory. 2003, New York: Peter Lang. (with Flecha, R. and Gómez, J.).
Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava
Jozef Bátora is professor at the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Arts, Comenius University. His research focuses on international relations, organization theory, European integration, diplomacy and change of political institutions. He holds a Bachelor degree in political science from Comenius University (1997), an MPhil degree in public administration from the University of Bergen (1999) and a PhD in political science from the University of Oslo (2006). His work experience includes positions as associate professor and director at the Institute of European Studies and International Relations at Comenius University (2009 – 2015), Fulbright visiting professor at The Europe Center, FSI, Stanford University (2013), research fellow at the Institute for European Integration Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna (2006 – 2009), senior researcher at ARENA – Centre of European Studies at the University of Oslo (2006), and visiting scholar at Scancor, Stanford University (2003 – 2004). In the period 2012-2015, he served as coordinating editor of Journal of International Relations and Development (www.palgrave-journals.com/jird). His research was published in a number of peer reviewed journals including Journal of European Public Policy, West European Politics and Journal of Common Market Studies.