Sijbolt Noorda

Cultural philosopher and social scientist. Is actually Professor em. in Social and Cultural Geography at the Free University of Brussels (Belgium). Is the founder of COSMOPOLIS, Centre for Urban Research at the VUB, vice-chair of the Brussels Studies Institute and director of the Brussels Academy. He has been running three international Erasmus master programmes and is actually coordinator of the Erasmus Mundus Master in Urban Studies 4Cities, with the universities of Brussels ( VUB and ULB), Vienna, Copenhagen and Madrid (Complutense and Autonoma) He is the author of more than 250 publications. Latest book is The Brussels Reader. A small world city to become the capital of Europe.

Professor emeritus in Astrophysics, Chair Teacher Trainers Working Group Faculty of Sciences VUB, Chair VUB Steering Committee Sustainability Policy. Member of the Science Committee of Technopolis (since 1996). President of the Brussels Diplomacy Academy. Advisor to the President of the Brussels University Association. Member of Task Force 1 of the Office for Astronomy Development of the IAU, President of IAU Commission 46 (Astronomy Education and Development), Director of the IAU International School for Young Astronomers, Chair of the university’s Working Group on Science Communication.

Former Vice-rector for International Relations (2010-2012). Former member of the Steering Committee of UNICA (the network of Universities of European Capital Cities) 2011-2013. 

Chair Department of Physics 2006-2009. Faculty coordinator for Student Mobility 2006-2009. Dean of Vesalius College: 2000-2006. Member of  French Comité Nationale d’Evaluation de la Recherche (CNER, Paris, France, 2006-2007). Belgian member of the Nato Science Committee (1994-1999). Member of the Open University Validation Board UK, 1999-2001. Scientific Council of the Royal Observatory of Belgium, 1995-2003 (chairman since 1998).

Eva Egron-Polak was educated in the Czech Republic, Canada and France.  She studied French Literature, Political Science and International Political Economy.  During nearly 20 years at the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) she has held several senior positions including Vice President, International, prior to becoming the Secretary General of IAU in 2002.    

At IAU, an independent, global association of universities and associations of higher education institutions based at UNESCO in Paris, Eva Egron-Polak  is involved in various policy issues in higher education – internationalization,  provision of equitable access to and success in higher education, the contribution of higher education to sustainable development, to the Millennium Development Goals, among others, with a continuing preoccupation with issues of ethics, academic values and higher education’s responsibility to society.  

Eva Egron-Polak is a member of many committees at UNESCO, the European Commission, OECD, etc.  She is has been a member of international advisory bodies in the Netherlands, Ireland and Romania and is a member of the Magna Charta Observatory Council. She has taken part in system level reviews of higher education in Egypt and Spain. She has co-authored the two last editions of the Global Survey Report on Internationalization of Higher Education in 2010 and 2014 respectively, and written and presented numerous papers on a variety of higher education topics.  In 2015 she was awarded a Doctorate honoris causa by Mykolas Romeris University in Lithuania.

Adinda van Gaalen works as a senior policy officer and researcher at EP-Nuffic, the Dutch organization for internationalising education. She has conducted studies on internationalisation strategies of Dutch higher education institutions and on various other topics such as a recent study for the Dutch Ministry of Education on internationalisation at home. Adinda has been involved in the development of a number of quality assurance tools for internationalisation of higher education. She is the author of several publications among which the EAIE toolkit on internationalization and quality assurance. In addition she works as an adviser and trainer in short courses and workshops. Adinda is an elected member of the General Council of EAIE. She has recently expanded the focus of her work to include internationalisation of secondary education. Adinda previously worked as a policy adviser, head of the international office and teacher at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. She holds a master’s degree in Social Sciences from the VU University in Amsterdam.

Dag Stenvoll’s ongoing projects are on higher educational institutions’ strategies for internationalisation, on Nordic HE institutions’ Erasmus Charter for Higher Education applications, and on the curiously generous Norwegian student loan and stipend scheme. He has also analysed education and research cooperation with BRICS countries and Japan.

