Middle
East
Mediterranean
MEM
Summer Summit
Lugano, Switzerland
The Seminar
15 - 23 August 2019
Overview
The aim of the Seminar is to facilitate discussions and exchange of ideas among young participants considered to be innovators, by providing a favourable environment and neutral guidance for thinking outside the box, finding common grounds, and exploring solutions beyond national boundaries. Challenging questions are posed to provoke bold answers and the quality of debate is ensured by emphasising mutual respect and self-reflection. Learning is believed to be about sharing experiences, active participation and social encounters.
Through a series of plenary lectures, participatory workshops, brainstorming sessions, film screenings, and cultural activities, participants are encouraged to reflect, and discuss topics from the following main areas:
- New Dynamics of the Middle East Mediterranean Region
- Middle East Mediterranean Region: Governance, Administration, and Policy Making
- Middle East Mediterranean Region: Cultural Narratives
The Seminar Programme
The programme consists of a series of plenary session and workshops, thematically separated into three streams:
Course coordinated by Prof Gilles Kepel, Prof Hela Ouardi, and Dr Federica Frediani
Course coordinated by Prof Jean-Patrick Villeneuve in collaboration with the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA)
Course coordinated by Prof Riccardo Bocco, Prof Silvia Naef, and Dr Federica Frediani
Full programme of the Seminar 2019:
The Università della Svizzera Italiana endorses the MEM Summer Summit Code of Conduct, which is applicable to all individuals participating in the MEM Summer Summit.
The Participants
The MEM Summer Summit welcomes 100 young people from 25 countries of the Middle East Mediterranean region.
Seminar Speakers
CAROLINE ABU SA’DA
President, ONG SOS Méditerranée, France
CAROLINE ABU SA’DA
Dr Caroline Abu Sa’da is the general director of SOS MEDITERANNEE in Switzerland and the editorial director of the International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights in Geneva. She has worked on food security and health programmes and has coordinated programs in the field, most notably in the Middle East for Oxfam GB, the United Nations and MSF Switzerland.
Abu Sa’da is the author of ONG palestiniennes et construction étatique, l’expérience de Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC) dans les Territoires occupés palestiniens, 1983- 2005, In the Eyes of Others. How People in Crises Perceive Humanitarian Aid, Le développement, une affaire d’ONG? Associations, Etats et Bailleurs dans le monde arabe, Dilemmas, Challenges, and Ethics of Humanitarian Action, Mc Gill-Queen’s University Press, 2012. She has also written numerous papers, reports and chapters on humanitarian action, NGOs and the Middle East, and has taught political science at New York University, Paris, and Sciences Po, Lille.
EMILIANO ALBANESE
Professor, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland
EMILIANO ALBANESE
Professor Emiliano Albanese is a physician with an FMH specialisation in public health from the University of Milan / London, an MSc in public health nutrition from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, as well as an MD-PhD in clinical neuropsychology.
He is currently full professor in the faculty of Biomedical Sciences at the Università della Svizzera italiana and director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Research and Training in Mental Health in the Department of Psychiatry of the School of Medicine at the University of Geneva.
Albanese has worked at the Italian National Institute of Health (ISS), the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, the National Institute on Aging (NIH, Bethesda, USA) and the MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing (London, UK). Albanese is also active more broadly in the field of both global mental health, particularly in Low and Middle Income Countries, and as an epidemiologist. He has been involved in a number of large cohort studies within which he has designed and conducted advanced analyses, integrating meta-analytical, cross-cultural and life-course epidemiological models.
The focus of his research is cognitive ageing and dementia and their epidemiology from a broad public health and evidence-based perspective.
ANNA ANTONIOS
Programme Officer, Swisspeace, Switzerland
ANNA ANTONIOS
Anna Maria Antonios joined swisspeace in February 2019 as a programme officer in the Mediation Programme where she contributes to the Syria portfolio.
She holds an MA in Advanced Development in Social Work (Erasmus Mundus Programme) from the University of Lincoln in the UK and Aalborg University in Denmark, as well as a BA in Social Work and Psychology from the Lebanese American University in Beirut.
Prior to swisspeace, she worked with War Child Holland (WCH) on the development and implementation of protection and education programmes in emergency situations, specifically in Syria. She also held an educational entrepreneurship coordinator position in the Arab World at the International Labour Organization (ILO).
Antonios has taken on several freelance consultancies with Lapis, UNICEF and Magenta on the design and implementation of training programmes with the aim of building the capacities of civil society organisations in Lebanon and Syria.
FABRICE BALANCHE
Associate Professor, University of Lyon, France
FABRICE BALANCHE
Fabrice Balanche is an associate professor at the University of Lyon. Formerly a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution from 2017 to 2018, Balanche is a political geographer who specialises in the Middle East. From 2003 to 2007 he was the director of the Urban Observatory at the French Institute of the Near East in Beirut. From 2010 to 2015 he was the director of GREMMO (Research Group on the Mediterranean and the Middle East) at the University of Lyon, and a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy from 2015 to 2017.
Balanche received a doctorate in political geography from the University of Tours in 2000 and accreditation to supervise research from the University of Lyon in 2013. He is frequently called on as an expert consultant on Middle East development issues and the Syrian crisis.
He spent ten years in Lebanon and Syria, his main areas of study, since first engaging in fieldwork in the region in 1990. He was one of the first academics and observers who accurately predicted the evolution of the Syrian crisis thanks to his deep knowledge of the Syrian society and his method of analysis. Balanche tries to understand political power by studying territory through a multidisciplinary approach that combines quantitative and qualitative methods, GIS, as well as direct field surveys; mapping is an important part of his research.
His publications include Geopolitics of the Middle East (2014, in French), Atlas of the Near East (2011, in English, French, and Arabic), the book version of his thesis, The Alawite Region and Syrian Power (2006, in French), and many articles on Syria and the Middle East. His latest book, Sectarianism in the Syrian Civil War (in English), was published in February 2018.
SALEH BARAKAT
Art Expert, Gallery Owner and Curator, Gallery Agial/Saleh Barakat, Lebanon
SALEH BARAKAT
Saleh Barakat is a Beirut-based gallerist who specialises in modern and contemporary art from the Arab world. He founded Agial Art Gallery in 1991 and Saleh Barakat Gallery in 2016 where he hosts an extensive programme of exhibitions and events.
