Vanessa Debiais-Sainton is Head of the Unit in charge of Higher Education policies and programme at the European Commission’s Directorate General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture. The unit is the lead service for European policies on reform and modernisation of higher education, the new European Universities initiative, automatic mutual recognition of higher education qualifications, the EU student card initiative, and the higher education strand of Erasmus+. In previous posts in the European Commission, Vanessa has worked in DG Research and Innovation. Before moving to the European Commission in 2006, Vanessa spent eight years working for several petroleum and chemical companies.

Filip van Depoele is an economist by training (University of Leuven, Belgium) and subsequently studied European Economic Integration (College of Europe, Bruges, Belgium) and International Relations (Johns Hopkins University, Bologna, Italy). He worked for a number of years in the private sector (banking) before joining the European Commission in 1997. Filip held several positions in the Directorate General for Employment and Social Affairs and the Directorate General for Competition before moving to the Directorate General in charge of Education, Youth, Sport and Culture. After having managed the Policy Coordination unit for 5 years, he is currently heading the International Cooperation unit.

Benedetta Gennaro, Ph.D., is head of the International Student Services and Refugee Integration at TU Darmstadt. She currently coordinates “IDEM – Inclusion, Diversity, Equity in Mobility” (2022-2025), an Erasmus + Cooperation Partnership and is active within the Diversity and Inclusion initiative of the Unite! European University Alliance at her University. She received her B.A. in the Department of Sociology – Mass Communications at Università degli Studi “La Sapienza” in Rome, an M.A. in Mass Communications from Miami University (Oxford, OH) and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Italian Studies from Brown University (Providence, RI).

Emmanuelle Gardan joined the Coimbra Group as Director of the Brussels Office in January 2020. She has gained a wealth of experience in international higher education over the past two decades. She previously worked as head of sector for higher education and research at the Union for the Mediterranean (2013-2019), helping shaping intergovernmental policy dialogues and large-scale cooperation projects across the two rims of the Mediterranean. Before that she was employed at the Erasmus+ French National Agency (2002-2011), holding various positions as that of the Erasmus Mundus national contact point. She was also involved in enhancing university-business cooperation at national and international level. She graduated in France in political science and specialised in European public policy.

Claire Herrmann is working in the European Commission, Directorate-General for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport. She is a policy officer in the unit responsible for International cooperation (beyond Europe). She works mainly on the implementation of the Erasmus+ programme in Sub-Saharan Africa and cooperation mechanisms in the Vocational Education and Training sector. From previous positions, she has experience in international cooperation and programmes in education and youth, employment and social inclusion (European Social Fund) and anti-discrimination issues.

Gro Tjore is the President of the Academic Cooperation Association and the Deputy Director General at the Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills (HK-dir). The Directorate is the executive agency for the Ministry of Education and Research within the higher education and higher vocational education sectors and is responsible for the national skills policy. Gro Tjore has been working in education since 2006. Her main focus has been on international cooperation in higher education, including programme administration, programme development and policy development. Since 2018 she has mainly been working with organizational development, managing large restructuring processes and developing new strategies. She previously worked within the field of humanitarian assistance and spent 9 years working for the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). She holds a degree in political science from the University of Bergen, Norway.

Dr. Julia Linder is a Senior Desk Officer for Risk and Security Management at the Center for International Academic Collaborations (KIWi) of the German Academic Exchange Service - DAAD. Within KIWi she is the regional coordinator for Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. She advises on risk and security management in international academic collaborations, on science-specific risk factors and on criteria-based collaboration in challenging contexts. Her focus lies on manageable awareness-raising and advisory formats for different stakeholder groups in German universities.