Stenvoll is Senior Adviser in the Section for Policy and Analysis at the Norwegian Centre for International Cooperation in Education (SIU). His has a doctoral degree in Comparative Politics from the University of Bergen (2003). Before he came to SIU in 2011, he worked for eight years as Senior Researcher at the Uni Rokkan Centre for Social Studies.

Markus Laitinen is the Head of International Affairs at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He has been part of the university’s internationalisation efforts in various roles for more than two decades. Currently his tasks comprise of overseeing and co-ordinating international affairs and providing strategic advice for the university leadership. Markus holds a Master’s of Social Sciences in international politics but has not considered an academic career and identifies himself as practitioner of higher education internationalisation.

The University of Helsinki was awarded the European Association for International Education (EAIE) Award for Innovation in Internationalisation based on a decade-long development of embedded internationalisation in 2013 and these experiences are reflected in ”Comprehensive Internationalization, Institutional Pathways to Success”, John Hudzik (ed) 2015.

In 2014 Markus Laitinen was elected as Vice President for EAIE and he assumed this office in September and will first serve two years in this position, to be followed by two years as President. He is a member of the Association’s Board and chairs the Awards and Talent Committee.

Dr. Stephan Fuchs is Head of the Audit “Internationalisation of Universities” at the German Rectors’ Conference, a position he has held since the beginning of 2014. His career has taken him through several stations in international exchange and academic administration, including as the programme manager for international projects with the German national science fair (Jugend forscht), as managing director of the Bavarian American Academy, as the Director of the International Office of the University of Munich (LMU) and most recently as Head of Conferences with the Alexander von Humboldt – Foundation. He received his academic training at the University of Munich (M.A. and Ph.D. in American Cultural History, Social Geography and Law) and at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Stephan Keuck is Programme Manager with the Audit “Internationalisation of Universities” since 2010. Previously, he spent three years as a Foreign Language lecturer at the University of Oxford. He received his academic training at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn and at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver (in North American Studies, Political Science, Art History, and Law). 

Uwe Brandenburg is project manager at CHE Consult and an expert on strategic development, internal communication and internal project quality assurance. He was the head of CHE Excellence Ranking (a pan-European quality assessment project of Master’s programmes), project coordinator of the IMPI project (Indicators for Mapping and Profiling Internationalisation), and leads a number of advisory projects in the fields of internationalisation, controlling, strategy development, organisation development, diversity management, benchmarking, and quality control. He has published on financing models for studying abroad, international education systems (inter alia on China with more than 53,000 downloads to date), foreign marketing, internationalisation, EU projects regarding benchmarking, internationalisation, and Change Management at European universities. He has cooperated in the International Deans’ Course for further education and training of deans from developing countries, and is a member of the Deutsche Assoziation für Internationalen Bildungsaustausch (DAIA) e.V. (German Association for International Exchange of Education) (Chairman until 2006), European Association for International Educators (EAIE), Fulbright Alumni e. V., and CHER (Consortium of Higher Education Researchers). He has been invited as core expert to the IAU (International Association of Universities) and to the Ad Hoc expert group on internationalisation.

Megan Brenn-White is Founder and Managing Director of The Brenn-White Group, a New York City-based company providing international marketing, editorial, staff training, and strategy services to global higher education institutions and related organizations. Prior to this role, Ms. Brenn-White held senior management positions at global websites such as iAgora.com, E*TRADE, and Bolt.com. She has worked in the field of international education for over a decade, having served as Deputy Director of DAAD New York, Executive Director of the Hessen Universities New York Office, and Director for International Partnerships at Parsons School of Design. Ms. Brenn-White publishes and presents regularly on topics related to international higher education and is a member of the Editorial Board of AIEA and Marketing & Recruitment Steering Committee of EAIE. She earned her BA in Government at Harvard University and an MSc in European Studies at The London School of Economics.

