MEM Summer Summit 2019
Seminar 2019
Programme
The programme consisted of a series of plenary session and workshops, thematically separated into three streams – “New Dynamics of the Middle East Mediterranean Region”, “Middle East Mediterranean Region: Governance, Administration, and Policy Making”, “Middle East Mediterranean Region: Cultural Narratives”.
Full programme of the Seminar 2019: MEM_Summer_Summit_2019_Seminar_Programme
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.
Forum 2019
Programme
The second edition of the Middle East Mediterranean Summer Summit involved around 100 young change-makers from over 30 countries of the Middle East Mediterranean region and Europe. Organised by Università della svizzera italiana (USI) with the joint support of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs and the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, the meeting aimed to develop innovative solutions and concrete opportunities for dialogue and growth.
On 24 and 25 August 2019, after an intense eight-day Seminar, the ideas generated and formulated by the young change-makers were presented and debated in the framework of a Forum, open to the public. Forum attendees included high-level political authorities, experts, intellectuals, and entrepreneurs of the Middle East Mediterranean region.
Full programme of the Forum 2019: MEM_Summer_Summit_2019_Forum_Programme
Speakers
SOUAD ABDERRAHIM
Mayor of Tunis, Tunisia
SOUAD ABDERRAHIM
Mrs Souad Abderrahim is a graduate of the Monastir School of Pharmacy and was elected Mayor of Tunis following the first democratic municipal elections in Tunisia. She is also one of the leaders of Tunisia’s decentralisation efforts as the mayor of the biggest commune in the country.
Abderrahim serves as the president of the National Federation of Tunisian Cities (FNVT), a national association created in 1973 to support and defend the interests of municipalities, as well as represent them in national and international bodies.
HE CARMELO ABELA
Minister, Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Trade Promotion, Republic of Malta
HE CARMELO ABELA
HE Carmelo Abela has been Malta’s minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Promotion since the 2017 general election. A social democrat by conviction, he is a strong believer in the capacity of the individual to make a positive difference. Abela has represented Malta on the European and global stage, constantly making the case for a Euro-Mediterranean dimension.
Following his reelection in 2013, he was appointed as whip for the Government Parliamentary Group and, later, as Government spokesperson. In 2014, he was handed his first ministerial position as minister for Home Affairs and National Security.
In 2008, he was unanimously appointed deputy speaker of the House of Representatives, as well as the Opposition’s main spokesperson for Industry, Foreign Investment, and Social Policy.
He was first elected to Parliament in 1996, having served as a local councillor in Żejtun, Malta, between 1994 and 1996. He has been present in Parliament in all subsequent legislations. Over the years he has grown into increasingly senior roles within the Maltese Labour Party as well as Government, serving as assistant whip, Opposition spokesperson for Youth and Sport and, later, as Opposition spokesperson for Education, Youth, Sport, and Culture.
In 1990, Abela joined Mid-Med Bank Ltd, today HSBC Bank Malta plc where he worked as a manager until April 2014.
As a member of Parliament, Abela has also served as: regional representative on the Executive Committee of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, head of the Maltese Delegation of the Inter Parliamentary Union, and member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
EMILIANO ALBANESE
Professor, Università della Svizzera italiana; Director, WHO Collaborating Center for Research and Training in Mental Health, University of Geneva, 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.
ROBERTO ANTONINI
Journalist, RSI Radiotelevisione svizzera, Switzerland
ROBERTO ANTONINI
Roberto Antonini has been a journalist at RSI Radiotelevisione svizzera since 1984. He is currently features editor and specialises in history and African, Middle-Eastern and U.S. politics. He received his degree in History from the Sorbonne, University of Paris 1, and in Anthropology from René Descartes, University of Paris V.
From 1991 to 1995 he headed the International Department of RSI. From 1995 to 2002, he was a correspondent in Washington DC, and in 2002 he was appointed editor-in-chief at RSI. Since 2008, he has been responsible for the production of in-depth programmes, including news stories and major interviews. His latest radio and TV reports have covered Syria and Iraq.