He has also curated exhibitions elsewhere, including The Road to Peace (2009) at the Beirut Art Center, retrospectives of Saloua Raouda Choucair (2013), Shafic Abboud (2013), Michel Basbous (2014) and Jean Boghossian (2015) at the Beirut Exhibition Center, as well as Gebran Tarazi (2017) and Afaf Zurayk (2019) at Saleh Barakat Gallery. He co-curated the first national pavilion for Lebanon at the 52nd Venice Biennale with Sandra Dagher, as well as the itinerant exhibition Mediterranean Crossroads, in collaboration with Martina Corgnati and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
He has lectured at Princeton University, the Metropolitan Museum of New York, The British Museum, as well as Christie’s Education in Dubai. He currently lectures at USJ and ALBA. He served on the steering committee of the Arts Center at the American University of Beirut and on the founding committee of the Saradar Collection. He has been a board member of the national Unesco since 2015 and currently serves on the advisory board of the School of Architecture and Design at the Lebanese American University. In 2006, he was nominated as a Yale World Fellow.
SOUHAÏL BELHADJ
Research Associate, Graduate Institute, Switzerland
SOUHAIL BELHADJ
Souhaïl Belhadj is a researcher at the Center on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. He holds a PhD in Political Science at Sciences Po, Paris. His current research concentrates on the transition process in Syria and Tunisia, with a particular focus on local government and politics.
He worked on a three-year project called Tunisia: Security Provision and Local State Authority in a Time of Transition, with the support of the Gerda Henkel Foundation and simultaneously conducting research on economy of violence and armed conflict in Syria.
He is author of the book La Syrie de Bashar al-Asad. Anatomie d’un régime autoritaire (Belin, 2013).
RICCARDO BOCCO
Professor, Graduate Institute, Switzerland
RICCARDO BOCCO
Riccardo Bocco is professor of Political Sociology at the Anthropology and Sociology Department of the IHEID in Geneva. His main geographical area of fieldwork for the last 35 years has been the Near East with a particular focus on Jordan, Israel/Palestine and Lebanon. He has successively worked on issues of development policies and State-building; on humanitarian aid and refugees; and monitoring the impact of international aid on civilian populations.
In addition to his PhD at SciencesPo Paris, he has degrees in cultural anthropology, development studies and Arabic. He has been director of the French Centre for Research on the Contemporary Middle East, based in Amman, and then research director at the Graduate Institute for Development Studies in Geneva. Since 2000, he has led large-scale research projects on international aid in the Near East for United Nations’ agencies.
His present research project titled Violence, memory and cinema explores the role of documentary and fiction films in reconstructing collective identities during armed conflicts (Israel/Palestine) in post-civil wars (Lebanon) and in post-dictatorship contexts (Argentina and Chile).
ADHAM DARAWSHA
Assessor for Cultures and Democratic Participation, Municipality of Palermo, Italy
ADHAM DARAWSHA
Dr Adham Darawsha is a graduate in Medicine from Università degli Studi di Palermo, Italy, and is currently working as a general practitioner. In March 2019, he was appointed deputy mayor for cultures and democratic participation in the local government of Palermo.
He has been involved in various activities as a promoter of both human rights and migrant rights. He has also organised several activities on inter religious dialogue and inter cultural activities.
In October 2013, he was elected as a member of the newly-created Consulta Comunale delle Culture, a political body that represents migrants in Palermo. He was elected president of the Consulta in November of that year and then reelected in 2015.
He has represented Palermo on many an occasion across Europe, most notably in: the German Parliament, the Dutch parliament, the European Parliament, the municipality of Paris, as well as meetings held by the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.
FEDERICA DE ROSSA
Professor and Director, Institute of Law, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland
FEDERICA DE ROSSA
Professor Federica De Rossa Gisimundo earned her law degree from the University of Fribourg, passed the Swiss Bar examination and went on to obtain a Doctorate in Law from the same university, receiving the prix Vigener award in 2010.
Since September 2017, she has been senior assistant professor with a tenure track in Law of Economics within the Faculty of Economics. She also serves as a deputy federal justice at the Federal Supreme Court (Second Public Law Division, Lausanne), and is a lecturer in the Faculty of Law at the University of Lucerne. She has been a member of the Institut für Wirtschaft und Regulierung of the University of Lucerne (Faculty of Law) since 2019.
De Rossa is currently director of the Law Institute (IDUSI). She is on the list of legal experts for the provision of independent external expertise to the Research Services of the European Parliament, a member of the Editorial Board of the Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Finanzmarktrecht (SZW), a committee member of the Swiss section of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ-CH), a member of the examining commission for advocacy in the Canton of Ticino, among many other professional and academic associations. She was a member of the Swiss Authority for regulating the postal market (Federal Postal Services Commission PostCom) until 2014.
GABRIELE DERIGHETTI
Deputy Head MENA Division, Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), Switzerland
GABRIELE DERIGHETTI
Gabriele Derighetti studied at the Swiss Technical University in Zurich (ETH Zürich) and graduated in 1998 as a forestry engineer. He currently holds the position of deputy head in the MENA Division (political Directorate) and is in charge of the North Africa region.
He has been working for the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs since 2004 and has served in Mexico, Bangladesh, Peru and Bern (Balkan/Turkey desk). He spent 4 years as an ICRC delegate in Rwanda, Colombia and the Ivory Coast, working as a polyvalent delegate and later as head of office. He also spent a year in Bolivia working as a forestry engineer on reforestation projects.
ISHAC DIWAN
Professor, PSL – Paris Sciences et Lettres; École normale supérieure, France
ISHAC DIWAN
Ishac Diwan is a visiting professor at SIPA, Columbia University. Diwan received his PhD in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1984. He holds the chair of the Socio-Economy of the Arab World at Paris Sciences et Lettres, a consortium of Parisian universities. He is currently directing the Political Economy programme of the Economic Research Forum, an association of social scientists from the Middle East.
From 1984 to 1987, he taught international finance at New York University’s Business School, after which, from 1987 to 1992, he worked in the Research Complex of the World Bank, in the Middle East department from 1992 to 1996, and then at the World Bank Institute from 1996 to 2002.
He held teaching positions at Harvard Kennedy School from 2011 to 2013, and at Dauphine University in Paris from 2014 to 2015. He was the Kuwait visiting professor at the Belfer Center of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government from 2016 to 2017. He is a frequent consultant with international organisations and governments.
Diwan spent time in Addis Abeba, from 2002 to 2007, and in Accra, from 2007 to 2011, as the World Bank’s country director for Ethiopia and Sudan, and then for Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, and Guinea. He has worked extensively on conflict prevention as well as state building in Palestine, Sudan, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Yemen and Guinea. He has also participated in the Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the Darfur Peace Negotiations, and the Oslo negotiations.
Diwan’s work on international finance, as well as on the Middle East, is widely published and cited. His current research interests focus on the political economy of the Middle East, in addition to broader development issues.
JOLANTA DRZEWIECKA
Professor, Institute for Public Communication, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland
JOLANTA DRZEWIECKA
Jolanta Drzewiecka (PhD, Arizona State University, USA) researches discursive constructions of cultural, racial, and national differences and identities to advance a critical intercultural communication framework. She focuses on two areas: immigrant identity and public memories. In the first, she examines how immigrant identities are negotiated and represented in personal and media narratives. Here, she develops a theory as to how immigrants are racially incorporated through intercultural translation in ways that sustain structures of inequality. The latter area explores how public memories are shaped by and shape nationalism. She is particularly interested in how memories of ethnic violence are discursively disabled and blocked and victims rendered unrecognisable to protect fictions of the national self. Here, she combines discourse and rhetorical analyses with psychoanalytic theories.
