SPEAKERS

Aurora Ailincai joined the Council of Europe (CoE) in 2003 within the Directorate of Education, where she was responsible for inclusive intercultural education. From 2010 to 2020, she was head of the Strategic Partnerships Unit and Deputy Head of Division within the Roma and Travellers Team of the CoE. Ailincai co-ordinated several pan-European programmes focusing on: local governance and active citizenship; promotion of inclusive education; teaching Roma and Traveller history; and the Remembrance of the Roma Holocaust. Since April 2021 she has been the executive director of the Observatory on History Teaching in Europe and head of the History Education and Schools of Political Studies Division, and since 2009 has been a visiting lecturer in several universities including the University of the West Indies and Guyana and the University of French Polynesia. Ms Ailincai has a PhD in educational sciences from the University of Strasbourg and her PhD research focused on school mediation and related challenges in view of existing inequalities and structural barriers in the education system. In February 2020 she successfully completed the Oxford Women’s Leadership Development Programme, in Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.

Ambassador Vesna Batistić Kos is the Head of the Delegation of the European Union to the Council of Europe. She is the primary representative of the EU towards EU Member States present in Strasbourg, representatives in the Parliamentary Assembly, third countries’ missions, and the Council of Europe Development Bank. Prior to her current posting, Ms Batistić Kos served as the Permanent Representative of Croatia to the United Nations in Geneva. She holds a Master of Laws in International Human Rights from the University of Essex in the United Kingdom. Ambassador Vesna Batistić Kos was awarded a PhD in International Human Rights Law from the Faculty of Law in Zagreb, Croatia, in 2011.

Bjørn Berge serves as the Council of Europe’s Deputy Secretary General since 1 March 2021. As the Deputy Secretary General he is involved in a number of key areas of the work of the Organisation, including advising and overseeing the implementation of the Secretary General’s reform agenda, in line with the decisions and priorities of the Committee of Ministers. His priorities include shaping the Programme and Budget, while ensuring that the Organisation’s activities have maximum impact in advancing democracy, human rights and the rule of law. He also oversees the Council of Europe’s staff policy, as well as other key areas of the work of the Organisation. Before taking up his post, Mr Berge was for a period of four years Director General and Secretary to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. Between 2009-2017, he served as Director of the Private Office of the Secretary General and the Deputy Secretary General, helping to prepare, co-ordinate and implement a number of comprehensive reforms of the Organisation. Mr Berge has over thirty years of international professional experience. As a former Norwegian diplomat, he served as International Adviser to the Prime Minister and as Deputy Director of the Foreign Minister’s Cabinet responsible for all matters related to Parliament. He also served as speechwriter to three Norwegian Foreign Ministers. Mr Berge has published several books on a range of issues relating to speech writing and speeches, as well as articles on the Council of Europe’s mandate and work. He was a Fulbright Scholar and holds a M.A. in International Relations from the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, Washington D.C., USA.

Anastasiia Brucha is from Kovel, Ukraine and is the winner of the 2023 HISTOLAB Award. In her project, she surveyed fellow high school students about the challenges of history teaching and possible solutions. She also wrote an accompanying research paper proposing innovative methods of teaching history in schools. Anastasiia is the winner of several regional history competitions organised by the Junior Academy of Science of Ukraine and an international competition on the history of Ukraine.

Assistant Professor in Twentieth-Century European History at Maynooth University, Ireland. He has previously worked as a Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Leicester, Lecturer in European Studies at the Europa Universität Flensburg, Senior Research Associate at the European Centre for Minority Issues, and Teaching Fellow at University College London. He has held Research Fellowships at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies and the Imre Kértesz Kolleg Jena. A Romanian national, he is currently residing in Flensburg, Germany. He is a member of the Scientific Council of the international network ‘National Movements and Intermediary Structures in Europe’ (NISE), and Co-Convenor of the BASEES Study Group for Minority History. He is co-editor of the book series ‘A Modern History of Politics and Violence’ at Bloomsbury.

