Register Committee

Stéphane Lauwick has extensive experience not only in the French higher education sector, at the University Institute of Technology (IUT) in Le Havre, but also at a European level, as former President of EURASHE and Secretary-General of ADIUT. In this capacity, he promoted the French Institutes of Technology, mainly outside Europe and worked with a variety of stakeholders.

He started his career at the University of Le Havre Normandy (FR) where he was head of the Electrical Engineering department.

Stéphane was also  for several years (2007-2011) the Director of the Life Long Learning Centre and Apprenticeship Training Centre at IUT Le Havre and also (2011-2014) reviewer at the HCERES (then AERES), the French Higher Education Quality Assurance agency.

Stéphane Lauwick, as President of EQAR, has a mandate until 1 July 2026.

Eltjo has has been working in quality assurance of higher education since 2011. He is active in internal and external quality assurance, both at programme and institutional level. He also has experience in execution and system development.

Eltjo is active in several Dutch and European networks concerning quality and quality assurance in professional higher education. He has been trained and is active in several auditing roles, such as a chair of internal auditing panels at HU UAS Utrecht, member of institutional audit panels abroad and as assessor in EFQM. Though he loves innovative ideas and experimenting, his firm belief is that the best way to improve is openness and the willingness to learn from each other, whether it be on programme, institutional or system level.

Eltjo has degrees in Philosophy, Business Management and Professional Sailing. His activities in quality assurance are a perfect combination of his love for education and the fields of philosophy and business management. Sailing has been diverted to his free time.

Sandra Bezjak started her career at the University of Zagreb and moved to the Croatian Agency for Science and Higher Education (ASHE) in 2005 after its establishment. Since then, she has been working in the field of quality assurance in HE.

During the first years at the agency, she was included in the setting up of the national QA scheme in HE in line with ESG and good international practices. Her work and topics of interest are especially related to institutional and program accreditations, and in recent years, to the implementation of the CroQF, the European Approach for Quality Assurance of Joint programmes and cross-border evaluations.

She actively participated in providing support to Croatian HEIs in the development of their own internal QA systems and was an invited speaker at a large number of meetings and events organised at national and international level. She is very passionate about quality assurance issues and witnessed the impact that these processes can have on the development of quality in HE at a national level.

Sandra Bezjak was a member of the ENQA Agency Review Committee in its first term (2021-2023) and participated as expert in several ENQA agency reviews (as a panel member, secretary and a chair). She also participated in several international projects with a focus on strengthening some of the EHEA agencies and their alignment with ESG, especially in the region of South-Eastern Europe.

She obtained a Master’s degree in Molecular Biology and a Master of Science degree in Biotechnical Sciences, both from the University of Zagreb.

As Head of the Policy Division at the Employers’ Confederation of Latvia (LDDK)), Rihards coordinates a team of experts advocating for employers’ interests in national policy-making, particularly in education, employment, and social affairs. Previously, as Head of the Education and Employment Sector at LDDK, he focused on representing employers at all levels of education and coordinated the work of sectoral expert councils. He currently serves as Chair of the Higher Education Quality Assurance Council in Latvia.

His earlier experience includes serving as Assistant Project Manager at the Higher Education Council during the 2012–2013 assessment of all higher education study programmes in Latvia. From 2013 to 2015, he was a Project Expert at the Academic Information Centre, contributing to the development of the Latvian Qualifications Framework. Between 2015 and 2017, he participated in the creation of the new quality assurance agency and was actively involved in organising the 12th European Quality Assurance Forum in Riga.

More recently, Rihards was a Project Manager and Consultant at SIA Dynamic University, providing strategic advice to universities and municipalities on education policy and development projects.

Before his professional career, Rihards was active in student representation at both university and national levels, managing a Youth in Action project to connect higher education with labour market needs and acting as an expert in quality assurance procedures in Latvia and abroad. He is the founder of the University of Latvia Alumni Club and serves as alumni representative on the university’s Quality Assurance Commission. He holds a degree in political science and completed an exchange semester at Charles University in Prague.

She has been a student expert in quality assurance of higher education since 2017, gaining vast experience both at national and international level, being part of panels for accreditation and evaluation of study programmes, higher education institutions and one European universities alliance.

Irina has been a member of the European Students’ Union’s Quality Assurance Student Experts’ Pool (ESU QA Pool) since 2019, out of which two years (2021-2023) she was part of the Steering Committee and, since 2022, she has been representing ESU in the Institutional Evaluation Programme (IEP) Steering Committee.

In terms of student representation, she was Vice President for Education (2018-2019) and Vice President for International Relations (2019-2020) of the National Alliance of Student Organisations in Romania (ANOSR), the national union of students which is a full member of ESU.