She has published her research in journals such Communication Theory, Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, Media Studies in Communication, and Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies.
Drzewiecka recently moved to Switzerland after teaching and conducting research at Washington State University, USA. She is academic director of the Master of Advanced Studies in Intercultural Communication at USI, and academic director of the European Masters of Intercultural Communication.
RABIH EL CHAMMAY
Psychiatrist, Saint Joseph University, Lebanon
RABIH EL CHAMMAY
Dr Rabih El Chammay is a member of the Department of Psychiatry at Saint Joseph University in Beirut, Lebanon, where he teaches at the Faculty of Medicine. He is currently the head of the National Mental Health Programme at the Ministry of Public Health in Lebanon.
Upon founding the programme he led its development and is currently overseeing the implementation of the first National Mental Health and Substance Use Strategy 2015-2020, with the aim of reforming the Mental Health System for individuals in Lebanon, including Syrian and Palestinian refugees, and restructuring community-based mental health services that are in line with human rights.
For the past ten years he has been working on strengthening the health system in the MENA region, as well as internationally, in conjunction with various agencies such as WHO, UNHCR, UNICEF, IMC and many other NGOs, including International Medical Corps.
MARTA FADDA
Postdoctoral Researcher, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland
MARTA FADDA
Marta Fadda is a Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer at the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences of the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI). Her main research interests are at the intersection of medical ethics, health communication, and health technologies. She conducted extensive research on vaccination hesitancy, the ethics of precision medicine, participant-driven research and genomic privacy using a mixed-method approach. Part of her background is in Arabic and anthropology of the Middle East (SOAS, University of London), which led her to conduct a study on health literacy in Lebanon with the American University of Beirut (AUB). She teaches qualitative methods in public health and is responsible for the medical ethics module of the master in biomedicine at USI.
FEDERICA FREDIANI
Ph.D. Senior Researcher, Educational Program Manager MEM Freethinking Platform, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland
FEDERICA FREDIANI
Federica Frediani obtained a PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Siena in 2005. She is presently researcher, lecturer and educational programme manager of the MEM Freethinking Platform at the Università della Svizzera italiana and she has scientific collaborations with the Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Bergamo. Her research is primarily focused on the cultural representations and productions of the Mediterranean as well as its intercultural and political dynamics.
She is author of Uscire. La scrittura di viaggio delle donne al femminile: dai paradigmi mitici alle immagini orientaliste (Diabasis 2007) and editor of The Mediterranean Cities between Myth and Reality (Nerbini 2014). She is co-author with Fernanda Gallo of Ethos repubblicano e Pensiero meridiano (Diabasis, 2011).
SARA GRECO
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Communication Sciences, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland
SARA GRECO
Sara Greco has been senior assistant professor of argumentation at USI since 2014. She has worked at the University of Neuchâtel, University College London and at the University of Surrey in the UK. Her research activities revolve around collaborative argumentation. Since 2018, Greco has been leader of the empirical working group at the European Network for Argumentation and Public Policy Analysis, in which she coordinates a group of about fifty scholars from a wide variety of countries.
Greco proposes an interpretation of argumentation, which goes by the name of ‘dialogue’, as a way to manage and resolve conflicts. She works on dispute mediation and other contexts of formal and informal dispute resolution and conflict prevention. She is also interested in how argumentative dialogue is present in other domains such as the family and in education, and how teachers and other third parties can design dialogue spaces in which other participants are free to bring up topics for discussion, as well as bring forward arguments and standpoints in social and inner argumentation.
Not only does Greco consider interpersonal conflict, but also societal disputes and public discourse controversies such as equal opportunities and migration. Her approach and methods are mainly empirical, drawing from argumentation studies, discourse analysis and linguistics. A key feature of her work is collaborating with colleagues in argumentation and other disciplines, which make several of her publications interdisciplinary.
ABIR HAJ IBRAHIM
Co-Founder and Board Member, Modaberoon Network, Syria
ABIR HAJ IBRAHIM
Abir Haj Ibrahim is one of the two co-founders of Mobaderoon Network, a civil institution with more than 4000 social activists, which works to provide civil society organisations in the Arab region with a range of consulting and training services.
Prior to founding the network, Haj Ibrahim was involved in voluntary work, whilst also working in the oil and gas sector, which she left once Mobaderoon gained momentum. She participated in developing the Procurement & Contracts department in partnership with TOTAL E&P and was nominated as High Potential employee for two years. She was subsequently selected as a project manager with the British Council where she was able to play a major role in putting the Active Citizens programme into action.
During the Syrian conflict, Haj Ibrahim’s new area of concern involved conflict resolution as a response to the local needs in Syria. She became a peace building facilitator in a widespread youth network and had the opportunity to build on her skills in mediation in several ways. She trained, planned and worked with peace actors who had a clear common vision in mind. In protecting sectarianism from spreading across the country, she was able to lead the network into a synergistic process and gathered members from different backgrounds, cultures and ethnic groups into one network, whose focus was on common values, as well as managing the worst time of isolation in the surrounding areas.
Working with people has given Haj Ibrahim the ability and the dedication to allow the network to develop and function in a more systematic way, whilst providing proper protection for the flexibility of the network.
In 2014, Haj Ibrahim was one of the co-founders who won the Livia Foundation Prize for her work in peace during the conflict.
MARC-ANDRÉ HALIDMANN
Research Associate, University of Bern, Switzerland
MARC-ANDRÉ HALIDMANN
Dr Marc-André Haldimann graduated as a Gallo-Roman archaeologist from the University of Geneva in 1986. Upon being nominated head curator of the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire of Geneva in 2003, he obtained his PhD from the University of Lausanne in 2004. In this position he co-curated two major Middle-East exhibitions: Gaza à la Croisée des civilisations in 2007 and Fascination du Liban in 2012.
Since 2012 he has been associated researcher at the University of Bern. He became a federal expert for Mediterranean archaeology in 2012, a UNESCO expert for Syria in 2014, and in the same year a member of the ICOM International Observatory for monitoring illicit cultural goods trafficking.
As a senior archaeologist at the State of Geneva Archaeological Service and at the State of Valais Archaeological Service, he has since directed 17 archaeological excavations in Switzerland. He also led excavations in Jordan from 1988 to 1990 on behalf of the Max van Berchem Foundation, and was a member of the Swiss archaeological Institute of Cairo from 2003 to 2008.
He has written several articles and books and currently works for the Sate of Geneva, the Musée cantonal d’Histoire du Valais, and has also been working for a long-term Museum project in Gaza.