Holly Case is a historian of modern Europe at Brown University whose work focuses on the relationship between foreign policy, social policy, science, and literature during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is the author of two books, Between States (2009) and The Age of Questions (2018). She has also written on European history, literature, politics and ideas for various magazines and newspapers, including The Guardian, The Chronicle Review, Aeon, The Nation, Dissent, The Times Literary Supplement, Eurozine, and Boston Review.

Arthur Chapman is Professor of History Education at IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, University College London. He was a history teacher for 12 years and has worked in university history education since 2005. He researches history in education, the history of history education, and public history. In history in education his special areas of interest include children’s historical thinking, teaching and learning about historical interpretations and children’s thinking about historical explanation. Knowing History in Schools was published open access by UCL Press in 2021 and History Education and Historical Inquiry is forthcoming from Information Age Publishing in 2023.

Sara Costa Feio was born in the capital of Portugal, Lisbon, but has always lived in various places, mainly throughout the north of Portugal. She now lives on the coast of Cascais. Her interest in humanities led her to study it in high school and now at university, having enrolled this year at the NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities to major in Anthropology. She enjoys reading, spending quality time with friends and volunteering in the tourism sector in Cascais in summer, since she has always been passionate about languages and Portuguese history and geography.

François da Rocha Carneiro is an associate researcher at the Centre for the Research and Study of History and Societies (CREHS) at the University of Artois. He is a specialist in the history of football and Vice-President of the French Association of History and Geography Teachers (APHG). Since 1997, he has been teaching at the Lycée Jean Moulin in Roubaix and is a member of the editorial team of the journal Historiens & Géographes.

Josep Dallerès has dedicated his life to education, writing and politics. He has held various posts: first in municipal administration, then within the Andorran government as Minister of Education, Culture and Youth. As a member of the Andorran Parliament for 15 years, he was a member of the legislative committees for finances, education and culture and the commissions for the OSCE and the Inter-Parliamentary Union. He was twice Síndic General, President of the Parliament, his first term being in 1994 following the adoption of the Constitution. He was a member of the advisory council for the first “Global Report on Parliaments” by the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the United Nations Development Programme in 2010, ambassador to the Council of Europe during the Andorran presidency of the Committee of Ministers in 2013, and a member of the High-Level Reflection Group of the Council of Europe in 2022. He is also an author and poet and has published seven collections of poetry, a novel and several stories.

Alberto de los Ríos Sánchez holds a bachelor’s degree in geography and history with a specialisation in contemporary history as well as a master’s degree in bilingual education (CLIL). He has been a history teacher for over 20 years and has taught in Spanish, English and French. In recent years, he has served as a teacher trainer and has authored history didactic materials for institutions and publishers such as Oxford University Press. In 2018, he taught at the Spanish high school in Paris and later worked at the Board of Education of the Spanish Embassy in France. In this role, he was in charge of developing the curriculum for history and geography in bilingual and bilateral programs such as the Spanish international sections or the Franco-Spanish dual qualification Bachibac.

Alberto de los Ríos Sánchez has pursued studies in political science, and spent a period at the University of Liverpool (UK) taking courses in anthropology, history and comparative literature. He has also been a representative and councillor in the City Council of his hometown Córdoba (Spain) for several years, focusing on cultural management and contributing as a columnist in various media.

Currently residing in Paris, he continues his role as technical advisor at the Spanish Embassy in France, overseeing the teaching of history in Spanish schools and programmes and providing training for history teachers.

Tobias Flessenkemper was appointed Head of the Youth Department of the Council of Europe on 1 September 2023. He previously served as Head of the Belgrade Office of the Council of Europe from 2018 to 2023. His previous postings include the European External Action Service (EEAS) in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Council of the European Union in Brussels, Skopje and Sarajevo, and the OSCE. From 2012 to 13, he was visiting fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). In 2013, he became managing director of the Berlin-based agency elbarlament.org – cultures of democracy. He regularly contributes to research and higher education programmes with a focus on the practice and history of European cooperation. From 1998 to 2001, he was Secretary General of the European Youth Forum. He holds a Magister Artium (M.A.) in Political Science from the University of Cologne, a European Master in International Humanitarian Assistance (E.MA) from the Ruhr-University Bochum, and serves as a member of the Scientific Council of the Centre international de formation européenne (CIFE), Nice.