Dr. Selma Porobić is an internationally recognized social scientist from Lund University in Sweden focused on addressing the cross-cutting themes of civilian protection, mental health, and education in meeting humanitarian crises, human rights, peacebuilding, and sustainable development. She has wide-ranging academic and professional experience in advancing the role of higher education in Central Eastern Europe and has acted as a program director, manager, and consultant to the UN, EU, NGOs, and Governmental agencies in various countries, including the US, UK, Sweden, Germany, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Since 2020 she acts as Aurora Alliance (European Universities) Programme manager at Rector’s Office, Palacky University Olomouc, the Czech Republic. In the Aurora Alliance, she also leads the work package Capacity Development Support Programme for the CEE Region and acts as the Ukraine Support Coordinator. Since the war in Ukraine, she has been fully managing both the emergency response as well as designing and implementing long-term, systemic and institutional support for the Aurora associate partner - V.N Karazin Kharkiv National University.  

Juan Rayón is the president of the Erasmus Student Network. As president, he is responsible for the general coordination of the organisation, external relations, policy, and advocacy. His main priorities include increasing participation in learning mobility and fostering civic engagement and participation of young people in democratic life through the Erasmus programme. Before taking on his role as president of ESN, he was the president of ESN Spain and a Liaison Officer for Inclusive mobility of the Erasmus Student Network. He has a bachelor’s degree in Law from the University of Oviedo and is currently finishing two master’s degrees in International Law and European Studies. Juan did his Erasmus exchange in Istanbul and also participated in the European Solidarity Corps in Padova, Italy, where he worked for the youth office. He is from Asturias, northern Spain.

Dr Franz Kok from University of Salzburg is the elected Executive Director of the PoSIG consortium.  He has been the Executive Director of the Joint MA programme - Political Science – Integration & Governance (PoSIG) since 2016. He is responsible for the management of the programme and the cooperation between the universities of the consortium. Dr Frank Kok has been a departmental Erasmus coordinator since 1991. In the past, Dr Kok was also a Political Science lecturer at the University of Salzburg. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Salzburg.

Paola works for the European Commission, in the international unit in DG EAC. She is in charge of the Western Balkans and follows EU development in this region, particularly in the fields of education, culture, youth and sport. Paola also has a strong background in communication and is still actively involved in this field. She started her career in academia, as a researcher lecturing in international relations and holds a PhD in European Studies from the University of Pavia.

Bibiana Crespo is the Delegate of the Rector for the International Networks and Mobility at the University of Barcelona. Her areas of responsibility are the coordination of the students and staff mobility and the Erasmus+ programme actions as well as the promotion of strategic initiatives of internationalization and the organization of international institutional networks activities. Also, at University of Barcelona, she was the Vice-Rector for Internationalization from 2020 to 2021 and, the Delegate of the Rector for the Internationalization from 2017 to 2021. She holds a PhD in Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona and is a Professor of Drawing at the same institution since 1996.

Peter Lievens is a Professor of Experimental Physics at the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Faculty of Science, KU Leuven, Belgium. After his PhD at KU Leuven in nuclear physics (1991) he was Fellow at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland before returning to Belgium in 1993 to switch research topics towards nanoscience and experimental quantum physics as Postdoctoral Researcher of the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO). He obtained tenure in 2001 as Research Professor and has been a Full Professor at KU Leuven since 2007. The focus of his work is on investigations of physical and chemical properties of atomic clusters and nanoparticles. In 2008 he became Vice Dean for Education of the Faculty of Science, where he got elected as Dean, taking office from 2009 until 2017. Since August 2017 he is Vice Rector at KU Leuven, currently responsible for International Policy, Interculturality and Alumni Policy.

Kinga works for the European Commission, in the International Cooperation Unit in DG EAC. She is in charge of Eastern Partners and follows EU developments in this region, particularly in the fields of education, culture, youth and sport. Kinga also has a strong background in diplomacy, with an experience in security policy, NATO-related issues and Eastern Partners. Before joining the European Commission, she worked as a diplomat in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland and NATO HQ. She graduated from the Faculty of Journalism and Political Science at the Warsaw University, and studied in Paris Lodron University in Salzburg (Erasmus Programme).