MARLEN HEIDE
Ph.D. Student, Institute for Public Communication, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland
MARLEN HEIDE
Marlen Heide is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Public Communication (ICP) and is carrying out research on national security secrecy. Prior to joining USI, she worked at the Transparency International Secretariat and the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She conducted survey research in Tbilisi, Georgia and was a consultant for the German Armed Forces. She studied at Erfurt University, Bogaziçi University Istanbul and holds an MA in War Studies from King’s College, London.
JEAN-JACQUES HIBLE
Policy Analyst, Public Governance Directorate, OECD, Switzerland
Jean-Jacques
Jean-Jacques Hible holds a bilingual master’s degree in European and International Law from Paris Nanterre University and a master’s degree in Public International Law from Complutense University, Madrid.
He is a policy analyst at the OECD and is currently working with the MENA-OECD Governance Programme, which is a strategic partnership between Middle East and North Africa and OECD countries to share knowledge and expertise on good governance reforms.
In this framework, he works with country and regional projects on youth engagement in public life, rule of law and anti-corruption reforms, as well as institutional capacity building for the provision of basic public services in post-conflict settings. He has also worked on access to justice reforms in the OECD Public Governance Directorate with a specific user-centred approach (citizens and businesses) in OECD member and non-member countries.
Prior to the OECD, Hible worked in the regional office for South America of the United Nations High Commissionner for Human Rights, and UNESCO. He has published several articles on judicial enforcement of indigenous people’s rights.
JULIAN HOTTINGER
Expert and Mediator, Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), Switzerland
JULIAN HOTTINGER
Julian Thomas Hottinger is a senior mediator attached to the Human Security Division (HSD) of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA).
Upon graduating from the University of Lausanne, he obtained his PhD in Political Science and specialised as an international conflict mediator at the Canadian International Institute for Applied Negotiations (CIIAN) in Ottawa, and at the Lester Pearson Peace Keeping Centre in Canada.
Hottinger has also worked as a member of the International Standing Hostage Negotiation Team (ISHNT) and has collaborated in various activities within this area over the last 18 years, mainly within the private sector.
Since January 2012, Hottinger has been working on various Somali issues, including the drafting of the Somali Constitution, while helping with the implementation of the Sudanese North/South CPA and the preparation of the January 2011 referendum.
In 2013, Hottinger worked on various issues linked to trying to establish ceasefire in Syria at JSR Lakhdar Brahimi’s UN Office. In February 2016, Hottinger contributed to the cessation of hostilities in the country while continuing to work on ceasefire issues within the Office of the Special Envoy for Syria, Mr Staffan de Mistura.
In recent years his work has involved establishing processes and designing models for future negotiations, while helping parties prepare for future talks, mainly in Mali, Colombia and the Republic of the Union of Myanmar.
To this day, Hottinger is mainly involved in advising various processes in Colombia, Mozambique, Myanmar and Ukraine in the military/security area, especially as far as ceasefires and DDR and SSR issues are concerned.
He also contributes as one of the trainers in the United Nations Ceasefire Mediation Course (UNCMC) in Oslo and within the Peace Mediation Course (PMC) organised by the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs in Switzerland.
TOMASZ JANOWSKI
Professor and Head of Department of Applied Informatics in Management, Gdańsk University of Technology, Poland; Professor, Danube University Krems, Krems, Austria
TOMASZ JANOWSKI
Tomasz Janowski is the head of the department of Applied Informatics in Management at the Faculty of Economics and Management, Gdańsk University of Technology, Poland. He is an invited professor at Danube University Krems, Austria, and co-editor-in-chief of Government Information Quarterly, Elsevier.
His academic qualifications include Habilitation in Management Sciences (equivalent) from Gdańsk University of Technology, Poland, a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Warwick, UK, and an MSc in Mathematics from the University of Gdańsk, Poland.
Previously, he was invited professor at Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland, as well as invited professor at University of Minho, Portugal, and research fellow, senior research fellow and head at the United Nations University entities in Macao and Portugal, where he founded and directed a Digital Government programme. The programme conducted research, training, projects and other initiatives in 61 countries around the world.
One such initiative was the International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV), which he founded in 2007 and coordinated 10 editions thereof in Macao, Cairo, Bogotá, Beijing, Tallinn, Albany, Seoul, Guimarães, Montevideo and New Delhi.
He has also authored and co-authored over 250 publications in the field of Digital Government and Development Informatics, including technical and policy reports prepared for organisations such as CTO, European Commission, IDRC, ITU, Macao Foundation, Microsoft, OSCE, UNDP, UNESCO and the World Bank, as well as for governments in countries in Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific.
ALEXANDRE KAZEROUNI
Associate Professor, Ecole Normale Supérieure, France
ALEXANDRE KAZEROUNI
Alexandre Kazerouni, PhD, is a political scientist and a specialist in cultural objects in and from the contemporary Muslim world, with a focus on the neighbouring countries of the Persian Gulf.
He is currently an associate professor in the department of geography at École normale supérieure, Paris, a member of its Middle-East Mediterranean Chair, and a researcher at Centre Jean Pépin (CNRS).
He is the author of Le ‘Miroir des cheikhs : musée et politique dans les principautés du golfe Persique’ (The Mirror of the Sheikhs: Museum and Politics in the Principalities of the Persian Gulf), published in 2017 at Presses universitaires de France, where he puts new museum projects into a historical, geographical and sociological perspective, such as Louvre Abu Dhabi or the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, which goes by the name of ‘mirror-museums’.
GILLES KEPEL
Professor, PLS Paris Sciences et Lettres-École normale supérieure, France; Adjunct Professor and Scientific director of the Middle East Mediterranean Freethinking Platform, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland
GILLES KEPEL
Professor Gilles Kepel is a French political scientist and arabist. He specialises in the contemporary Middle East and Muslims in the West. He is the director of the Middle East and Mediterranean Chair at PSL Paris Sciences et Lettres Research University, École Normale Supérieure.
Kepel holds degrees in Arabic, English, and Philosophy, as well as a PhD in Sociology and an HDR (Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches) in Political Science. Upon receiving his PhD in 1983, he has since specialised in contemporary islamist movements. He has been a visiting professor at New York University and Columbia University and was elected as a senior fellow at the Institut Universitaire de France from 2010 to 2015.
Kepel created and was general editor of the series Proche Orient at Presses Universitaires de France, which was comprised of 23 volumes, from 2004 to 2017.
His books, including The Revenge of God and Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, have been translated into a dozen languages. He recently published Terror in France: The Rise of Jihad in the West (Princeton U. Press, 2017). His latest book, Sortir du Chaos: Les crises en Méditerranée et au Moyen-Orient (Gallimard), published in October 2018, was critically acclaimed and sold 30,000 copies in the first 3 months.