Timothy Garton Ash is the author of eleven books of political writing or ‘history of the present’ which have charted the transformation of Europe over the last half century. He is Professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford, Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He writes a column on international affairs in the Guardian newspaper which is widely syndicated.

His latest book Homelands: A Personal History of Europe was published in English in Spring 2023, and has appeared or will soon be appearing in at least nineteen other languages.

Well-known TV host and journalist of the European Culture Channel ARTE. She presents programs in both German and French. She has been a bilingual news anchor for the last 25 years, specialising in live arts events on ARTE. She has presented live from the Cannes and Berlin Film Festivals together with music events in prestigious settings such as Scala di Milano, Fenice in Venice, Berliner Philharmonie, Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, Opéra Garnier and Bastille in Paris, Salzburger Festspiele (Austria), Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow or the Savonlinna Festival in Finland. She is also responsible for the development of Educ’ARTE in Germany, an online tool for schools. Annette Gerlach regularly presents symposiums, round tables and award ceremonies for the Council of Europe, the European Parliament and other institutions and associations, both on stage and online. She is also a valued public speaking coach.

Matjaž Gruden is Director of Democratic Participation at the Council of Europe, which includes Council of Europe activities and programmes in the area of education, including education for democratic citizenship, youth cooperation, culture and cultural heritage, landscape and biodiversity. The Directorate also includes the Platform to promote the Protection of Journalism and Safety of Journalists, the Eurimages film fund and the Observatory on History Teaching in Europe. Matjaž Gruden previously served as Director of Policy Planning, Deputy Director of the Private Office of the Secretary General, political adviser and speechwriter for the Secretary General and President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Prior to his career at the Council of Europe, he was a diplomat at the Slovenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, posted in Brussels. He holds a law degree from the Law Faculty of the University of Ljubljana, as well as a post-graduate degree in EU law from the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium.

Graduate and research associate (1992-2005) of the University of Warsaw; fellow at King’s College London (1997-98); visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2001-2) and the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz (2009); research associate at the German Historical Institute in Warsaw (2005-10); member of the team of experts preparing the core exhibition at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw (2008-14); head of the team of experts preparing the permanent exhibition at the Museum of Polish History in Warsaw (2010-13).

Since 2011, Igor Kąkolewski has been a professor at the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn (Poland). Since 2012, he has been the academic project manager for the Polish team of the German-Polish history textbook project “Europa. Nasza historia / Europa – unsere Geschichte”. Since 2018, he has also been the director of the Centre for Historical Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Berlin.

Irena Krasnická is a senior diplomat with the Foreign Service of the Czech Republic. She started her career as the first Director of the Czech Centre in Warsaw (1994-1998). She was a Director of the Press and Information Department of the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs, later serving as Consul General in Mumbai and Istanbul. In the capacity of Director of the Diplomatic Academy of the MFA, she was in charge of the preparation of the Czech Presidency of the Council of the EU. In the years 2015 and 2016, she was appointed a Special Envoy on Migration of the MFA of the Czech Republic and then Special Advisor on Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine at the International Visegrád Fund in Bratislava.

Since 2018, she has been the Head of the OSCE Documentation Centre in Prague, the section of the Office of the Secretary General responsible for institutional memory and outreach and educational programmes. Irena Krasnická studied at Warsaw University in Poland and holds an MA (PhDr.) degree from Charles University in Prague. Before her diplomatic career, she was a senior editor in a publishing house and an associate professor at Charles University.