He has interviewed, among others, Bill Clinton, Itzaak Rabin, Yasser Arafat, Benazir Bhutto, Nelson Mandela, Kenneth Kaunda, Desmond Tutu, Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, George Soros, Noam Chomsky, Jacques LeGoff and Paul Krugman.
He has been awarded several prizes, including: the Prix Suisse, the Schweizer Journalist Prize, Suisse Grand Prix du journalisme des radios francophones (Swiss journalism Grand Prix of French-language public radio stations), Premio ATG, and the Swiss Media Award.
MANUELE BERTOLI
State Councilor, Republic and Canton of Ticino, Switzerland
MANUELE BERTOLI
Manuele Bertoli obtained a diploma in law from Geneva in 1988. Prior to that, he received a teaching diploma which allowed him to teach in elementary schools.
From 1988 to 2002 he was secretary of the Associazione Inquilini per la Svizzera italiana (The Tenants’ Association in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland), after which he directed Unitas, an association for the blind and partially-sighted in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland.
He is a former member of the Board of Directors of Banca Stato, as well as a member at the town hall in Balerna and a member of the Grand Council from 1998 to 2011.
Bertoli has participated in numerous voluntary and social activities and was President of the Partito Socialista (Socialist Party) for seven years.
MARCO BORRADORI
Mayor, City of Lugano, Switzerland
MARCO BORRADORI
Mr Marco Borradori, born in Lugano, graduated at the Law faculty of the University of Zurich in 1983. He became Lawyer and notary in 1986.
Borradori was elected to the Swiss Federal Parliament in 1991. After that he joined the Municipality of Lugano in 1992 until 1995. Borradori was Minister in the Council of State of Ticino Canton from 1995 until 2013, head of the Department of Territory.
Since 2013 he has been mayor of the City of Lugano; head of the Institution Department, comprising: Chancellery, Communication and Institutional Relations, Human Resources and Economic Development.
LORENZO CANTONI
Prorector and Professor, UNESCO Chair, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland
LORENZO CANTONI
Lorenzo Cantoni graduated in Philosophy and holds a PhD in Education and Linguistics. He is full professor at Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano, Switzerland, in the Faculty of Communication Sciences, where he is director of the Institute of Digital Technologies for Communication.
His research interests are where communication, education and new media overlap, ranging from computer mediated communication and usability, to eLearning, eTourism, digital Fashion, ICT4D and eGovernment.
He is chair-holder of the UNESCO chair in ICT to develop and promote sustainable tourism in World Heritage Sites, established at USI in 2013.
He is USI’s pro-rector for Education and Students’ experience, director of the Master’s in Digital Fashion Communication, in collaboration with Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, and a member of the board of the Master’s in International Tourism.
Cantoni was dean of the faculty from 2010 to 2014 and President of the IFITT (International Federation for IT in Travel and Tourism) from 2014 to January 2018.
OLMO GIOVANNINI
Film historian, Communication Officer at the Dicastero cultura, sport ed eventi, City of Lugano, Switzerland
OLMO GIOVANNINI
Olmo Giovannini graduated in History and Aesthetics in Cinema from the faculty of Literature at the University of Lausanne. In 2006, he began a collaboration with the programming department of the Locarno Festival, for which he coordinates numerous tributes and retrospectives, including Ernst Lubitsch, Vincente Minnelli and George Cukor. From 2013 to 2015, he was in charge of the press office of the Locarno event. He directed the Lugano Human Rights Film Festival in both 2016 and 2017, and is currently in charge of communication for the Culture, Sports and Events Department of the City of Lugano.
MARINA CAROBBIO GUSCETTI
President, National Council, Switzerland
MARINA CAROBBIO GUSCETTI
Marina Carobbio Guscetti has been vice president of the Swiss Socialist Party since 2008 and since 26th October, 2018, she has held the position of president of the National Council.
She has had a seat in the National Council since 2007, where she is a member of the finance commission, the social security commission and the health commission, as well as the finance delegation. In December 2016 she was selected as president of the 2019 National Council.
Prior to being elected to the National Council, she was active in the Ticino Grand Council from 1991 to 2007. She also holds the presidency of the Swiss Office for the Coordination of Addiction Facilities and is vice president of Iniziativa da las alps and Associazione Svizzera Inquilini (Association of Swiss tenants).
