Ulrich Grothus is president of ACA. Before his retirement in July 2018, he was Deputy Secretary-General and head of the Berlin office of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). He obtained a master’s degree in Political Science at the Freie Universität Berlin in 1976. He then worked as a journalist before joining the International Division of the former West German Rectors Conference in 1982. He worked for DAAD from 1988 through 2018, first as spokesman and head of the president’s office. From 1991, he was consecutively director of all three DAAD program directorates, for the Southern and Northern hemisphere and for supra regional internationalization programs. In between, he served as director of the Paris office from 1998 to 2000 and of the New York office from 2004 to 2008. Grothus speaks five foreign languages and has given three others a try.
Ágnes Sarolta Fazekas is an Associate Professor and a Social Policy Ph.D. fellow at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary. She is the chairperson of the EAIE Expert Community Access and Diversity 2018-2020. She holds a Master’s degree in Social Policy, has acquired an extensive list of additional skills throughout her international professional experiences in the field of inclusive education and disability. She has been working as an external adviser for the Erasmus+ Higher Education Working Group on mobility for people with disabilities since 2015. She has been working as a trainer with the Council of Europe Youth Department on several study sessions, including the ‘Understanding encountering multiple discrimination faced by young people with disabilities in Europe’, ‘All in – creating inclusive and empowering spaces for all’ and she was the course director and one of the trainers of ‘Inclusion Culture – Promoting Leadership in intercultural Understanding within Mixed-ability Groups’ in 2017.
João Pinto is a European citizen born in Lisbon one year after the creation of the Erasmus Programme. Having always been interested in global challenges, João holds an MsC in International Relations from both the University of Coimbra (Portugal) and Sciences Po Bordeaux (France). In these institutions he has researched how federal systems work, having written a thesis on the internal dynamics of the Russian Federation. Currently, João is a PhD candidate studying the global actorness of the European Union, specially towards Brazil and South America. After working in the European Research Council (European Commission), the recently elected President of ESN is particularly interested in the role international students can have in making societies more inclusive and resilient. An avid traveller, João also has a passion for maps, trains, and good food.
Ragnhild Solvi Berg is a senior adviser for the Norwegian Centre for International Cooperation in Higher Education (Diku) and has been working in the agency since 2004. At the time being, she is working at the recently established Norwegian Cooperation Office for Research, Innovation and Education (Norcore), as head of Diku Brussels office. From 2010-1016 Ragnhild was seconded as a national expert to the European Commission, DG Education and Culture, where she worked as a policy officer in the unit for international cooperation and programmes. She holds a master’s degree in Social Anthropology from the University of Bergen.
Renilde Knevels is Policy Advisor Internationalisation at
Flanders Knowledge Area - VLUHR since 2017. In this position she is responsible,
among others, for the implementation of the Action Plan Mobility Brains on the
Move, which is funded by the Flemish Ministry of Education and Training. She
has gathered 18 years of experience in internationalization of education, from
different perspectives. She holds a master’s degree in French and Italian
Literature and Linguistics and a teaching degree from KU Leuven. She speaks 9
languages and is a true international.
Support Centre for Inclusive Higher Education (SIHO)
Valérie Van Hees
Valérie Van Hees is the coordinator of the Support Centre for Inclusive Higher Education (SIHO) in Flanders, Belgium. She has cumulated over 17 years of experience in the field of policy and services for underrepresented groups in higher education. Valérie is a board member in several working groups on diversity and inclusion in Belgium and Europe. She has developed a specific expertise in the area of social inclusion, inclusive mobility and defining and monitoring underrepresented groups. She holds a master’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology Sciences from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium) and is affiliated to Ghent University and Université catholique de Louvain for research project on students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the transition from secondary education into higher education.
Piet Van Hove is Director, since 2005, of the International Relations Office of the University of Antwerp, where he previously studied Law. He is the former chairman of Flanders Knowledge Area, and also a non-executive board member of www.apopo.org, training rats to detect landmines and diseases in vulnerable societies. His interest lies in international education, social responsibility and education without borders.
Head of the section „Information on studying abroad”
German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)
Alexander Haridi
Alexander Haridi is head of the section „Information on studying abroad” at the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in Bonn. His team targets German students at universities and schools, promoting the idea of studying abroad via a national awareness campaign (studieren weltweit – ERLEBE ES!). The core idea is to let students produce media content and advise fellow students as study abroad ambassadors. Alexander has been working with DAAD since 1999 in various positions, e.g. director of DAAD’s Cairo office, section „Information on studying in Germany” and section „Iran, Iraq”. He has graduated from the universities of Bonn and Hamburg and Science Po Paris and has tasted all types of study abroad patterns, taking him to France, the Netherlands, Morocco, Egypt and Iran.
Mr Juha Ketolainen is Director, International Affairs, at the Finnish National Agency for Education. He has a long work experience in the field of international cooperation in higher education & in the management of various programmes and initiatives at institutional, national, Nordic and European levels, including the management of the EU Erasmus programme in Finland. His former employers include e.g. the Erasmus Bureau/European Cultural Foundation in Brussels, Helsinki University of Technology and CIMO (Centre for International Mobility). In his current job at EDUFI, the Finnish National Agency for Education, he is responsible for the coordination of international affairs of EDUFI.
Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, Finland
Tiina Piipponen
Tiina Piipponen works as an International Coordinator and Lecturer at
Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, Finland. Her education brought her
to Keele University, UK, for a Bachelor’s degree in international relations, to
the International Master’s programme in International Relations and European
Studies at the University of Tampere, Finland, and to the University of
Helsinki, where she earned her Master’s degree in intercultural encounters. Her
experience as an international student inspired her interest in mobility and
internationalisation matters for higher education institutions, an area she has
worked in since 2002 with a particular focus on the fields of engineering and
technology. Her work includes study abroad advising as well as managing
mobility programmes and related international cooperation. She also teaches
student groups about intercultural learning and is currently involved in
developing and implementing an intercultural training course for study abroad.
Head of Unit, Directorate General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture
European Commission
Vanessa Debiais-Sainton
Vanessa Debiais-Sainton isHead of the Unit in charge of Higher Education policies and programme at the European Commission’s Directorate General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture. The unit is the lead service for European policies on reform and modernisation of higher education, the new European Universities initiative, automatic mutual recognition of higher education qualifications, the creation of the EU student card, and the higher education strand of Erasmus+. In previous posts in the European Commission, Vanessa has worked in DG Research and Innovation. Before moving to the European Commission in 2006, Vanessa spent eight years working for several petroleum and chemical companies.