Marija Mitic started as a trainee at ACA from March until September 2014 and then joined the team as a Project Officer. She has since taken part in several ACA projects: a study on English-taught programmes in Europe,a policy support document on innovation in higher education, and in research on Open Education in five higher education systems in the EU . Before joining ACA, Marija was a trainee at the European Commission, in the International Cooperation and Programmes Unit of DG EAC. M arija is a certified trainer with international experience in youth work and adult education. She is an Erasmus Mundus Alumna with a Master’s Degree in Lifelong Learning: Policy and Management from Aarhus University, Denmark and Universidad de Deusto, Spain.

Jeroen Huisman is professor of Higher Education at the Centre for Higher Education Governance Ghent (CHEGG, www.chegg.ugent.be), department of Sociology, Ghent University, Belgium. He was researcher at the Center for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS), University of Twente, the Netherlands (1991-2005) and professor of Higher Education Management, University of Bath, UK (2005-2013). He is editor of the journal Higher Education Policy, co-editor of the Routledge/SRHE Higher Education book series, co-editor of the Emerald book series on Theory and Method in Higher Education Research (with Malcolm Tight) and member of the editorial board of several higher education journals. His research interests are: higher education policy, higher education governance, organizational change in higher education and internationalization and Europeanisation. , higher education governance, organizational change in higher education and internationalization and Europeanisation.

Peter Scott is Professor of Higher Education Studies at the UCL Institute of Education. From 1998 until 2010 he was Vice-Chancellor of Kingston University in London. Before that he was a professor at the University of Leeds, and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (responsible for external affairs), and was Editor of ‘The Times Higher Education Supplement’ from 1976 until 1992.

He was President of ACA from 2000 until 2008. He is Treasurer of the Academia Europaea, and chair of its Behavioural Sciences Section, and also a member of the British Council’s Education Advisory Panel. He has published books on mass higher education, new patterns of knowledge production, the governance and management of universities, and the internationalisation of higher education.

Ligia Deca is a PhD researcher in political science at the University of Luxembourg, working on internationalization of higher education. She is also currently coordinating the development of the Romanian strategy for internationalization of higher education, as part of a strategic project coordinated by the Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding (UEFISCDI) in Romania.

Previously, Ligia Deca was the Head of the Bologna Follow-Up Group Secretariat (2010-2012), which supported the activities of the 2009-2012 Bologna Process’ work plan and prepared the 2012 Bucharest Ministerial Conference and Third Bologna Policy Forum. In 2008-2010, she was the Chairperson of the European Students’ Union (ESU). Previously, Ligia also worked as a policy officer at the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education (EQAR) and was involved as an external expert in various projects by the Council of Europe and the European Commission.

Since 2012, Ligia has been a member of the European Award for Excellence in Teaching in the Social Sciences and Humanities Jury, awarded by the Central European University (CEU). In 2008, she led the Coalition for Clean Universities – a pilot project aimed at fostering academic integrity in Romania.

Margie Waters is deputy head of unit in the unit responsible for EU higher education policies and the higher education strand of the Erasmus+ programmes at the European Commission’s Directorate General for Education and Culture, with particular focus on policy development. She previously worked in policy coordination in the Directorate General, and before joining the Commission worked in academic publishing.

Laura E. Rumbley is associate director and lecturer at the Boston College Center for International Higher Education. Her research and teaching focus largely on internationalization of US and European higher education. She serves as co-editor of the Journal of Studies in International Education and is Publications Committee chair for the European Association for International Education (EAIE).

Shivleta Tagirova is the Director of International Relations at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE-University), Moscow Russia. Prior to her arrival at the Higher School of Economics, Shivleta Tagirova headed the Department Europe at the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia.

Tagirova received her degrees in Public Administration and Translation (French) from the same university. In 2009, she defended her dissertation entitled ‘Policy of Strategic Management in Higher Education: a Comparative Analysis of Western and Russian Experience (through the example of France, the United Kingdom and the Russian Federation’).