Koen Verlaeckt has been leading the Flemish Interuniversity Council (VLIR) as Secretary General since 2018. The National Rectors’ Conference for Flanders groups the five Flemish universities. As a member organisation it is active in a wide variety of subjects, such as higher education and quality assurance, research and innovation, social policy and diversity, internationalisation, development cooperation, and university administration. From 2008 to 2018 Koen headed the Flanders Department of Foreign Affairs as Secretary General. The Department has been entrusted with the preparation, evaluation and monitoring of Flemish governmental policy in the field of foreign affairs, development cooperation, foreign trade and tourism. Prior to 2008, Koen has been a programme committee member in the European Framework Programme for Research and Development, both for research infrastructures and the Marie Curie actions; a member of the Steering Group Human Resources and Mobility, closely involved with policy discussions preparing the Code of Conduct and the European Quality Charter for Researchers; and has served the Government of Flanders as Head of Cabinet and as senior advisor in charge of science and innovation policy. He obtained his university degree in history and his Ph.D. degree in archaeology, both at the University of Ghent.

Tania Friederichs is Senior Policy Officer at the Directorate General for Research & Innovation - Directorate on International Cooperation in the European Commission in Brussels (Belgium). She started this assignment in December 2021 after having been for more than 5 years Science Counsellor and Head of Section at the EU Delegation to India in New Delhi from September 2016 to November 2021. In her capacity of science counsellor, she was responsible for cooperation on research and innovation between the European Union and India and the nodal contact with the Indian institutional counterparts on science and innovation. Before taking up her assignment in India, she was already working at the Directorate General on Research and Innovation, Department for International Cooperation and was responsible for cooperation with the Western Balkan Countries and Turkey. Tania has also been a member of the Private Office of European Commissioner Philippe Busquin for research and innovation from 1999 to 2004. Before that she worked at the EU Delegation in Geneva (Switzerland) following the negotiations on trade in services (GATS) under the World Trade Organisation (WTO). She is a lawyer by training and obtained her Law Degree at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in Brussels, Belgium in 1980 and a L.L.M. at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (US) in 1981.

As Deputy Director, Enora Bennetot Pruvot is responsible for implementing EUA policy on university funding and governance. Her work particularly focuses on financial sustainability and funding models for higher education and research, institutional autonomy, mergers as well as EU funding programmes. She is responsible for the organisation of the EUA Funding Forum and for the Public Funding Observatory, which monitors the evolution of public funding to higher education institutions throughout Europe. Before joining EUA in 2008, Enora gained experience in the field of European research and development policy. Enora holds master’s degrees in Political Science and European Public Affairs, and in European Political and Administrative Studies from the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium.

Olga Belova is International Project Manager at Alianza 4 Universidades, a consortium of 4 public Spanish Universities: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and Universitat Pompeu Fabra. She is responsible for their joint Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility mobility programme with countries in Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Russia and Iran. Before joining A-4U, she worked as a lecturer in Management at the University of Essex in the UK, received research grants from the British Academy and was a Visiting Lecturer at Copenhagen Business School. Olga holds a BA in French and English from Nizhny Novgorod Linguistic University, MA in Human Rights and PhD in Management from the University of Essex. Apart from her native Russian, she speaks English, Spanish, Catalan, French and Italian.

Matteo Vespa, a Sardinian, has been active in the organised student movement at the local, national, and European levels since 2016. From 2018 to 2020, he served as International Officer for UDU – Unione degli Universitari, Italy’s main student union. As a member of the ESU Executive Committee, he has worked extensively on academic freedom, Belarus, Next Generation EU, the Conference on the Future of Europe, global outreach and solidarity, the European Education Area and European Universities, brain drain, Erasmus+, Swiss-EU student mobility, Internationalisation at Home, and the proposal for a European level Students At Risk scholarship scheme. His current areas of responsibility are: European Education Area and European Universities; Public Responsibility, Governance and Financing of Higher Education; BFUG Working Group on Fundamental Values of the EHEA; Students At Risk scholarship scheme; Ukraine.'