FYRAS MAWAZINI
Country Director for Morocco and Tunisia, Drosos Foundation, Switzerland
FYRAS MAWAZINI
Mr Fyras Mawazini graduated from the Institut Universitaire d’Etudes du Développement (IUED) in Geneva. He has more than 15 years’ experience as head of mission for several international NGOs in various countries in Africa and the Middle East. He has been the director of the Drosos Foundation office in Casablanca since 2016.
He joined the Foundation in 2011 and was the country director for Egypt until 2014, after which, in 2015, he was responsible for developing the Foundation’s programmes in Tunisia. He is currently in charge of Morocco and Tunisia and closely follows the transformation of the civil societies through an important network of almost 50 partners in both countries. He participates actively in their dynamism and their role as actors of change by accompanying and supporting them with the implementation of development programmes that address social challenges.
DIMA MOHAMMED
Senior Researcher, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal
DIMA MOHAMMED
Dima Mohammed is a senior researcher of argumentation at the Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas (FCSH), Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal. She is also adjunct professor at the Department of Communication Sciences where she teaches argumentation, rhetoric and philosophy of communication.
She is an acting member of several academic associations and initiatives, including the Board of Directors of the Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking (AILACT) and the Steering Committee of the European Conference on Argumentation.
She obtained her PhD in Argumentation Theory from the University of Amsterdam and has taught argumentation and persuasion in several universities in the Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland, Palestine and Canada.
As a researcher, her main interest lies in political argumentation. Her research focuses on the complexities of public political arguments and the challenges these pose. She is interested in questions related to the strategic shape and the rationality of argumentative exchanges, as well as the links between argumentative and political dimensions in argumentative practice.
She has served as a member of programme and organising committees of various argumentation conferences, including the 1st European Conference on Argumentation (ECA) in Lisbon in 2015 and the 11th Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation (OSSA) conference in 2016. She has also been a prize jury member for the J. Anthony Blair Prize and the F.H. van Eemeren Prize.
Her published work covers cases from a wide variety of contexts, from the highly formal British and European parliaments to the more informal of social media (twitter, facebook, among others), dealing with topics connected to Europe and the USA, as well as the Arab Spring.
EL MOUHOUB MOUHOUD
Professor, University of Paris Dauphine PSL, France
EL MOUHOUB MOUHOUD
El Mouhoub Mouhoud is professor of Economics at the University of Paris Dauphine PSL where he teaches international economics. He is the director of the master’s in International Affairs and the founding director of the International research group Développement des Recherches Économiques Euroméditerranéennes (DREEM) of the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).
Mouhoud’s research centres on globalisation, European integration, FDI, international migration and political economy of countries in the Middle East and North Africa. His current focus is on the role of migration policies in development, most notably on ways to leverage brain drain and remittances for development. As well as being a research fellow of the Economic Research Forum, he is a regular consultant for the OECD (Division of International Migration), the World Bank, UNFPA and UNCATD with regard to the aforementioned topics.
He has conducted several surveys among migrants and communities from France, Morocco, Algeria and Lebanon and has strong publication records in various journals, including: The Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Economic Modelling, The Journal of Development Studies, World Economic Review, Foresight, and The International Review of Applied Economics.
He has published many books, including L’immigration en France. Mythes et Réalité. (Fayard), in 2017.
SILVIA NAEF
Professor, Université de Genève, Switzerland
SILVIA NAEF
Silvia Naef has been a full professor at the Arabic Studies Section of the University of Geneva since 2006, where she obtained her PhD in 1993 with a thesis on modern art in the Arab world, published in 1996. She is the director of the master’s program in Middle Eastern Studies (MAMO) at the Global Studies Institute of the University of Geneva. She has taught in Tübingen and Basel, and in 2000 she became an associate professor at the University of Geneva.
As a postdoctoral scholar, she worked on Shia in Iraq and Lebanon and their relation to left-wing ideologies in Tübingen and Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, from 1993 to 1996, and then in Basel, Switzerland, from 1996 to 2000, receiving grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Janggen-Pöhn Foundation, St. Gallen, Switzerland.
She has been a visiting professor at the following institutions: the University of Toronto from 2007 to 2009; the University of Sassari, Italy, in 2012; the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, in 2016; and Université St. Joseph, Beirut, in 2017. She was also a research fellow in Princeton in 2003 and in Göttingen in 2013.
Her current research focuses on modern art, visual representations and images in the Arab and Islamic world. She also has an interest in gender issues. She was the leading researcher of the four-year Sinergia research project from 2013 to 2017, Other Modernities: Patrimony and Practices of Visual Expression Outside the West, which was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, in collaboration with professsor Irene Maffi from the University of Lausanne and professor Wendy Shaw from Free University Berlin.
IBRAHIM OLABI
Executive Director and Founder, Syrian Legal Development Programme, Syria
IBRAHIM OLABI
Ibrahim Olabi is the founder and director of the Syrian Legal Development Programme, an organisation addressing international law matters in the Syrian conflict. Olabi trained more than 500 Syrians inside Syria and in neighbouring countries on matters of international humanitarianism, human rights and criminal law in relation to the Syrian conflict. He regularly engages with policy makers in Geneva, London and Brussels on human rights matters in Syria.
He completed his LLM (Master of Laws) in Security and International Law and his LLB at the University of Manchester, where he was awarded both Undergraduate and Postgraduate Student of the Year. During his time at university he was the President of the Arab Society and was further elected as national union of students delegate to represent his university.
In 2017, he worked as a consultant for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the legality of local agreements that led to population transfer in Syria. He is also a consultant for the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute. In 2018, Olabi passed his UK bar exams and joined Guernica 37, International Justice Chambers, as a barrister.
Olabi has chaired and spoken at many events organised by Chatham House, as well as universities and think tanks. He has also met with previous heads of state, including president Holland, and has received personal invitations from the heads of state of the UK and Germany to attend Syria-related conferences.
JUANITA OLAYA
Lawyer, Independent Expert; Chair, UNCAC Coalition, Germany
JUANITA OLAYA
Dr Juanita Olaya Garcia has over 25 years of experience and a proven track record in the areas of good governance, sustainability, human rights and anti-corruption across the world, that have made her a renowned expert in the field. Her speciality lies at the intersection between law and society.
She is currently chair of the UNCAC Coalition, a member of the International Expert Panel of OGP’s Independent Review Mechanism, and a member of the International Review Panel of the Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative (StAR). Olaya is a Colombian/German lawyer (Andes, 1991) with master’s degrees in Economics (Andes, 1994) and Public Administration (Harvard, KSG, 1998) and a Doctorate (Dr iur) in International Public Economic Law (Bonn, 2010).
Having worked with different national and international institutions, as well as the public sector, academia and civil society, including Transparency International, Juanita launched her independent private practice in 2008, based in Berlin, Germany, where she focuses on empirical research and expert advice in the areas of governance, sustainability and integrity. This involves working hands-on, helping partners with the implementation of anti-corruption and human rights standards, supporting organisational development efforts, undertaking stakeholder engagement and pursuing both field- and policy- development work.
