Amanda Crowfoot joined EUA as Secretary General in January 2020. She is responsible for co-developing and implementing the Association’s strategic plan and is an ambassador for all members, presenting a collective vision of strong universities in Europe.

Amanda previously served as Director of Science Europe, the association representing major public research funding and performing organisations in Europe. As Science Europe’s first Director, she was responsible for establishing its office in Brussels in 2012, as well as developing and implementing its policy agenda.

From 2001 to 2012, Amanda worked at the UK Research Office (UKRO) – the Brussels office of the UK research councils. Prior to joining UKRO, she taught and researched at several UK universities, and was Projects Manager at the Centre for Research and Policy in Disability at Coventry University.

@euatweets

Ana Tecilazić is the Secretary General of the Algebra University College (Croatia) and is a member of the EURASHE Board and a co-chair of the BFUG WG on L&T. Ana’s professional experience has been shaped mainly by working for twenty years on policy developments in HE in the Croatian Ministry of Science and Education in particular in the areas of quality assurance, recognition, qualifications frameworks, employability, performance-based funding, social dimension, validation of prior learning, European affairs and internationalisation of higher education.

Ana contributed to higher education policy developments at the European level by representing Croatia in numerous bodies, groups and networks, such as the EQF AG, ET 2020 WG on Modernization of HE, the BFUG and its different working groups. Ana was a co-chair of the BICG in 2018-2020. She was mandated by the BFUG to participate as an observer in the EQAR Register Committee.

Anthony Camilleri is a tertiary education policy consultant and senior consultant at the Knowledge Innovation Centre.  He currently works on topics related to Quality Assurance of Higher and Vocational Education as well as quality and innovation processes. In Quality Assurance, Mr. Camilleri led the creation of ISO 21001 – Educational Organisation Management Systems and also consults QA agencies on reviewer training and issues linked to e-learning. Currently he is leading interoperability work on the new Europass.

Benedetto Lepori holds a PhD in Communication Sciences with a thesis on the Swiss research and higher education policy. At the Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano (USI), he is currently titular professor at the Faculty of Communication science and rector delegate per research analysis. He is senior researcher at the University of Paris Est and invited researcher at the Department of Management of the University of Bath.

His research interests cover a broad range of topics in research and higher education studies. He is a recognised specialist in the analysis of research policies and, especially, public research funding. In this area, he coordinated the PRIME project on public project funding and he was co-coordinator of the European Contract on Joint and Open Programs (JOREP). He also worked extensively in the domain of higher education indicators and governance and he is currently coordinator of the European Tertiary Education Register (ETER). He has been involved science the beginning in the Research Infrastructure for Science and Innovation Studies initiative, where he has coordinated the establishment of a register of public research organizations.

Geographer, she comes from the world of research and is an expert in the evaluation of qualifications and higher education systems. Author of various publications on the subject of credential evaluation, she coordinates numerous international projects on the above topics and is a member of various international working groups on higher education policies.

She has been appointed a member of the working group on higher education of the Council of Europe Steering Committee for Education Policy and Practice (CDPPE Working Group on Higher Education), and is an expert on the ETINED Platform (Council of Europe Platform on Ethics, Transparency and Integrity in Education). She is a member of the NARIC advisory board and National Correspondent for the Italian Qualifications Framework within the EHEA.

David has been working for Eurydice, the European Union’s education information network, since 2008. He leads the work on higher education. This includes the production of four Bologna Process Implementation Reports (2012, 2015, 2018 and 2020) which have informed discussions of the Ministerial Conferences as well as thematic reports and other information related to European priorities.
Before joining Eurydice, David worked for the European University Association where he managed EUA’s Trends reports, and was responsible for EUA’s project work on joint programmes and degrees prior to the establishment of the Erasmus Mundus programme.

Giorgi Munjishvili is a Deputy Head of Planning, Research and International Relations Department at the National Center for the Educational Quality Enhancement (NCEQE), Georgia.

Giorgi has extensive experience in external quality assurance, institutional development and digitalization. In his role at NCEQE, he is responsible for strategic planning, coordinating research activities and international relations of the agency. He has been engaged in various local and international projects with a focus on enhancing quality assurance systems.

Giorgi is a PhD student of Social Sciences with a research focus on higher education systems and inequality in education. Currently, he is engaged in teaching at two academic institutions in Georgia.