Tagirova has worked as Coordinator of the Global Education Programme of the North-South Centre of the Council of Europe and the first joint Russian Master’s programme in human rights carried out with support of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. She also briefly led the Division for International Organizations and Programs of Russia’s Ministry of Education and Science. She has published on the topic of the market for educational services and management of innovation processes in higher education.

Hans-Georg van Liempd has been the Managing Director at the Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Tilburg University, the Netherlands since November 2014. 

From September 2010 until September 2014 is served as (vice-) President of the European Association for International Education (EAIE). As Immediate Past President he is still a member of the General Council of the EAIE. 

In the past he held several positions at Tilburg University. In 2005, he set up the Central International Office at Tilburg University and served as its Director until mid-2010, when he became elected as Vice President of the EAIE. During his (vice-) Presidency he worked as Senior Programme Manager at Tilburg on university wide programmes such as Internationalising the Campus and Corporate Social Responsibility. Lastly, he was interim Director Strategy & Policy from March until October 2014 at the university. He is member of the international expert team for the Romanian Government project for internationalizing the strategy of 21 Romanian universities. 

In his role he was and still is a frequent presenter at institutions and conferences around the world. He is also a senior EAIE Trainer. His area of expertise concerns International Strategy in Higher Education, Leading and Managing International Operations and EU Strategy, Policies and Partnerships. He was member of the ISEP Council of Advisors in Washington DC from 2002 to 2006. Furthermore he is a member of several Advisory Boards in Higher Education and Culture in the Netherlands and abroad.

Giancarlo Spinelli is the Rector’s Delegate for International Networks at the Politecnico di Milano in Italy. He graduated in Nuclear Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano. He has published widely on special and general relativity and on continuum mechanics. In 1980 he became full professor in Mathematical Physics and his first Chair was at the Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy. Since 1981 he has been full professor of Rational Mechanics at the Politecnico di Milano.

He was Vice-Dean of the College of Engineering (1987-1994) and Pro-Rector for International Relations (1990-94). He was the President of the Centre for International Relations during its existence from 1995 to 2003. In 2004, when internationalisation was ‘streamlined’ at the Politecnico di Milano, he became the Rector’s Delegate for International Relations (2004-10) and, in 2011, also for International Networks. 

In 1997, Giancarlo was the President of the EAIE. From 2000 to 2004, he served on the Board of the Educational Testing Service (Princeton, US A). Since 2008, he has been the Chair of the Admission Committee of the T.I.M.E. Association based at École Centrale Paris and, since 2009, Chair of the “T.I.M.E. label certificate” Committee. Since 2012, he has been a member of the Advisory Council for Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts, USA. In 2009, he received the – first ever – Transatlantic Award of the EAIE. He also received honorary doctorates from the American University of Science and Technology in Beirut (Lebanon), Lund University (Sweden) and École Centrale de Nantes (France).

Thijs Verbeurgt studied Eastern European Languages and Cultures at Ghent University and was a student representative at different levels. In 2008-2009 he was elected as member of the Board of Governors at Ghent University and of the Flemish Student Union (VVS). At the same time, he worked as an educational administrative assistant at the department of Pediatrics at the faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of Ghent University. In 2009, he started as a policy advisor at the International Relations Office where he was successively responsible for non-European bilateral agreements and the start-up of a branch campus in Korea. In 2011, he become project manager at the faculty of Arts and Philosophy where he was responsible for promoting part time learning. In 2012, he returned to the International Relations Office as part-time project manager of the EU funded Expanding Opportunities – ExpandO project and part-time policy advisor commissioned with drafting the integrated policy plan for internationalisation, Ghent University’s strategic plan in this field for 2014-2018. In the framework of this plan, he was also closely involved in the development of specific action concerning quality of international cooperation and increasing outgoing student mobility numbers. 

After the approval of Integrated Policy Plan for Internationalisation, he was appointed policy advisor for internationalisation responsible for the implementation, under the Policy Coordinator of Internationalisation. Thijs Verbeurgt is a frequently asked speaker at national and international conferences on both widening participation and internationalisation strategies.