Alain Lamassoure is currently the Chair of the Governing Board of the Observatory on History Teaching in Europe. He previously served as a Minister Delegate for European Affairs of France and as a Member of the European Parliament. After a career as a senior civil servant in several ministries and in the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the French Republic, Mr Lamassoure held numerous political mandates at the local, regional, national and European levels. He ended his political activities in 2019 to devote his time to teaching European Public Finance at Sciences Po Paris.

Di̇lek Lati̇f is a professor of international relations and an expert on history education. She obtained her PhD from Middle East Technical University on “Peacebuilding in Ethnically Divided Societies – The Case of Bosnia and Herzegovina”. She was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar on the Negotiation, Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding program at California State University. She was also a research fellow at Boston University and the US Institute of Peace (USIP) as part of the Cyprus-America Scholarship Program. Her research interests lie in peace studies, focusing on peacebuilding and reconciliation strategies in divided societies, including history and religious education in Cyprus. Her research on these issues has been published in several international edited volumes and peer-reviewed journals.

Stéphane Lévesque is associate professor and director of the Virtual History and Narratives Laboratory at the University of Ottawa (Canada). A specialist in the teaching and didactics of history, he has written and co-edited over a hundred publications. He is currently an expert analyst in French-language education and scientific knowledge for the Government of Canada.

Liechtenstein assumed the Presidency of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in November 2023. Helen Lorez-Schweig is part of the “Liechtenstein presidency team” and took up her duties as Deputy Permanent Representative in Strasbourg on 1 August 2020. Before that, she was posted to the Liechtenstein Mission to the EU in Brussels from 2016. From 2013, she also served in the Liechtenstein Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in the EEA Coordination Unit and the Embassy in Vienna. She graduated from law school in Vienna and holds an LLM from the University of Zurich. Moreover, she is a trained kindergarten teacher.

Chair of the Scientific Advisory Council of the Observatory on History Teaching in Europe. She is a Founding Member of the Association for Historical Dialogue and Research, the Home for Cooperation and the CypRom Association in Cyprus. She served as a EuroClio Board Policy Officer and Council of Europe expert and trainer. She authored museum education programmes and history teaching materials. Furthermore, she co-ordinated the implementation of the new history curriculum in primary schools of the Republic of Cyprus. A Fellow of the Cambridge Commonwealth Society and a Scholar of the Cyprus Fulbright Commission, she was shortlisted for the Grinnell College Young Innovator for Social Justice Prize. Currently a primary school deputy head teacher, she is also a EuroClio Ambassador. She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge (UK), a Master of Arts in History in Education from the University of London and a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Nottingham (UK).

Alan McCully obtained Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD degrees from Ulster University, Northern Ireland, and a Dip. Ed from the University of Edinburgh. Currently he holds an Honorary Research Fellowship in the UNESCO Centre, School of Education, Ulster University. Previously he was a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education, working, mainly, as a history teacher educator and researcher. Prior to that, he taught history in a high school for twenty years. His research has focused on educational responses to conflict, the interface between history learned in schools and that encountered informally in communities in divided societies, and the teaching of controversial and sensitive issues. He has written widely on these themes and is the author of more than seventy publications, including reports, an educational handbook, articles in scholarly journals and chapters in edited volumes.

PhD in Education Research from the University of Alicante (2011); art history degree and master’s degree in cultural heritage investigation and management from the University of Murcia (Spain). Research stays at the Universities of Naples (Italy) and Oxford (pre-PhD scholarship, UK). At present, developing teaching and research at the University of Murcia in social sciences education, focusing on historical thinking competencies, historical consciousness, gender studies and art history education. Author of more than a hundred papers, books and chapters, he has been also invited to collaborate with institutions such as Roma Trè University (Italy), the University of South Florida (USA), the University of Costa Rica and Harvard University (USA).

Pap Ndiaye has been Ambassador and Permanent Representative of France to the Council of Europe since 1 August 2023. He is a historian and academic, and previously held the posts of French Minister of National Education and Youth as well as Director General of the Public Establishment of the Palais de la Porte Dorée. Since 2013, he has also been a university professor at Sciences Po Paris.
Pap Ndiaye is a highly renowned author of numerous works and articles on the comparative history of minorities (United States and France). He has been a visiting professor at numerous foreign universities and has given lectures all over the world. He is a Knight of the Legion of Honour and of the National Order of Merit as well as Commander of the Order of Academic Palms.