Olaya has worked with numerous international and national partners across the globe, including as senior advisor to the UNDP-ACIAC Project in the Arab Region. She has been a council member at the World Economic Forum and Benchmarking Progress in Society Global Council, and has also participated in boards of diverse national organisations.
HELA OUARDI
Professor, Université de Tunis, Tunisia
HELA OUARDI
Hela Ouardi is a university professor in Tunis, where she teaches French Literature and civilisation. She is also an associate member of the Laboratoire d’études sur les monothéismes (Laboratory of Studies on Religious Monotheisms) of the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris.
In addition to her numerous works in the field of literary criticism and history of ideas, she is interested in islamology. She coordinated the new critical edition of the Chrestomathie arabe (Arabic chrestomathy) by Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacy (P.U.F., 2008) and she published an article in 2012 entitled De l’autorité en islam (On Authority in Islam), in the French Review, Le Débat, Gallimard.
She devotes herself particularly to the study of the origins of Islam. She is the author of the book Les derniers jours de Muhammad (The Last Days of Muhammad), Albin Michel, 2016, and La Déchirure (The Ripping), Albin Michel, 2019, which is the first volume of the series, Les Califes maudits (The Accursed Caliphs).
FRANCESCA PIANA
Historian, Université de Genève, Switzerland
FRANCESCA PIANA
Francesca Piana is a historian of European and international history. She holds a PhD in International History and Politics from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. Her research and teaching encompass internationalism, humanitarian aid and missions, migration, and women/gender issues in 20th century Europe through a transnational, comparative and interdisciplinary perspective.
From 2016 to 2017, she was a postdoctoral fellow in women’s and gender history at Binghamton University, New York, and the Journal of Women’s History. From 2013 to 2016, she was a postdoctoral fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation at Columbia University, the University of Michigan, and Birkbeck College.
Piana is completing her first monograph entitled ‘Humanitarianism in Practice. Europe and its Displaced Populations after World War I’. She is also co-editing alongside Jo Laycock the volume, ‘Aid to Armenia. Humanitarian Aid, Relief, and Interventions from 1890s to Present’.
GIOVANNI PICA
Professor, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland
GIOVANNI PICA
Giovanni Pica has been professor of economics at the Istituto di Economia Politica of the Università della Svizzera italiana since 2018. After completing his PhD at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, he held positions at the University of Southampton, the University of Salerno and the University of Milan. He is also affiliated with Centro Studi Luca D’Agliano, CSEF, Centro Baffi and fRDB.
His research concentrates on the labour market effects of financial market imperfections, globalisation and labour market institutions. He is currently working on the role of internal capital and labour markets within organisations, the labour market impact of the financial crisis, the link between social mobility and macroeconomic outcomes, as well as occupational licensing.
His work has been published, among other journals, in the Journal of Financial Economics, the Economic Journal, the Journal of European Economic Association and the Journal of International Economics.
FRANCIS PICCAND
Head, Think-Tank Middle East and North Africa, Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), Switzerland
FRANCIS PICCAND
Dr Francis Piccand is responsible for the Middle East and North Africa think tank at the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. He is also professor of political science at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and professor associate at the Webster University, Geneva. Prior to that, he was the director of the Center for Political Analysis in Ottawa, Canada, and from 1983 to 1985, he worked in Lebanon and in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as a delegate for the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Piccand is a member of the International Directory of Middle East Scholars at Columbia University, New York. He is also a member of the Scientific Counsel at the Geneva School of Governance, as well as a founding member of the Geneva Center for Security and Development in the Middle East.
Some of his publications include: The Syrian Policy in the Middle East: 20 Years of the Assad Doctrine (1970 – 1990); From Tribe to Nation in Black Africa; Islam and International Relations: Towards a Clash of Civilizations?; Bachar al Assad from Syria: End of Regime or New Start?; and The Arab Spring: Challenges and Perspectives for Switzerland.
NADIA REDISSI
Training manager, Maison de l’Image, Tunisia
NADIA REDISSI
Nadia Redissi has a master’s degree in Management and Strategy and a bachelor’s degree in Management Sciences. She has experience in human resources management, particularly in recruitment.
After joining a private recruitment company, she set up her own consulting company where she mainly recruited directly or by means of a traditional approach. She is also involved in candidate coaching. In addition, she held the position of office manager in a training centre where she managed the ‘Artistic and Artisanal’ subsidiary and collaborated on the launch of a new subsidiary.
Since 2017, she has been part of the Maison de l’Image team, a private cultural centre dedicated to contemporary visual art, where she is in charge of training, particularly with regard to the Vision Solidaire project, and participates in the implementation of the company’s various projects.
ANDREA ROCCI
Dean and Professor, Faculty of Communication Sciences, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland
ANDREA ROCCI
Andrea Rocci is full professor and director of the Institute of Argumentation, Linguistics and Semiotics at the Università della Svizzera italiana (Lugano). He is also director of the master’s programme in Financial Communication offered jointly by the faculties of Economics and Communication Sciences at the same university. He has published extensively in the fields of argumentation, pragmatics, semantics and discourse analysis.
He is co-author (with Marcel Danesi) of a textbook on Global linguistics. He has directed several projects on argumentation in the contexts of journalism, corporate communication and financial communication funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).
IBRAHIM SAÏD
Research Associate, Centre of Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP); Co-founder, Think-Ahead, Switzerland
IBRAHIM SAÏD
Dr Ibrahim Saïd is a research associate at the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP) in Geneva and co-founder of Think Ahead, a non-profit research organisation that specialises in the analysis of humanitarian and development policies and practices.
He is currently interested in the politics of translation and assemblage with a particular interest in examining policy responses to violent extremism from a critical perspective. Saïd received his PhD in Anthropology and Sociology of Development from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, and completed his master’s in the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at the University of Oxford, for which he was the recipient of the Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship for Foreign Students and the Saïd Foundation Scholarship, respectively. In his doctoral research, he critically examined development and human rights practices as they unfold in a settler colonial context with a focus on Israel-Palestine.
Saïd has wide-ranging professional and research-based experience with interest across the fields of legal and political anthropology, economic anthropology, anthropology of policy, and colonial governmentality, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa region.
Saïd has taught at the Graduate Institute in both the department of Anthropology and Sociology of Development and the interdisciplinary master’s of International Affairs and Development. He also worked at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), exploring the nexus between the social and solidarity economy and sustainable development.
SAMIR
Filmmaker, Producer, Author, and Film Director, Switzerland
SAMIR
Samir is a filmmaker, producer, author and director. After training as a cameraman he began to produce his own films, which drew attention at various festivals with their innovative style approach.