Irina is also involved in the European University of Technology (EUt+), of which TUC-N is a founding member, sharing her experience in quality assurance into the works of the alliance.

She has a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Automotive Engineering, both from the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, and is currently completing her PhD studies in Mechanical Engineering.

Geneviève has been Vice-Rector for Quality and Social Responsibility at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Western Switzerland (HES-SO) since 2016.

She began her professional career as an art historian specialising in pre-Columbian Mayan civilisation and then moved on to institutional functions in the field of higher education: firstly, she was responsible for equal opportunities at the University of Neuchâtel, and then deputy director of the Swiss Agency for Accreditation and Quality Assurance.

Patricia Georgieva obtained a Master degree in Education at the Faculty of Philosophy in St. Kliment Ohridski university in Sofia, followed by a PhD degree at the same university. She was a Head of Higher Education Research Department at the National Institute of Education and specialised in the field of quality assurance at the Institute of Education in London University (1996-1997).

Patricia Georgieva was a member of the International Accreditation Council of AKKORK (2015-2019), Secretary General of the National Evaluation and Accreditation Agency of Bulgaria (2002-2008) and co-opted Board member of ENQA (2004-2005; 2008). She served as a Review Panel secretary and Review-Panel member in ENQA coordinated quality reviews of agencies (EUA, 2009; AKKORK- Russian Federation, 2011 and 2014; NOKUT- Norway, 2013; HCERES- France, 2016).

Esther Huertas possesses extensive experience in the accreditation of programs and institutions, with a particular emphasis on e-learning. She served as the chair of ENQA’s working group on quality assurance and e-learning and was a member of the ENQA working group on micro-credentials and their quality assurance.

From 2021 to 2025, she served on the ENQA Agency Review Committee. She plays a key role in both national and international initiatives led by AQU Catalunya. She regularly contributes to international discussions on quality assurance and has participated as an expert in a variety of international projects and events.

Before joining AQU Catalunya, Esther Huertas worked as a researcher and later as an assistant professor at the university. She holds degrees in Agronomy and in Food Science and Technology, as well as a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Barcelona.

Petri joined Hanken in 1996 and was tenured as full professor in 2000. His perspective on quality assurance is that of a university professor and union activist. He has served as a shop steward and member of the University Council at Hanken, a triple-accredited business school, and as member of the board of the Finnish Union of University Professors.

He has participated in the work of several national bodies relating to open science. He is also a former member of ETUCE’s HERSC and has in the past represented EI/ETUCE in the EHEA on several occasions, including as member of the BFUG Task Force on Enhancing Knowledge Sharing in the EHEA Community and member of the ESG Revision Steering Committee.

As a researcher, he has so far published 11 monographs and articles covering a broad range of topics in commercial law and legal science. A major part of his research is comparative and focused on European law. One of his current research fields is the higher education market.

Petri studied law at the University of Helsinki (MJur 1988) and commercial law at the University of Bristol (LLM 1989). He was awarded a doctorate in commercial law at Hanken School of Economics (DScEcon 1999). Before joining Hanken, he practiced commercial law in Helsinki and was a guest researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg (1994-5).

Liv Teresa Muth holds a Ph.D. in “Bioscience Engineering” from Ghent University and is currently enrolled as a part-time student in the postgraduate certificate programme “EU Policy Making” at Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

Since her bachelor studies, she has been an active student representative and engaged in Quality Assurance-related activities, including study programme, institutional and Quality Assurance Agency reviews. During this time, she joined more than 25 Quality Assurance review panels on German, European and international level.

She was also a panel member for the previous external reviews of ENQA and EQAR and a Board member of the Icelandic Quality Assurance Agency. Besides, she served as a Steering Committee member of the German and ESU Quality Assurance Student Expert Pool, e.g. conceptualizing and organizing trainings, and presenting the voice of students at conferences and in various advisory bodies.

where he works with the Vice-Presidents Academic group across the Irish university system.

Within the Irish Universities Association (IUA) he has overall responsibility for a broad portfolio of policy areas, including access, admissions, teaching and learning, student engagement, skills and graduate outcomes, graduate studies and quality.

Prior to joining IUA in 2005, Lewis worked at the European University Association and with several United Nations agencies in educational, health and social fields. He is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin and of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies at the University of Geneva.

Lewis has contributed to more than 25 evaluations of university quality assurance in over 15 European countries since 1998. While these have mostly been with the Institutional Evaluation Programme (of which Lewis is currently a steering committee member), he has also been a member of expert evaluation panels with national agencies in Belgium, Germany, Iceland, Latvia and Switzerland.