Olena Palko is an Assistant Professor at the Department of History, University of Basel, working on her new research project, “Red Tower of Babel: Soviet Minorities Experiment in Interwar Ukraine”, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Her research interests lie in early Soviet cultural history and the interwar history of Eastern Europe. She was awarded her Ph.D. from the University of East Anglia in 2017 and has held research fellowships at the Humboldt University of Berlin and the University of Basel. She also holds the degree of ‘Candidate of Sciences’ (kandydat nauk) from the Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

Her first book, Making Ukraine Soviet. Literature and Cultural Politics under Lenin and Stalin (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020) received the 2021 prize for the best book in the field of Ukrainian history, politics, language, literature and culture from the American Association for Ukrainian Studies; the 2023 Alec Nove Prize in Russian, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Studies; and the Honourable Mention of the 2022 Omeljan Pritsak Book Prize in Ukrainian Studies.

Joseph Peyrelongue is a student in International Relations at Sciences Po Strasbourg. He is currently in the second year of his master’s degree. He spent an exchange year in Lisbon, leaving with both the Portuguese language and a particular fascination for the Lusophone world. In the next years, he intends to focus on diplomacy and, if possible, on defence issues specifically.

Lauren Pray leads efforts with student representatives in crisis situations and facilitates advocacy efforts internationally. She works on EU-funded projects and organises international networking events attended by EU political representatives and national delegates. Her expertise extends to issues such as academic freedom, access to higher education for minority and refugee students, Belarus, and Ukraine.

Originally from Prague, Lauren began her student activism in university, leading campaigns and organising workshops for Ukraine, students in Iran, and other student initiatives. She was later selected as a delegate for the national representation of university students in the Czech Republic and continued as an analyst at the National Accreditation Bureau for Higher Education in the Czech Republic.

Lauren’s knowledge of foreign affairs, including foreign policy analysis, diplomatic outreach, and public affairs, was developed through her work at the British and American embassies. Currently, she is completing her bachelor’s degree in political science in Prague.

Isabelle Prelipceanu is a recent graduate of SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) in London, where she studied International Relations and Development Studies. She is pursuing a career in global security and her undergraduate dissertation was titled “What is the role of the South China Sea dispute in the Sino-American competition?”. She is highly interested in the impact and influence of the seas on world politics and believes that maritime security will become a more conspicuous topic than it already is.

Villano Qiriazi is the Head of the Education Department of the Organisation since February 2022. He graduated in philology (French language and literature) from the University of Tirana in 1988. He joined the Council of Europe in 1996 and gained a rich experience in the development of Council of Europe policies and instruments related to quality education, democratic citizenship and human rights, digital citizenship education, fraud prevention in education, etc.

Since 2012, he has been responsible for the secretariat of the Intergovernmental Committee for Cooperation in Education and the Standing Conference of European Ministers of Education. He also served for three years as a special advisor to the Director General of the DGII. Throughout these years, he was responsible for the design of several official documents of the Committee of Ministers, the coordination of various publications and the establishment of European networks in the fields of digital citizenship education and ethics, transparency and integrity in higher education.

Ana Radaković is a PhD student and research assistant at the History Department in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Belgrade. She is currently working on her thesis The European Dimension and Development of Historical Consciousness in History Teaching in Serbia (1990-2020). She assists the courses in History Didactics and Initial Teacher Training at the Faculty of Philosophy. She is vice-president of the organisation Education for the 21st Century, a member of the research steering committee for the project Learning History that is not yet History II by the European Association of History Educators (EuroClio), and a researcher for the 90s Museum initiative in Belgrade. She is the author of several scientific articles and a contributor to publications regarding the teaching of sensitive and controversial issues from the past in post-conflict societies, the challenges of teaching history for national minorities in Serbia, and the introduction of historical thinking concepts in history curricula in the Serbian education system. From July 2023, Ana Radaković has been a grantee of the HISTOLAB fellowship.