Various series and televised films have also been produced for German TV broadcasters under his direction. To this day, his list of works include more than 40 films. As a producer, Samir is in charge of numerous feature and documentary film projects at Dschoint Ventschr.
MARK THATCHER
Professor, Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali (LUISS) Guido Carli, Rome, Italy
MARK THATCHER
Mark Thatcher is professor of Politics, Department of Political Science, LUISS Guido Carli University, Rome and professor of Comparative and International Politics, Department of Government, London School of Economics. He has also taught in Paris and Oxford and been a fellow at the European University Institute, Florence. He studied at Oxford and also qualified as a Barrister.
His research expertise lies in comparative public policy and regulation in Europe, and specifically; regulation of network industries; independent regulatory agencies; EU policy making and regulation; regulation of sovereign wealth fund investment; heritage policy and regulation of historic buildings.
His current projects include: comparing policies to preserve cultural heritage; the EU and its political identity; Western policies towards sovereign wealth fund investments. Recent publications include: editor (with Sabine Saurugger), ‘Constructing the EU’s political identity’ Comparative European Politics 17(4), 2019; editor, ‘The state and historic buildings’, special issue Nations and Nationalism 24 (1), 2018; ‘European Commission merger control: Combining competition and the creation of larger European firms’, European Journal of Political Research 53(3) (2014): 443-464; Resilient Liberalism in Europe’s Political Economy (co-edited with V Schmidt; Cambridge University Press, 2013).
YVES UBELMANN
President and Co-founder, Iconem, France
YVES UBELMANN
Yves Ubelmann is president and co-founder of Iconem, which specialises in the 3D digitisation of endangered cultural heritage sites. After graduating from the École Nationale Supérieure d’architecture de Versailles in 2006, Ubelmann worked as an architect in Syria and Afghanistan, where he surveyed and interpreted archaeological sites. This experience inspired him to develop a high-tech, photogrammetric approach to survey archaeological sites.
In 2013, he co-founded Iconem, which is currently active in 30 countries, to further conservation of cultural heritage threatened by looting, urbanisation, mass tourism, armed conflict, and climate change. Its expert team travels the globe, combining the largescale scanning capacity of drones and the photorealistic quality of 3D to create digital replicas of our most treasured places. Iconem works with international organisations, national governments, local authorities, and world class museums such as UNESCO, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, the Sultanate of Oman, the City of Paris, and the Louvre.
LUCA URECH
Swiss Career Diplomat and Syria Programme Manager, Human Security Division, Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), Switzerland
LUCA URECH
Luca Urech is a Swiss career diplomat and the Syria programme manager at the Human Security Division of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland. He holds an MA in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.
Since 2018, he has been managing the Swiss peace promotion efforts in relation to the conflict in Syria. Prior to his current post, Urech held positions in the multilateral, human rights, and security policy field, and was involved in bilateral relations in the MENA region.
LIISA VÄLIKANGAS
Professor, Hanken School of Economics, Finland
LIISA VÄLIKANGAS
Professor Liisa Välikangas teaches innovation management at Aalto University and Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki, Finland.
She was previously affiliated with Stanford University, London Business School and Keio University in Japan. She has also worked for Strategos, a strategic management consulting firm, and SRI International in California’s Silicon Valley.
She is senior editor of Management and Organization Review, a journal focused on China and emerging markets, published by Cambridge University Press. Her current research projects focus on the business and societal implications of digital technologies including blockchain and how to tackle worldwide issues.
Välikangas has consulted and worked with many small and large companies around the world and served on the board of the Finnish National Innovation Agency, Tekes.
She is known for her publications in strategic renewal and resilience, including ‘The Resilient Organization’, (McGraw-Hill, 2010) and ‘The Quest for Resilience’, (Harvard Business Review, 2003). She is also known for her publication on innovation management, ‘Strategic Innovation’, (Pearson/Financial Times Press, 2015).
ELINE VAN DER VLIST
Artistic Director, Darat al Funun-The Khalid Shoman Foundation, Jordan
ELINE VAN DER VLIST
Eline van der Vlist has been the artistic director at Darat al Funun-The Khalid Shoman Foundation in Amman since 2012. Previously, she worked as an independent curator and researcher. Her role at Darat al Funun covers exhibitions, publications, talks, as well as its fellowship and residency programmes. In 2013, she worked with Adriano Pedrosa, curator of Darat al Funun’s 25th anniversary exhibition HIWAR | Conversations in Amman.
She is co-editor of the book Arab Art Histories – The Khalid Shoman Collection (2013). In 2014, she curated Emily Jacir’s first survey show, for which she edited the publication, A star as far as the eye can see and as near as my eye is to me. In 2017, she curated the first comprehensive exhibition of photographs from Karimeh Abbud’s archive.
COSTA VAYENAS
Director, Procivis Think Tank, Switzerland
COSTA VAYENAS
Dr Costa Vayenas is the author of Democracy in the Digital Age: How we will vote and what we will vote about, published in 2017. His book shows how the disintermediation that digitalization is causing in the private sector is now also impacting the machinery of the state.
Before being appointed as the director of the Procivis Think Tank, Vayenas worked as an analyst for UBS in London, New York and Zurich. His recent roles saw him as head of research and head of credit for emerging markets. He has been a guest lecturer at the University of Zurich as well as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH).
JEAN-PATRICK VILLENEUVE
Professor and Vice-Director, Institute for Public Communication, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland
JEAN-PATRICK VILLENEUVE
Jean-Patrick Villeneuve is associate professor at the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI). He is also vice dean of the Faculty of Communication Sciences, Deputy-Director of the Institute for Public Communication, and academic director of the master’s programme, Public Management and Policy, which is offered in conjunction with the University of Lausanne and the University of Berne.
Villeneuve holds the following degrees: a PhD in Public Administration from the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration/HEC Lausanne, Switzerland; an MPhil from Cambridge University, United Kingdom; an MA from Concordia University, Canada; and a BA from McGill University, Canada.
He is adjunct professor of Public Management at the Ecole nationale d’admnistration publique in Canada and visiting professor at the International University of Business and Economics (UIBE) in Beijing, China.
He is a member of Ticino’s Cantonal Commissione di Mediazione Independente and a member of the Steering Committee of the Independent Expert Panel of the Open Government Partnership.
Prior to joining USI, Villeneuve worked for the United Nations at the International Civil Aviation Organisation and the International Labour Organisation. He has also worked for Canadian public organisations, including: the Federal Ministry of Transport, the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the House of Commons. He works regularly with public institution at the local, national and international level.
His research on organisational transparency, anti-corruption policies and gambling regulation has been funded by various institutions, most notably by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the European Science Foundation.
He is a member of various journal boards and academic associations, and has published in a number of top-level academic journals, including: Government Information Quarterly, International Review of Administrative Sciences, European Journal of Risk Regulation, Gaming Law Review, among others. He has also published with leading publishing houses including Routledge, Springer, and others.