I am an automotive engineer, having both bachelor’s and master’s degrees completed within the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania. I am currently a PhD in Mechanical Engineering. I was a local student representative before being a Governing Board member of the National Alliance of Student Organisations in Romania (ANOSR) for 2 mandates. In terms of quality assurance of higher education, I have been a student reviewer within the Romanian Agency for Quality Assurance of Higher Education (ARACIS) for 4 years now and a member of ESU’s QA Pool since 2019, whereas I gained a wide experience both at national and international level. I am a Steering Committee member of ESU’s QA Pool since February 2021.

Jakub Grodecki is currently serving as Vice President of the European Students’ Union and is also board member of the EQAR executive Board.

His primary focus within ESU is quality of higher education, Implementation of Bologna Process commitments and digitalisation of higher education. He is also a member of the Advisory Council on Youth in the Council of Europe.

Previously, he worked as a quality assurance expert of the Polish Accreditation Committee (PKA) and of the ESU QA Pool of Experts. He has an academic background in Mechanical Engineering (B.Eng) and Management and Production Engineering (MSc) done at the University of Science and Technology (AGH) in Kraków.

Janja Možina Brecelj is Secretary at Ministry of Education, Science and Sport. She works in the field of information system of higher education in the Republic of Slovenia and participates in projects at national and EU level.  Working in the public administration since 2001 she has a lot of knowledge of public administration and its procedures in Slovenia. In the presentation she will show USE OF DEQAR IN ENROLLMENT APPLICATION FOR STUDY.

Jenneke Lokhoff is elected President of the ENIC-NARIC Networks, where digitization is one of the priorities in the workplan. As senior policy officer at Nuffic, the Dutch ENIC-NARIC. At Nuffic Jenneke is lead of the European projects, which include exploring solutions for the ongoing digitization of student data and the recognition of foreign qualifications.

Twitter:

@Nuffic
@ENICNARIC_NL
@ENIC_NARIC
@JennekeLokhoff

Dr. Jens Jungblut works as an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo. His main research interests include party politics, policy-making, and public governance in the knowledge policy domain (higher education & research), the role of (academic) expertise in policy advice, and communication of public organisations.

Jolanta Silka is Head of the Quality Agency for Higher Education (AIKA) in the Academic Information Centre (AIC). The agency is the only national quality assurance agency for higher education in Latvia.

Agency is a full member of ENQA and is listed in EQAR. Jolanta coordinated the agency’s external ESG review process and has experience in development methodologies and guidelines in line with national regulation and the ESG and with the development internal regulations on quality assessment, including experts’ selection and training.

She has more than 10 years of professional experience as an expert for higher education policy and reforms in the Ministry of Education and Science, in which capacity she has also taken part in the BFUG. In addition, she has experience in the external evaluation procedures as an expert and as a member of decision making body. Jolanta has participated in a number of higher education related projects (both as a manager and an expert).

Koen Nomden is currently Team Leader for “Transparency and Recognition of Skills and Qualifications”, within the Unit on Skills and Qualifications of the European Commission (DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion). He works on the European Qualifications Framework for lifelong learning, validation of non-formal and informal learning and Europass.

Other positions he held within the European Commission were that of Erasmus Mundus Programme Manager and of policy officer in charge of setting up a European Executive Agency in charge of implementing programmes in education, training, culture and media. Before joining the Commission in 2003 Koen worked at the University of Antwerp (researcher) and at the European Institute of Public Administration in Maastricht (the Netherlands). Koen studied public policy and public administration at the University of Twente (NL) and holds a Master in European Studies from the College of Europe, Bruges (BE).

Lluís Alfons Ariño Martín is a computer engineer with more than 25 years of experience in IT specialized in the higher education sector. Linked to the Rovira i Virgili University, in his work he fosters a holistic vision of the business, establishing the objective of adding value to the business, aligning IT in the global strategy of the university.

Having different recognitions throughout his professional career, he likes to highlight the “IT career award” granted by the ICT Sector Committee of the Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities (CRUE-TIC), for the recognition that represents the fact of that it comes from colleagues from all Spanish universities.