Jolan Remcsak was born in La Réunion to the son of Hungarian immigrants and is a former student of Sciences Po Rennes and Sciences Po Bordeaux. He has worked for the UN, the Occitanie regional administration and in sponsorship. Following the confines of COVID-19, he chose to work as a history and geography teacher in the village of Kahani, in Mayotte, where there are many challenges to overcome, including poverty, successive waves of violence since 2018 and access to water. Jolan Remcsak is coordinator of his subject and prepares final-year students with varying levels of ability for the specialised written exams and the oral exam. In 2022, he trained three students for the academic eloquence competition. In 2023, he is establishing a partnership with Sciences Po Rennes to prepare students for the entrance exam.

“The local people and their students believe in the future of their region and are attached to France. Its departmentalisation in 2011 means it is now part of the European Union as an outermost region.”

Oleksandra Romantsova studied at the University of Economics and Law KROK in Kyiv, where she obtained a master’s degree in International Economics from the Faculty of International Relations, receiving a second master’s degree in Project Management after a couple of years. At the end of 2021, she obtained a master’s degree in conflict management and mediation.

Since May 2014, Oleksandra has pursued her professional career as a human rights defender at the Centre for Civil Liberties. Her first project involved monitoring and documenting human rights violations and political persecution in Russian-occupied Crimea. From May 2014 until the end of 2016, Oleksandra coordinated mobile observation of human rights violations and war crimes in eastern Ukraine, and has continued monitoring political persecution in occupied Crimea. Since September 2017, Oleksandra has served as Executive Director of the Centre for Civil Liberties, and from February 2022, she has also worked to coordinate the documentation of war crimes and advocacy as part of the global initiative “Tribunal for Putin”. Oleksandra participates in field missions in the Kyiv region.

Steffen Sammler studied history at the universities of Leipzig, Rouen and at the European University Institute in Florence. He obtained his PhD in Modern History from Leipzig University and his habilitation in modern and contemporary history and history education from the Technical University of Braunschweig. After having taught at the universities of Leipzig, Lyon 2 and EMLYON Business School, he is currently a senior researcher at the Georg Eckert Institute (Leibniz Institute for Educational Media). There, he heads the European Forum for Reconciliation and Cooperation in History and Social Sciences Education (EFREC) while also teaching in the Department of History at the Technical University of Braunschweig.

His main research foci are the history of textbook production and the history and present of bi- and multilateral textbook revision. He is committed to strengthening transnational perspectives in history education as a member of the European Network in Universal and Global History (ENIUG), the Making Histories consortium (funded by a European Union Maria Skłodowska-Curie Action), and the working group on global perspectives in history education in the German Standing Conference on History Education (KGD).

Ms. Sarigul is the Deputy Permanent Representative of Türkiye to the Council of Europe since September 2023. She holds a Bachelor’s of Law Degree (L.LB) from Istanbul University, and a Masters of Law Degree (L.LM) from Mcgill University. She practiced trade law as an attorney for five years in İstanbul before joining foreign service.
She started her career at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1998, and served respectively at the Legal Bureau, the Department of Maritime and Aviation, and the Department of Consular Affairs.
Ms. Sarigul also served abroad in different positions at the Turkish Embassies in Washington D.C, Tirana, and Belgrade as well as the Permanent Representation of Türkiye to International Civil Aviation Organization.

Marius Schlageter is a board member of the European Movement Germany and serves as the Spokesperson for the German National Committee for International Youth Work (DNK). He also held the position of Vice-President of the German Federal Youth Council from 2019 to 2023. Marius completed his Bachelor’s degree in political science and Portuguese, studying in Mainz, Lisbon, and Rio de Janeiro. He further pursued a Master’s degree in peace and conflict studies at both Goethe University Frankfurt and the Technical University Darmstadt. With over 15 years of extensive experience in youth work across various levels, Marius is widely recognized as a passionate advocate for non-formal education. In his political roles, he closely collaborates with the Council of Europe to strengthen independent, self-organised youth structures as well as youth participation all over Europe.