HE IGNAZIO CASSIS
Head of the Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), Switzerland
HE IGNAZIO CASSIS
HE Ignazio Cassis graduated from the University of Zurich in 1988 with a degree in human medicine. He then worked as a doctor from 1988 to 1996. Thereafter, in 1996, he became cantonal physician for the Canton of Ticino and in the same year he obtained a master’s degree in public health (MPH) from the University of Geneva. He also graduated in 1998, specialising in internal medicine as well as in prevention and public health.
Cassis’ political career began in 2004 with his election to the legislative authority of the Ticino municipality of Collina d’Oro. From 2008 to 2012, Cassis held the office of Vice-President of the Swiss Medical Association. From 2015, he chaired the National Council’s Social Security and Health Committee, and has also been vice-chairman or chairman of various parliamentary groups.
During the two years prior to his election to the Federal Council, Cassis was president of the parliamentary group of the FDP.The Liberals, of which he became a member since his election to the National Council in 2007.
Since 2001, he has lectured at various universities in Switzerland. He has also been a member of numerous foundations and associations. He was the head of the CURAVIVA association (care homes and institutions in Switzerland) and Curafutura, a health insurance association.
Cassis was elected to the Federal Council of Switzerland on 20 September 2017, where he took up his post as Head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs on 1 November 2017.
CRISTIAN CHIAVETTA
Environmental Engineer and Industrial Researcher, Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development ENEA, Italy
CRISTIAN CHIAVETTA
Cristian Chiavetta is an environmental engineer. He graduated from the University of Bologna with a PhD in Life Cycle Assessment of renewable energy and secondary materials production. He is currently working as a researcher at the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA) in the Valorisation ofResources Laboratory (RISE).
For the last ten years he has been working in the field of circular economy with a specific focus on sustainability assessment from a life cycle point of view. He carries out research activities in Italian and international projects with regard to the environmental, economic and social assessment of products, processes and systems, as well as supporting companies and public administrations in eco-innovation paths through the implementation of industrial symbiosis instruments and circular economy principles.
He is an expert in Life Cycle Assessment methodology (LCA), Resource Efficient Management and Green Public Procurement (GPP). He is a member of the ENEA working group, which supports the Italian Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea (MATTM) in the European Technical Advisory Board (TAB) of the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) pilot phase.
He is also one of 10 Italian experts on circular economy who was selected by the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MAECI) to participate in the Summit of the Two Shores initiative.
LORENZO CREMONESI
Journalist and Middle East Correspondent, Corriere della Sera, Italy
LORENZO CREMONESI
Lorenzo Cremonesi is a graduate in Philosophy. Since 1982, his work has mainly concentrated on the Middle East.
From 1984 to 2000 he was a writer for il Corriere della Sera in Jerusalem, firstly as a collaborator and then as correspondent. He has followed other crisis areas as a reporter, including the Afghan crisis, and was also in Iraq for almost three years.
In addition to having written papers on the relationship between Israel and Santa Sede, in 2003 he published Le origini del sionismo e la nascita del kibbutz (The origins of Zionism and the birth of the kibbutz), and in 2008 he published Dai nostri inviati. Inchieste, guerre ed esplorazioni nelle pagine del Corriere della Sera (From our correspondents. Investigations, wars and explorations in the pages of il Corriere della Sera).
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.
STEFANO DOMINIONI
Executive Secretary, Council of Europe Enlarged Partial Agreement on Cultural Routes (EPA); Director of the European Institute of Cultural Routes, Luxembourg
STEFANO DOMINIONI
Stefano Dominioni is executive secretary of the Council of Europe Enlarged Partial Agreement on Cultural Routes (EPA) and director of the European Institute of Cultural Routes in Luxembourg. He received his PhD, MPhil and MA from Yale University, as well as an MA from Université d’Aix-Marseille, and a BA from the University of Milan. He was also a research fellow at Cambridge University, England.
His responsibilites involve overseeing the certification by the Council of Europe of Cultural Routes in the field of European culture and heritage across its 47 member states and the regular evaluation of the current 33 certified cultural routes. Dominioni ensures EPA Governing Board and Statutory Committee operations, management of the European Institute of Cultural Routes, and coordination with the Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe.
