Dr Maurits van Rooijen has executive responsibility for international and institutional development at the University of Westminster, London, which includes the development of the Westminster International University Tashkent.

He is president of the Compostela Group of Universities, with almost 80 members the largest consortium of its kind. He is executive vice-president of WACE, the Boston based organisation dedicated to promoting work-integrated learning and vice-president of EAN, the only international organisation solely dedicated to the promotion of higher education to underrepresented groups.

Dr Van Rooijen’s academic background is in ‘green town planning’. He worked at his alma mater, Utrecht University and the Erasmus University before moving to the University of Westminster in 1993. He combined his London position with a vice-president position at Victoria University Melbourne (1998, sabbatical) and Leiden University (1999-2005; part-time secondment).

Following an undergraduate degree in History and Russian at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark and an MA in History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, Line worked as Information and Recruitment Officer at Imperial College London. In 2003, Line joined the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education where she was Deputy Director until 2007 where she joined Hobsons as Research Manager. In the beginning of 2008, Line returned to Denmark to take up a position as Head of Section with CIRIUS, part of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.  

Ramon Wyss is a professor in theoretical nuclear physics at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden. He was the vice president of KTH in charge of international education from 2002 to 2007 after which he became advisor to the KTH-President in 2008. He has been since 2004 a member of the management board of CESAER (a network of 60 universities in science and technology) and since 2006 the Secretary General for CLUSTER (a network of 12 European universities in science and technology). Ramon Wyss is the KTH project leader to develop the Swedish University of Science and Technology in Pakistan, and has also developed joint educational and research programmes with China and India.

Dr Robert John Coelen is Vice-President International at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He has worked for about 12 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: First as an international student, fresh out of the Netherlands, next as a researcher and academic, and finally as Director International at two universities in Queensland. He spent part of the time working on developmental projects in Indonesia.

Mr Coelen is a member of Club33, a global think tank on internationalisation, a member of the International Ranking Experts Group, which produced the Berlin Principles on Ranking in Higher Education, member of the executive board, Steering and Editorial Committees of the European Association of International Education. He has recently become a member of advisory boards on the EU Network of European Promoters and Transnational Education Projects within the context of the Erasmus Mundus Global Promotion.

Robert 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. He is also the organiser of the Leiden University Global Ranking Symposium Series. He is the initiator of Euroscholars, a new study abroad education project in collaboration with 12 continental LERU universities.

Mr Coelen is committed to the ideals of an internationalised higher education as the result of first-hand experience as an international student, followed by observing the development of his international students in undergraduate programmes, as well as his international Ph.D. students. The beneficial personal transformation that ensues from academic development in cultures other than one’s own is something he believes all students should experience at some time in their lives.

Dr Christian Bode is the Secretary General of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), which is the largest scholarship organisation globally, with more than 200 programmes out of and into Germany, and over 60,000 scholarships per year.  It also runs many initiatives to internationalise German higher education, and to increase its global attractiveness. Christian Bode was educated in law, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Bonn in 1971. Between 1972 and 1982, he held different senior positions in the Federal Ministry of Education and Science.  From 1982 until 1990 he was the Secretary General of the German Rectors’ Conference (then called Westdeutsche Rektorenkonferenz). 

Christian Bode is one of the founders of the Academic Cooperation Association, of which he has been a vice-president twice. He has been awarded several honorary degrees from universities all over the world (e.g. UK, Vietnam, Sudan). Recent awards include the „Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite“ (France), the „Officer of the Order of the British Empire“ and the Cassandra Pyle Award (USA).

Bernd Wächter is the Director of the Academic Cooperation Association (ACA), a consortium of European and global agencies which support international cooperation in higher education. ACA is a think-tank which promotes innovation and internationalisation in higher education. Bernd was born in Giessen (Germany) and studied at the universities of Hull (UK), Giessen and Marburg (Germany).  He lives in Brussels (Belgium) and is married to Thora Magnusdottir, a delightful lady from Iceland.

Bernd’s career has been focused on international higher education. In his first post, at the University of Kassel (Germany), he devised international degree programmes in cooperation with universities abroad. He later joined the British Council, before becoming the Director of the international office of the Fachhochschule Darmstadt. Moving on to Germany’s internationalisation agency DAAD, he became the head of this organisation’s European section. He subsequently became Director of Higher Education in the Brussels Socrates Office, with overall responsibility for the Erasmus Programme in Europe. In 1998, he took up his present post as the director of ACA. Bernd has published widely on international matters in higher education, and he is a frequent speaker at European and international education conferences. He is the editor of the ACA Papers on International Cooperation in Higher Education and.  He also works, as an expert advisor, for many international organisations.