Chahira Nouira is currently working at the University of Göttingen, Germany as an Instructional Designer. Almost 15 years ago, Chahira has started her career as an educational technologist. While working at the United Nations University (UNU), she contributed to a few European projects about Open Educational Resources for European Universities and Virtual Mobility. The focus of her work is the development and implementation of methods and tools that help teachers and students strengthen their digital competences and enhance collaborative teaching and learning. Since December 2016, Chahira has been a member of the Digital Learning and Teaching team at the University of Göttingen. She first worked for the “Internationalisation of the Curricula” project and helped with the successful implementation of more than 30 digital and collaborative teaching initiatives. Since April 2020, Chahira has been in charge of Digital Teaching and Learning in the DAAD funded IMKD project ´liveSciences³ – Transnational and Digital Linked Life Sciences`.

Adam Lipski coordinates both the European partnerships and the EU programs at Frankfurt UAS. He also currently acts as one of two main Safety Managers for Global Mobility at his institution, tasked with risk analyses and crisis reaction duties. Moreover, he is presently part of a task force at Frankfurt UAS setting up a compliance system for international academic cooperation. He studied in the US, Germany and Japan. Prior to his student life, he served in the German Armed Forces.

Janis Walter is a research assistant at the Chair of Adult and Continuing Education at the Distance-Learning University in Hagen (FernUniversität in Hagen/FeU). As part of the team at FeU he coordinated from 2020 to 2022 the ONE Meeting Project, a pilot project in sustainable and smart ways of international cooperation. His academic background is a BA in Philosophy, Korean Studies and Political Sciences and a MA in Philosophy, both at Freie Universität Berlin. Currently he is doing a cross disciplinary PhD on Poetics of Disruption.

Anna-Lena Sender has been working in the field of European higher education policy since 2017. After her engagement at the DAAD Brussels office as policy officer and deputy director for the past years, she is taking up a new position as Chief of Staff at the headquarters of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in Bonn as of February 2023. Her academic background is a BA in Cultural Studies, Business Administration and Political Science from the Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany (with an Erasmus semester in France) and an Erasmus Mundus MA in European Studies from the Universities of Groningen, Göttingen and Krakow. She is experienced in a wide range of higher education developments on European level, a.o. having followed the roll-out of the transversal priorities for the Erasmus+ programme 2021-2017 - in particular, the programme’s contribution to the European Green Deal.

Dorina Veldhuis has been the education attaché at the permanent representation of the Netherlands to the EU since October 2021. She obtained her PhD in child language acquisition/applied linguistics in 2015. She has developed a true passion for education during and after this PhD, in several positions and educational institutions– varying from a function as a teacher in training at a primary school, to policy maker at the ministry of education. In these positions she became aware of the risk of (clandestine) interference in education and the importance of academic freedom. In her current position, Dorina represents the Netherlands in the Education Committee of the Council, and is eager to exchange best practices in the organization of education with other member states.

Yann-Maël Bideau is a Policy Officer in the Higher Education Unit of the Directorate General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture, in the European Commission. Yann-Maël is currently mainly working on quality assurance and the European degree. Before joining the European Commission in 2019, he worked as a language teacher and in the field of university cooperation in France, Czechia, Slovakia and Belgium.

Peter Gill is a Senior Policy Advisor China at Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands.
At DUT he was instrumental for developing the Partnering with China Tools, setting up a Greater China team and Sharepoint site and co-ordinated three China Symposia with the Greater China team. He also assists Program Director Peter Weijland in setting up the country agnostic knowledge security program. Prior to his current role Peter held various positions in The Netherlands, China and Taiwan in the area’s of Oil & Gas, Mining and Offshore Wind. Peter holds a Master degree in Mechanical Engineering, Bachelor’s degree in Business Economics and speaks and reads Chinese.