He is also responsible for the implementation of Joint Programmes with the European Commission, and cooperation with other international organisations such as UNESCO, UNWTO, OECD and OEI. During his career at the Council of Europe, he has worked for the directorate general of Education, Culture and Youth and the directorate general of Social Cohesion.
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.
MAHA EL-ADAWY
MD and Director, Health Protection and Promotion, WHO Office Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean, Egypt
MAHA EL-ADAWY
Dr El-Adawy holds a bachelor of Medicine and Surgery from the Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University, Egypt, as well as a master’s degree in Public Health from the same university. She received a master’s degree in Public Health in Maternal and Child Health from the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, USA, and a PhD in Public Health from Cairo University. She has been the director of the Division of Health Protection and Promotion at the World Health Organization since July 2016.
From August 2015 to July 2016 she worked as the representative of UNFPA in Iran. From January 2009 to August 2015 she held the position of program and technical regional advisor for Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights at the UNFPA regional office in Cairo. El-Adawy was also the policy adviser for health at the UNDP office in New York, USA, from June 2007 to December 2008.
El-Adawy held the position of senior Regional Reproductive Health and Reproductive Rights Program officer at the Ford Foundation, New York, from March 2000 to June 2007. She has held other senior health positions at the European Commission Delegation in Cairo, as well as at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.
She holds the Eisenhower fellowship for leadership development and also received a Takemi fellowship from the Harvard School of Public Health. She has also worked as a consultant for UNICEF, the World Bank and the American University in Beirut.
LAZARE ELOUNDOU ASSOMO
Director, Culture and Emergencies, UNESCO, France
LAZARE ELOUNDOU ASSOMO
Lazare Eloundou Assomo has been director for Culture and Emergencies at UNESCO since November 2018. He is an architect conservator and town-planner who specialises in earthen architecture and cultural heritage.
He was deputy director of the Division for Heritage and the UNESCO World Heritage Centre from 2016 to 2018. The entity for which he is responsible takes care of all matters regarding museums, restitution and the fight against illicit traffic, protection of cultural heritage in conflict situations, and underwater cultural heritage.
Before October 2016, he was UNESCO head of office and representative in Mali. His main responsibilities involved coordinating UNESCO’s actions to rehabilitate Mali’s cultural heritage and ancient manuscripts. It is in this capacity that he successfully coordinated the rapid reconstruction of the destroyed mausoleums in Timbuktu in close cooperation with MINUSMA, the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Mali.
Prior to being posted in Mali, Assomo was the chief of unit for Africa at the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, where he was in charge of coordinating cooperation between UNESCO and African member states for all issues related to world heritage.
He is the author of the book ‘African World Heritage, a remarkable diversity’, which was recently published by UNESCO.
BOAS EREZ
Rector, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland
BOAS EREZ
Professor Boas Erez graduated in 1981 from the Liceo Cantonale (scientific lyceum) in Lugano, and continued his studies at the University of Geneva where he obtained a degree in mathematics in 1985 and, in 1987, a Ph.D. in mathematics. From 1985 to 1990, he was an assistant at the same university, before moving to Harvard University where he was Benjamin Peirce Assistant Professor from 1990 to 1993. In 1993, he was appointed Full professor of mathematics at the University of Bordeaux, where he held several executive positions at the level of institute, faculty, commissions, programmes, doctoral committees and international scientific projects. Erez was time and again a Board member of the University of Bordeaux 1, and was also vice-president of the university from 2005 to 2008. Erez is the author of numerous quality scientific publications and has regularly organized international activities in his subject field. He has great experience in the coordination of joint international projects in higher education. As of September 1st, 2016, Boas Erez is Rector of the Università della Svizzera italiana.
AMOS GITAÏ
Filmmaker and Author, Israel
AMOS GITAÏ
Amos Gitaï is an Israeli filmmaker. Upon receiving a PhD in architecture from the University of Berkeley, California, Gitaï devoted his first film, House (1980), to the construction of a house in West Jerusalem. His other films include Field Diary (1982), as well as fictional works and documentaries, including, Esther (1986), Berlin-Jerusalem (1989) and Golem, the Spirit of Exile (1991).
