Ulf Lie

Ulf Lie is former the Deputy Director of the Academic Cooperation Association (ACA). In this position he was is instrumental in the development and implementation of ACA policy and projects. Earlier on, he was Senior Advisor at Norway’s Centre for International University Cooperation (SIU) in Bergen. He created this organisation and was its Director until the summer of 2004. Prior to this he was the Director of the Bergen Student Welfare Organisation and the Chairman the Norwegian Student Welfare Organisations. In a different career, he was a Professor of American Literature at Bergen University, and a Vice-Dean. He held a research fellowship from ACLS to SUNY at Buffalo and published books and articles on poetry, art and literature, discourse analysis and language competence in industry. His publications include topics such as internationalisation, commercialisation, and globalisation of higher education, particularly cooperation with developing countries. Ulf Lie also has a distinguished track record in educational development cooperation, in which field he championed many successful projects. He has received the Constance Meldrum Award for Vision and Leadership from the European Association for International Education.

Stamenka Uvalić-Trumbić is a UNESCO staff member (1990-to present day), presently Chief of the Section for Reform, Innovation and Quality Assurance, in the Higher Education Division in UNESCO Headquarters in Paris. Prior to her work with UNESCO, she had different position in education in Former Yugoslavia, the last one as Secretary-General and CEO of the Association of Universities of Former Yugoslavia.Her special areas of expertise include UNESCO’s work on conventions, recommendations, codes of good practices and guidelines that relate to the recognition of qualifications and quality assurance in higher education. In that framework, she was responsible for the elaboration of the 1997 Lisbon Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications in the European Region and is Secretary of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Mediterranean Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications.

She was also involved in reviews of Higher Education in Macedonia (1994) UNESCO-UNDP Higher Education reviews of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1996-1997) and a UNESCO-UNICEF review of Yugoslavia (2000).Her more recent responsibilities are aimed at developing policy debates on cross-border higher education covering a wide range of issues from distance education to trade in higher educational services through the Global Forum on International Quality Assurance, Accreditation and the Recognition of Qualifications (2002; 2004). One of the most recent outcomes of this work are the Guidelines on Quality Provision in Cross Border Higher Education, elaborated jointly with the OECD (2005) which promote mutual trust and international cooperation in quality assurance and the recognition of qualifications, especially those provided across borders, such as distance education, eLearning and other forms of provision. She is also the responsible officer for a UNESCO-World Bank Global Initiative for Quality Assurance Capacity (GIQAC) aiming at building capacity for quality assurance in higher education in developing and transition countries.

Professor Chacha Nyaigotti-Chacha (born 1952) born in Kuria District, Nyanza Province is a Kenyan playwright and Swahili Language educationalist, the executive secretary of the Inter-University Council for East Africa, and a former secretary of the Kenyan Higher Education Loans Board. Educated at Kenyatta College (S1) and BEd (Swahili Language). Later studied at Yale University gaining a PhD in Swahili Language Linguistics. He has been a Tutorial Fellow and Lecturer in Swahili Language and Linguistics at Kenyatta University and later Egerton University in Kenya.

Christoph Hansert is head of division for Higher Education Management and International Consultancy Projects at the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Before taking up this position, he was deputy head and senior project manager for international quality assurance and educational budget management projects at the divsion of education of InWEnt (Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung) in Bonn with regional emphasis on Central America, Eastern and Southern Africa, and Soutrh East Asia. Earlier, he was employed at the German Foundation for International Development (DSE) as policy adivser to the Executive Directors.

Christoph Hansert has studied political science, economics and social history at the Universities of Freiburg and Heidelberg, at the Catholic University of America, Washington D.C., and at the Free University of Berlin with internships at the World Bank and the UCLAC Office in Buenos Aires. He has completed a one year professional postgraduate course in Development Co-operation at the German Development Insitute (DIE).

Irene Horejs works as a head of unit for human development, social cohesion and employment in DG Development and relations with African, Caribbean and Pacific States of the European Commission. Before her arrival in Brussels in November 2007, she served as the head of EC delegation in Niger (2000 – 2004) and Mali (2004 – 2007). She has also an extensive development experience from other regions, particularly Central America, where she worked for more than a decade as part of the Austrian development assistance. Ms. Horejs has a degree in development economics. She is an Austrian national and speaks German, French, English, Portuguese and Spanish.

Associate professor Tor Halvorsen is employed at the Department of  Administration and Organisation Theory, the University of Bergen, Norway. He is also research leader for the Social Sceince Faculty topic “Knowledge and Politics” as well as responsible for the topic “Knowledge, politics and globalisation” at the university-owned research centre UNIFOB – Global. At this research centre he is also presently leading the reseach group “Shaping research universities”, composed of researchers from all the Nile countries,  under the programme Nile Basin Research Programme. In his research on relations between knowledge and politics Tor Halvorsen has mainly focused on trends in the global development and the role of multilateral organisations, reforms of higher education, knowledge policies and realtions between education and work. 

Peter Taylor is a Research Fellow and is also Team Leader of the Participation, Power and Social Change Team at the Institute of Development Studies, at the University of Sussex, UK. His background is in agriculture and education and he has worked for many years on issues relating to education for agricultural and rural development, and participatory approaches and processes in educational arenas. He has authored two books and a number of other publications, and in 2008 was Guest Editor of the GUNI report on Higher Education in the World. He has been involved in a wide range of research and advisory activities, including: participatory curriculum development in agricultural and forestry education; research into use of contextualised curricula and teaching methodologies in basic education; support to initiatives supporting development of education provision for people in rural areas; training of trainers and teachers on participatory approaches and methodologies; engaging in collaborative inquiry into education for community change; research on grassroots democracy and empowerment; and facilitation of learning processes. He currently convenes the MA in Participation, Power and Social Change, and international initiatives such as “Learning and Teaching for Transformation”, and the “Capacity Collective”.

Han Aarts is director of the Maastricht University centre for international cooperation in academic development (MUNDO). Han Aarts has a Master degree in human geography and development studies (Free University, 1984). After his studies he spent several years with Nuffic, where he was introduced to university development cooperation. He has been working with Maastricht University since 1987, co-ordinating the university’s international office until 1997, and directing Mundo since then. Mundo is exclusively focusing on cooperation with partner universities in the developing world. In various capacities Han Aarts has been involved in collaborative projects with universities in, among other places, El Salvador, Kenya, South Africa, Vietnam, Mozambique, Indonesia, with the main aim of local capacity development. Han Aarts is also strongly involved in the European Association for International Education, as executive board member in the past and as co-founder and leading member of the Educational cooperation with Developing Countries (EDC) section at present.