Florian Pecenka studied law at the University of Vienna and during his studies he spent one year in Madrid, participating in the Erasmus program. Since 2005 he works for the Ministry of Education, Science and Research. He is since 2010 Attaché in Brussels where he is head of unit for Education, Science and Research at the Austrian Permanent Representation to the EU. During the Austrian Presidency 2018, he was co-chair of the Education Committee. Mr. Pecenka holds a master's degree in law (2002) and received his Master of Advanced International Studies from Aliter Madrid (2004). He also holds an MBA in Public Management from SMBS – University of Salzburg Business School (2010).

Svava Finsen is a Policy Officer in the Higher Education unit in DG EAC in the European Commission. Her focus is on Key Action 131 and the implementation of the Erasmus+ programme for student and staff mobility in higher education. She also works on inclusion in the Erasmus+ programme and the Erasmus Charter for Higher Education.

Ulrich Grothus is the President of the Academic Cooperation Association (ACA). He obtained a master’s degree in Political Science at the Freie Universität Berlin in 1976. He then worked as a journalist before joining the International Division of the former West German Rectors Conference in 1982. He has been working for DAAD since 1988, first as spokesman and head of the president’s office. From 1991, he was consecutively director of all three DAAD program directorates. In between, he served as director of the Paris office from 1998 to 2000 and of the New York office from 2004 to 2008. Grothus was also the Deputy Secretary General of DAAD and the head of the organisation’s Berlin office. Grothus speaks five foreign languages and has given three others a try.

Irina Ferencz is the Director of ACA and has been working in international higher education since 2008. Irina has specific expertise in the area of international student and staff mobility in the European context (data collections, trends, policies), as well as in planning, monitoring and assessing internationalisation activities at institutional and national level. She also has a growing interest in widening inclusion in internationalisation activities. Currently, she is also a PhD candidate at Ghent University, CHEGG, and an occasional reviewer for two higher education journals. She has authored and co-authored multiple publications in the field. Irina holds an MSc degree in European Politics and Policies (KULeuven, Belgium) and a Bachelor's degree in International Relations and European Studies (Universitatea Babeş-Bolyai, Romania). She is a Romanian national, speaks several languages, and calls Belgium 'home'.

Angeliki Psychogyiou works in the ACA Secretariat as a Policy and Project Officer. She is an EU Funding and Grants specialist, with considerable experience in the Higher Education and Vocational Education and Training sectors. Her main focus within the Secretariat is digitalisation, conducting both project and policy related work in this area. She is also the co-chair of the Thematic Peer Group ‘New mobility formats’, exploring the intersection between digitalisation & sustainability. Angeliki’s main areas of professional and personal interest are international cooperation, mobility as a foster agent for European identity, digitalisation, inclusion and social responsibility of educational institutions.

Veronika Kupriyanova is Deputy Director at ACA. Before re-joining ACA in November 2020, Veronika worked for the European University Association (EUA) and several consulting companies specialising in higher education and research. Veronika spent two years in Berlin hosted by the Humboldt University of Berlin with the fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung and later worked as a researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). She is experienced in a wide range of higher education and research topics and has a keen interest in policies and programmes supporting internationalisation at the institutional, national and European level. Veronika holds a joint Master’s degree in World Politics from the Moscow State Institute in International Relations (MGIMO) and the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po). She speaks three official languages of Belgium in addition to her mother tongue (Russian).

Martin Bogdan is a policy and project officer at ACA where he first started as a trainee in 2019. While at ACA he has managed the CARe project, which deals with labour integration of refugee researchers in Europe, and the Internationalisation in Higher Education for Society mapping report. Before joining ACA, he completed a Blue Book Traineeship in the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency of the European Commission in the unit working on Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degrees. In his pre-Brussels life, Martin worked for a number of NGOs in different capacities and briefly taught social sciences and history in an international school. He has a joint MA in European studies from Rijksuniversiteit Groningen and Jagiellonian University Krakow, as well as a MA in cultural anthropology and museum studies from the University of Zagreb and a BA in anthropology and information science also from the University of Zagreb.