Experts

Holds MA degree in Political Sciences and in European Studies, also studied law at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, from 2006 she works at Institute of European Studies, Jagiellonian University. Between 2009-2011 she has been researcher in the RECON (Reconstituting Democracy in Europe) Integrated Project supported by the European Commission's Sixth Framework Programme. Her academic interests include transformation processes in Central and Eastern Europe, party politics and euroscepticism in the CEE region, as well as Austro-Hungarian heritage in the Central and Southern Europe.

PhD, since 1997 professor in East and Central European Studies and since 2004 Director for the Centre for European Studies, Lund University, Sweden. She specialises in cultural studies and contemporary history focusing on studies of identities, symbols, collective memory and nationalism. She has published 12 edited or single authored books and many articles and book chapters on these topics. She is the editor in chief of Slavica Lundensia and on the advisory board of the journals Baltic Worlds and Bialoruskie Zeszyty Historyczne. Since 2012 she leads an international research network in Memory Studies, financed by EU/COST. Her recent book on Central and Eastern Europe culture is the edited volume: ”Cultural Transformations after Communism: Central and Eastern Europe in Focus” 2011.

Doc. PhDr. Michal Vašečka, PhD (1972) is sociologist by background and focuses his interests on issues of ethnicity, race, antisemitism, and migration studies. As an Associate Professor he operates at the Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts (BISLA) since 2015 and he is a director of Bratislava Policy Institute. He operated at the Faculty of Social Studies of Masaryk University in Brno in 2002-2017 and at the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences of the Comenius University in 2006-2009. As a visiting scholar he operated at the New School University in New York (1996-1997) and at the University of London (1998), in 2008-2009 he lectured at the Georgetown University in Washington, DC, in 2015 at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, in 2016 he was a scholar-in-residence in the ISGAP at Oxford University. Michal Vašečka is a founder of the Center for the Research of Ethnicity and Culture, he served a director of the CVEK (2006-2012). In 1998-2005 he operated at the Slovak think-tank Institute of Public Affairs as a program director on expert analysis of the Slovak transformation process with a focus on national minorities and the state of civil society in Slovakia. He has been a consultant for the World Bank in 2000-2008 and in 2011-2012. Since 2012 Michal Vašečka serves as a representative of the Slovak Republic in the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), human rights body of the Council of Europe. He is also as a vice-chairman of the governmental committee VRAX tackling extremism and racism in Slovakia. Michal Vašečka serves as a non-resident research associate at the European Centre for Minority Issues in Flensburg. In 2018 Michal became a laureate of the Award for special contribution in the field human rights of Minister of Justice of Slovakia.