PIO WENNUBST
Vice Director General, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), Switzerland
PIO WENNUBST
Pio Wennubst is assistant director general of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and head of the Global Cooperation Department.
He is a visionary who has worked successfully in promoting sustainable and fair globalisation. Having trained as an agricultural economist, his work involves developing viable solutions for implementing political agreements. After working as managing director of a Swiss chemical company, he moved to the public sector, joining the SDC in 1995. On the strength of many years’ experience in international development diplomacy, in his current position he is successfully mobilising both private companies and individuals to take part in building the ‘new economy’.
DIMITRIOS XEFTERIS
Assitant Professor, University of Cyprus, Cyprus
DIMITRIOS XEFTERIS
Dimitrios Xefteris is assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Cyprus. He received his PhD in political economy from the International Doctorate in Economic Analysis programme, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
His academic interests lie in political economics, economic behaviour and game theory. His research has been published in several leading journals in economics and political science, including the American Political Science Review, Journal of Economic Theory, American Journal of Political Science, and the International Economic Review.
Application
Applications for the MEM Summer Summit 2019 are now closed.
The MEM Summer Summit welcomed applications from candidates:
- aged between 25 and 35
- from the Middle East Mediterranean region and/or with a demonstrated interest in the region
- with diverse educational backgrounds and work experience (professionals with careers in business, media, human rights and non-governmental work as well as artists, intellectuals, students and researchers)
- with interest in intercultural dialogue
- with the ability to work as part of a team
- with the will to collaborate and actively interact positively with all participants
- with a working knowledge of English and French
The deadline for applications was Friday, 17 May 2019.
Tuition fees for participation in the MEM Summer Summit 2019 are 2’300 CHF / 2’000 EUR.
Tuition fees include: plenary sessions and workshops of the Seminar, access to the two-day Forum, and all activities during the Summit, lunches and coffee breaks.
Tuition fees do NOT include: accommodation, visas, health insurance, travel costs and dinners.
Successful self-sponsored applicants are required to pay the tuition fee no later than Monday, 1 July 2019.
It is only upon reception of the tuition payment that an applicant is considered formally enrolled and their place in the MEM Summer Summit 2019 is secured.
If payment is not made in due time, Università della Svizzera italiana reserves the right to cancel the admission and attribute the place to another candidate.
Precise payment instructions will be given to the applicants by email after their application has been approved.
In case of cancellations applicants should refer to the General Regulations for Young Change-Makers and contact the MEM Summer Summit organisers at MEM@usi.ch.
The MEM Summer Summit organisers offered a limited number of partial or full grants for participation in the MEM Summer Summit 2019.
- Eligibility depended on the application and motivation letter for a grant.
- Priority was given to covering the expenses of citizens from low-income countries or with proven financial needs.
Venue
USI Lugano Campus, Università della Svizzera italiana
The Seminar of the MEM Summer Summit 2019 will take place at Università della Svizzera italiana.
The Campus hosts the USI Faculties of Communication Sciences, Economics, Informatics and Biomedical Sciences, as well as the University central administrative offices and library.
Practical information
Transport
By train: Lugano is one of the principal stops on the main European North-South route and can be reached from many cities in the northern and southern part of Europe by direct day or night train connections. Check trains and updated departure times from/to Lugano here.
By plane: The quickest way to get to Lugano from most places abroad, will be through a number of airports listed below:
- From Milano Malpensa: There are frequent direct bus connections to Lugano (travel time 1hr). These are the main providers operating from Malpensa Airport Terminal 1 and Terminal 2: GiosyTours, LuganoServizi, and JetBus.
- Lugano Airport is served by Swiss International Air Lines. From the airport, you can take a shuttle bus to the centre of the city or a taxi.
- Zurich Airport: As an alternative you might consider flying to Zurich and use the train to travel to Lugano (overall, a 2h journey). There is a direct, hourly train from Zurich main station to Lugano. It is a chance to experience the longest train tunnel in Europe by passing under the Gotthard.
By car: The University is located in Via Giuseppe Buffi 13 and can be easily reached by car. The underground University parking lot is passed the second traffic light after the Glass building (The LAB) on your right. If you need to reach the University entrance instead, keep going straight passed the parking lot entrance and turn second right onto via Fusoni. Turn second right onto Via Lambertenghi and keep going straight until the end of the road until you see the University main building in front of you.
By bus from the train station: Go to the bus stop across the street from the train station and take the Nr. 6 bus towards Cornaredo and get off at “Università” (3 stops).
By bus from downtown Lugano: At the bus terminal, take the Nr. 5 bus towards “Viganello” and get off at “Università” (3 stops).
On foot (around 20-25 minutes): Reach the city centre by taking the pedestrian bridge across the street from the train station and follow the road downhill. From Piazza Cioccaro head south to Piazza Dante. Walk across the square and turn left onto Via Pretorio. Cross Via Pretorio to get to the bus terminal. Walk pass the bus terminal and keep heading straight onto Corso Pestalozzi until you reach a big underground car park and the entrance of the Ciani Park. Turn left onto Via Lucchini and keep walking straight until you reach the University main building (Via Lucchini eventually becomes Via Lambertenghi).
Lugano has an effective bus system connecting different parts of the city. Tickets must be purchased at the bus stop. All destinations in the city centre can also be easily reached on foot.
Envision and foster change.
Volunteer Programme
Volunteer applications for the MEM Summer Summit 2019 are now closed.
Call for volunteers
The Università della Svizzera italiana is looking for proactive people who are interested in volunteering for the MEM Summer Summit 2019.
The international event gathers young change-makers, leaders from the public and private sector, artists, and intellectuals in the south of Switzerland to address recent developments and persisting problems in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern countries.
Volunteers can get involved in either the Seminar, the Forum or the entire Summit. The selected volunteers for the Forum will be granted a complimentary registration. Please note that costs related to accommodation and travel are the volunteers’ responsibility.
Requirements
Applicants should:
- Preferably be enrolled in a Swiss university
- Have a very good command of English. People with additional language skills are encouraged to apply
- Have experience in the field of event management, hospitality and communication
- Preferably, have a keen interest in politics, society and culture of the Middle East Mediterranean region
Benefit from the programme
- Join cutting-edge discussions and meet interesting figures from the region
- Work in a dynamic and cooperative team of professionals
- Have a great opportunity to show your potential
- Enrich your CV with an exciting experience
- Receive a working certificate at the end of the event
Students of Università della Svizzera italiana have the possibility to obtain credits from the Volunteer Programme.
When not on duty, volunteers can attend programme sessions, as well as lunches and coffee breaks. If there are specific sessions that volunteers would particularly like to attend, we kindly invite them to inform us, and we will do our best to accommodate their request.
The deadline for receiving applications was Sunday, 30 June 2019.