Gitaï’s work has received numerous awards, including: a Leopard of Honour in Locarno in 2008 for his lifetime’s work, the Roberto Rossellini Prize in 2005, the Robert Bresson Prize in 2013, and the Paradjanov Prize in 2014. He has also been awarded the distinctions of Officier des Arts et des Lettres (Official of Arts and Literature) and Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour).
Upon his return to Israel in 1993, Gitaï directed a three-city trilogy: Devarim, shot in Tel Aviv in 1995, Yom Yom, filmed in Haifa in 1998, and Kadosh, which was shot in Jerusalem in 1999. Four of his films have been shown in competition at the Cannes Film Festival (Kadosh, Kippur, Kedma, and Free Zone), and a further six at the Mostra in Venice (Berlin-Jerusalem, Eden, Alila, Promised Land, Ana Arabia, and Yitzhak Rabin: the Last Day).
In October 2018, a performance of Yitzhak Rabin: Chronicle of an Assassination Foretold, which was developed for the Festival d’Avignon in 2016, was presented at the Philharmonie de Paris, which featured the soprano Barbara Hendricks.
Retrospectives of his complete works have been presented at numerous institutions worldwide, including: Centre Pompidou, Cinémathèque française, Jerusalem Cinematheque, New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Lincoln Center (New York), British Film Institute (London), Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid), Mostra São Paulo, State Film Museum (Moscow), and Japan Film Institute (Tokyo).
ENRICO GRANARA
Minister Plenipotentiary, Coordinator Euro-Mediterranean Multilateral Activities, Directorate General for Political and Security Affairs, Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation MAECI, Italy
ENRICO GRANARA
Enrico Granara graduated in Political Sciences from the University of Padua. Since 2013, he has been the coordinator of the Euro-Mediterranean Multilateral Activities at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In this capacity he represents Italy at: the 5+5 Dialogue; the conference of ambassadors of the Union for the Mediterranean; the board of governors of the Anna Lindh Foundation for Dialogue between Cultures; and the Mediterranean Centre for Integration (CMI) supervisory committee.
He joined the Italian Foreign Service in 1983; in 1984, he was assigned to Maputo, Mozambique, where he served as first secretary for Development and Emergency Aid at the Italian Embassy.
In 1988, he was appointed consul in Grenoble, France, and in 1990 he was appointed consul general in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He resumed his duties at the Foreign Ministry in 1992, where he served as deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa Desk until 1995.
He was then assigned to Mexico City as counsellor and DHM. In 1999, he was appointed consul general in Chicago (US Midwest). In 2003, he resumed his duties at the Ministry as head of the Budget Unit in the Directorate General for Development Aid, also serving as the Italian focal point for the Global Fund to Fight HIV, AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFATM).
In 2005, he was elected executive president of the Italian Diplomats Union and in 2008 he was appointed ambassador of Italy to the State of Kuwait. Upon completion of his mandate, he resumed his duties in Rome from 2012 to 2013 as counsellor for International Affairs at the Centre for High Defence Studies (CASD-Ministry of Defence).
SUZY HATOUGH
Director, Middle East Travel and Tourism Development Network, Middle East University, Jordan
SUZY HATOUGH
Dr Suzy Hatough-Bouran has more than 20 years’ experience in tourism education, quality assurance and human resources development. She is currently the advisor at Jordan Inbound Tour Operators Association (JITOA), leading the mission to empower youth in tourism and promoting sustainable tourism development in Jordan and the Middle East Region. Hatough believes that tourism is a vehicle for the advancement of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), making it possible to create a better world for future generations.
Hatough was the former director of the Middle East Travel and Tourism Development Network Center at Middle East University (MEU) for one year. She was responsible for enhancing cooperation for sustainable development between countries in the Middle East, North Africa and the Mediterranean regions.
In 2000, she headed Ammon College for Hospitality and Tourism Education as vice dean for four years, after which, in 2009, she established Dar Al-Diafa for Hospitality and Tourism Education Consultancy, which offers academic and professional services to enterprises in order to contribute to the development of the tourist industry and competitiveness in Jordan and the Middle East Region.
