During the ACA General Assembly (GA) that took place on 29-30 November 2018, in Vienna, and that was hosted by ACA’s Austrian member organisation, OeAD, elections were held for four positions on the ACA Board (officially called the Administrative Council – AC) – the representative, seven-member body that guides and watches over the good running of the association.

Katrin Kiisler, who already served for one term on the Board, was elected ACA Vice-President (for a term of 3 years). Katrin is in charge of higher education at Archimedes Foundation, ACA’s Estonian member organisation. She joined the Archimedes team in 1998 with the mandate to facilitate launching and implementing the Erasmus programme in Estonia. Since then she has been active in the development Estonian higher education internationalisation policies, implementation of various mobility instruments, has been a member of numerous national and international working groups, committees, strategy task forces and evaluation panels. Her research interests are related to impact of national mobility instruments and factors affecting migration and return mobility of academics. Before joining Archimedes, Katrin was employed as a lecturer of Latin and Roman literature at the University of Tartu.

Ragnhild Solvi Berg was re-elected for another term as ACA Treasurer. Ragnhild is a senior adviser for ACA’s Norwegian member organisation – the Norwegian Centre for International Cooperation in Higher Education (DIKU) and has been working in the agency since 2004. Currently, she is working as Head of Office at the recently established Norwegian Cooperation Office for Research, Innovation and Education (NORCORE). From 2010-2016 Ragnhild was seconded as a national expert to the European Commission, DG Education and Culture, where she worked as a policy officer in the unit for international cooperation and programmes. She holds a master’s degree in Social Anthropology from the University of Bergen.

Péter Tordai was re-elected for a second term as member of the Board. Péter is the Director of Tempus Public Foundation (TPF) – the Hungarian agency for the internationalisation of education and training,also a member of ACA. He has been involved in the internationalisation of education and training for almost 20 years including school education, VET, higher education, adult learning and most recently youth. He has significant experience in transnational co-operation programmes financed by national, regional or EU resources, particularly on Erasmus+ programme and its predecessors, Stipendium Hungaricum programme (in-coming degree mobility programme financed by the Hungarian state), Campus Mundi (ESF funded initiative for the internationalisation of the Hungarian Higher Education). Besides the co-ordination of scholarship programmes and the corresponding knowledge management activities he took part in transnational and national working groups on the preparation, monitoring and evaluation of specific initiatives. 

Alenka Flander was elected as a new member of the Board. Alenkais the Director of ACA’s Slovene member organisation – the Centre of the Republic of Slovenia for Mobility and European Educational and Training Programmes (CMEPIUS), the leading Slovene institution in the field of internationalisation of education and training. In that capacity she is responsible for very successful implementation of EU programmes (Erasmus+) in Slovenia with a strong focus on achieving sustainable impact of the projects and programme and ensuring effective dissemination and integration of programme results into institutional and national systems and practices. Alenka was trained as an electrical engineer and completed her PhD in the Political Science. Her research work is interdisciplinary in nature and encompasses monitoring and measuring the impact of European programmes in the area of education and training, and research on internationalisation and higher education. She contributed to national or international expert groups (i.e. EUROSTUDENT, EAIE Task Force) and is author of several publications and articles on internationalisation in higher education and academic profession.In internationalisation, she was behind the preparation of Slovene Strategy for internationalisation of higher education adopted in 2016.

The other members of the ACA Board are: Dana Petrova, Director of the Centre for International Cooperation in Education (DZS), Czech Republic; Christian Müller Deputy Secretary-General of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Germany; Olivier Tschopp, Director of Movetia – Swiss National Agency, Switzerland; as well as ACA President – Ulrich Grothus and the ACA Director – Bernd Wächter, both ex officio members.

The meeting also marked the end of service as ACA Vice-President of Stefan Zotti, Director General of OeAD, Austria, to whom ACA is profoundly grateful and indebted for strong leadership and vision during an important transformative period for the association.