Executive Director of EuroClio, the European Association of History Educators based in The Hague (Netherlands). At EuroClio, he has developed and coordinated international projects to enhance history and citizenship education in the Caucasus, the European Union, the Middle East, and the countries of the former Yugoslavia. He has worked as an advisor for the Council of Europe, the Global Centre for Pluralism, the European Commission, KAICIID Dialogue Centre, the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities and the International Baccalaureate. He has co-ordinated the development of the award-winning Historiana platform, which is designed for and with history educators from Europe and beyond. He holds a Master of Science in Social and Organisational Psychology from the University of Leiden (Netherlands).

Marko Šuica is a historian and member of the OHTE Scientific Advisory Council. His academic career as a Serbian medievalist started and advanced at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, where he lectures as professor. He was coordinator of the Georg Eckert Institute project on History Textbook Research and Development in Southeast Europe from 2001 to 2004. Since 2010, he has been engaged as an expert in intergovernmental projects and bilateral programmes of the Council of Europe’s History Teaching Unit. His domain of expertise includes medieval Balkan history, history didactics, curriculum design and assessment. He is active in educational projects and teacher training on the national, regional and international levels. He is the author of several textbooks, additional teaching materials, education standards and history curricula. He is a consultant to the Council of Europe’s anti-discrimination and national minorities programmes and a member of EuroClio – European Association of History Educators and the International Society for History Didactics.

Tamar Taliashvili took up her duties as Permanent Representative of Georgia to the Council of Europe on 7 November 2022. Besides her position as a Member of Parliament, Ms Taliashvili is also the First Deputy Chairperson of the Education and Science Committee of Parliament as well as the Vice-President of the Council of Europe’s Congress of Local and Regional Authorities. From 2017 to 2020, she served as the Vice-President of the National Association of Local Authorities of Georgia, as well as the Chairperson for the Education and Culture Commission of the Tbilisi Municipal Assembly, a position which she held from 2014 to 2017 as well. Ms Taliashvili has also served as the Head of Administration of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and has been a delegate of the American Bar Association.

Marie-Claire Tuite is a Teacher of History and Assistant Principal at Dominican College Muckross Park, a Post-Primary school in Dublin. A published author and provider of Teacher Professional Development, she is currently the President of the History Teachers’ Association of Ireland.

Sven Tuytens studied Communications at the Plantijn Hoge School in Antwerp. Since 1996, he has been working as a journalist and filmmaker for different public television channels in Belgium. Between 2010 and 2021, he lived in Madrid where he worked as a correspondent for the Flemish Public Radio & Television Channel (VRT). His main area of research is the role of the international brigades in the Spanish Civil War. He is a historical advisor for the Centre for Studies of the International Brigades (CEDOBI) in Albacete, Spain. His research has led to various publications and participation in conferences and other events at international level. Among his published books are Lugares de las Brigadas Internacionales en Madrid – Batalla de Brunete (Spain, 2015), Israël Piet Akkerman (Belgium, 2016), Las mamás belgas (edited in Belgium and Spain) and various papers for the Centre for Studies of Social Movements, AMSAB-ISG in Belgium. Since 1997, he has written and directed various historical documentaries for Belgian television. His short documentary Las Mamás belgas (financed by the Province of Valencia in 2016) tells the story of a group of Jewish women from Belgium working as nurses at the Republican Military Hospital of Ontinyent (Valencia).

Student Sciences Po Strasbourg for the past five years. She follows an international curriculum and spent a year of study in Rome and another in Brussels. At the start of her master’s degree, she specialised in children’s rights and the right to education, both in France and at a supranational level. She wishes to continue her professional career in this same field by contributing to the implementation of public policies, thereby educating and defending the adults of tomorrow.