Gijs Coucke has been working at the International Relations Office of Ghent University since 2009. His main duties are the development and the daily management of the strategic and regional cooperation on an institutional basis. In this context he is a.o. responsible for the central coordination of the U4 network with the universities of Groningen, Göttingen and Uppsala. Further, next to his involvement in a variety of internationalization policy related issues Gijs Coucke is in charge of several dimensions of the external and internal communication on internationalization and of the development of online resources. In the framework of Ghent University’s strategic plan for internationalization he has been involved in organizing the English offer for exchange students and the development of mobility windows. 

Prior to his appointment by Ghent University Gijs Coucke was a researcher at KU Leuven at the Institute of Philosophy where he obtained his doctoral degree in 2008 and spent a short period as postdoc.

Carla Locatelli is Vice-Rector for International Agreements at the University of Trento (Italy) and also a Member of the Academic Senate. She is Professor of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature in the Department of Cognitive Sciences at Trento, and Adjunct Professor in the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (PA, USA).

She is the European Coordinator of Asea-Uninet (Asean European Academic University Network), and acted as its President from 2009 to 2011. She has been a member of the Italian National Committee for the Evaluation of Research of the Italian Ministry of Education. 

She is a member of the Editorial Boards of the journals Testuale; The European Journal of Women’s Studies and of the electronic Journal Limite(e) Beckett (www.limitebeckett.paris-sorbonne.fr). She is also on the International Advisory Board of The Philippine Humanities Review, and is an international contributor on higher education to the Global Business Review Journal (Burapha University).

Carla Locatelli has been Exchange Research Fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2004, and Senior Fulbright Fellow at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana in 2002. Among her publications are 14 volumes (some edited), and approximately 150 articles and contributions to volumes, and reference works. In 2013 she received a Certificate for Outstanding Contribution to the ASEAN Network in the field of Higher Education from the Minister of Higher Education, Malaysia (YB Dato’ Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin).

Dorothy Kelly is Vice Rector for International Relations at the University of Granada, where she is also professor of Translation. She obtained her B.A. in Translating and Interpreting at Heriot-Watt University, and her doctoral degree from the University of Granada. Her main research interests are translator training, directionality in translation, intercultural competence and student mobility. She was a member of Spain’s national Bologna Experts Team until 2013, and has been Chair of the Executive Board of the Coimbra Group of Universities since 2010.

Asta Radzeviciene is the Vice-Rector for International Relations at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University and the Head of the International Relations Committee at the Lithuanian University Rectors’ Conference. Next to these core functions, she is a member of numerous committees and working groups, such as the National EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region Monitoring Group; National EU Programme Committee; National Appeals Commission for the Recognition of Foreign Degrees and Qualifications; amongst others.

Both a practitioner of and a researcher on higher education management, Asta produced over 20 scientific publications and co-authored the National Programme for Enhancing the Internationalisation of Lithuanian Higher Education (2008-2010). Her research interests range from strategic management of higher education institutions to human resource management and internationalisation of private and public sector institutions.

Asta holds a PhD in Social Sciences, a Master in Engineering Economics and Management, and a Diploma in Russian Philology. She is a dedicated promoter of ‘internationalisation at home’ and believes in professional networking’s power to bring about change.

Robert John Coelen is Professor of Internationalisation of Higher Education at Stenden University in the Netherlands. Prior to this appointment he was Vice-President International at Leiden University. He has worked for about 20 years in the field of international education. He returned to work in Europe after an absence of 30 years. Most of these 30 years were spent in Australia. During his time in Australia he spent about 5 years altogether in South-East Asia, particularly in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.

Dr Coelen is a regular speaker at international and national conferences on issues related to internationalisation of higher education. In particular ranking, international positioning, the services to international students and admission are amongst the topics he addresses. More recently he is talking about quality in internationalisation as a pressing issue. He was the organiser of the Leiden University Global Ranking Symposium Series. He is the initiator and president of Euroscholars, a new study abroad education project in collaboration with 12 continental LERU universities.