Related to Blockchain, Lluís collaborates with the BlockChain working group of the National Association of Rectors of Spanish Universities (CRUE), linked to the Computer Sector Committee (CRUE-TIC), in the deployment of the BLUE network (Blockchain Spanish Universities). He is also a member of the Spanish delegation at the European Blockchain Partnership (EBP) in the Diploma Use Case, on behalf of CRUE, of which he is also a convenor.

Marina Cvitanušić Brečić is a Head of the Service for Quality of Higher Education in the Ministry of Science and Education of the Republic of Croatia. She has 15 years of experience in the higher education sector, with an emphasis on recognition of foreign qualifications, quality assurance external evaluation procedures and collection and analysis of data on Croatian higher education (HE) and science.

Prior to the Ministry, she worked at the Croatian Agency for Science and Higher Education (ASHE). Her main area of work and interests are information systems in higher education and their optimization, in particular the systems and data used in quality assurance procedures in higher education. She has participated in the development of several information systems and tools for collecting data on Croatian higher education and quality assurance procedures, including the ASHE’s internal database, which submits data to the DEQAR database. As part of the DEQAR Connect project, she was one of the experts who helped newcomers to adapt their information systems to the requirements of DEQAR.

Pegi Pavletić is a member of the Executive Committee of the European Students’ Union (ESU). She has a master`s degree in Research and Development of Drugs and she is now a Ph.D. student in Pharmaceutical, Nutraceutical, and Food Sciences.

She comes from Croatia and she worked in the Department of Biotechnology Students` Council, University of Rijeka Students` Council where she served 2 presidential mandates, and in the Croatian Students` Council as President. Her most extensive experience is work on the recognition of prior learning, micro-credentials, sustainability, and enhancement of the quality of education through the regional and national quality assurance committees.

She represents ESU in the European Network for Academic Integrity, the Thematic Peer Group B on Lisbon Recognition Convention, she is a member of the Advisory Group on the European Qualifications Framework.

Twitter:

@ESUtwt
@PavleticPegi

Magalie Soenen has more than 20 years of experience in internationalisation in higher education, on institutional level (Ghent University), Erasmus+ national agency level (EPOS) and national policy level (Ministry of Education and Training of Belgium/Flemish Community).

Magalie Soenen represents the Flemish Community in the Bologna Follow Up Group and the ASEM process. She was a member of the BFUG secretariat in the past and is currently co-chair of the Bologna Thematic Peer Group on Quality Assurance and co-chair of the Bologna Coordination Group on Global Policy Dialogue. She is coordinator of several European projects, within the field of quality assurance, inclusion, digitalisation and micro-credentials. She also develops the national policies concerning internationalisation and mobility in higher education.

Prof. Dr. Mile Dželalija is a professor of physics at the University of Split. Besides teaching and research in physics, from an initial focus on quality assurance in higher education he has gradually expanded his focus to various areas of education policies. His fields of expertise in education sector range from teaching, lifelong learning, quality assurance, qualifications frameworks, validation of non-formal and informal learning, recognition of foreign qualifications, digitalisation in higher education, up to transfer of innovation.

He has extensive experience in preparation and management of a number of international research and education projects within various programmes. He leads Quality Assurance and Ethics Subcommittee and processes for testing and implementation of the European Digital Credentials for learning and automatic recognition of qualifications for the European University of the Seas, SEA-EU. He is an author of over 300 scientific reviewed publications.

Twitter:

@HrUnist

PhD student in public policies at Aveiro University and Center for Research in Higher Education Policies (CIPES), both in Portugal. I have experience in public policies and quality assurance at national and international level. My current research project is related with Cross-border Higher Education and the challenges regarding quality assurance policies and processes at European level.

Internationalisation practitioner since 2000, Thomas Blanc de la Carrere (MA, Drs) works at Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences as Quality Advisor Internationalisation. His responsibilities include advisory to study programmes to allow informed choices regarding: vision on internationalisation, quality of international partners, benchmarking, internationalisation aspects of accreditation, choice and implementation of internationalisation activities.

Until 2015 he was a staff member at the European Consortium for Accreditation (ECA) Secretariat and Project Officer Internationalisation in the international policy department of the Accreditation Organisation of the Netherlands and Flanders (NVAO). In this role he has been involved in various ECA project activities regarding transnational quality assurance of joint programmes and the assessment of the quality of internationalisation.