Since 2009, Hatough has been a certified UNWTO TedQual Certification Program auditor. She has conducted audits on several tourism education programmes at universities in Europe and Asia and has also implemented regional developmental projects in the MENA Countries, with a particular focus on developing tourism education strategies and plans with regard to labour market needs in Algeria, Syria and Saudi Arabia.
Hatough has conducted customised sustainable development projects in the tourism sector in Jordan in cooperation with the USAID/Jordan Tourism Development Project (Siyaha), as well as the ongoing five-year USAID/Building Economic Sustainability through Tourism Project (BEST).
Hatough was appointed alternate member of the UNWTO-World Committee for Tourism Ethics (WCTE) from 2013 to 2017; her 4-year post has been renewed, which she will serve until 2021. She is responsible for promoting, advocating and implementing the Global Code of Ethics for Tourism in the Middle East Region.
NASSER KAMEL
General Secretary, Union for the Mediterranean UPM, Spain
NASSER KAMEL
Nasser Kamel has spent his career as a diplomat for the Egyptian government and is currently the secretary general of Union for the Mediterranean.
Kamel studied Political Science at Brussels University from 1977 to 1979 and at Cairo University’s Faculty of Economics and Political Science, obtaining his bachelor’s degree in 1981. He graduated from the Diplomatic Institute – Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Cairo in 1982 and the École Nationale d’Administration (ENA) in Paris in 1983.
From 2014 to 2018 he held the position of ambassador of Egypt to the United Kingdom. He was ambassador to France from 2006 to 2012, during which he took part in the drafting of the Joint Declaration of the 2008 Paris Summit that marked the launch of the Union for the Mediterranean. Furthermore, between 2012 and 2014, he was assistant minister for Arab and Middle Eastern Affairs. From 2004 to 2006, he was the director of Egypt’s Public Information Service.
He has also served in various embassies, including: Washington (1984-1988), Lisbon (1990-1994), Tunis (1994-1998), Brussels (1999-2001) and Paris (2001-2004).
He holds the title of Grand Officier de l’Ordre National du Mérite of the Republic of France and has also received decorations from the Kingdom of Belgium and the Republic of Portugal.
KARIN KNEISSL
Ambassador; Former Minister of Foreign Affairs; Analyst, Austria
KARIN KNEISSL
Karin Kneissl served as Austria’s minister of foreign affairs from December 2017 to June 2019.
She studied law and Arabic at the University of Vienna and received a scholarship for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1988 where she wrote her thesis. Thereafter, she studied in Amman and at GU Washington, DC. She is also a graduate of ENA.
She lectures at the Vienna National Defence College and EBS Universität, Germany, as well as in Beirut, Tehran, and many other reputable institutions.
Karin joined the Austrian Ministry for Foreign Affairs in 1990 and served in Paris and Madrid, as well as in the legal office. In 1998, she became a freelance analyst and has written several books on energy, geopolitics and the Middle East.
GILLES KEPEL
Professor and Scientific Director of the Middle East Mediterranean Freethinking Platform, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland; PLS Paris Sciences et Lettres-École Normale Supérieure, France
GILLES KEPEL
Professor Gilles Kepel is a French Political Scientist and Arabist, has specialised 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, based at École Normale Supérieure. Kepel holds degrees in Arabic, English, and Philosophy, a PhD in Sociology and a Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches (HDR) in Political Science.
He has specialised in contemporary islamist movements since his 1983 PhD. 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.
Professor Kepel created and was general editor of the series ‘Proche Orient’ at Presses Universitaires de France, which was comprised of 23 volumes between 2004 and 2017. His books, such as ‘The Revenge of God’ and ‘Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam’, have been translated in a dozen languages. Recently he has published ‘Terror in France: The Rise of Jihad in the West’ (Princeton U. Press, 2017).
ELENA KORZHENEVICH
Co-Founder and AtWork Program Director, Moleskine Foundation, Italy
ELENA KORZHENEVICH
Elena Korzhenevich is a graduate in Linguistics and International Communication at the Moscow State Linguistic University. She went on to receive a Master of Science in Journalism and Mass Communication, focusing primarily on advertising at San José State University, California, USA.
In May 2014, her career path took a different direction and she decided to dedicate herself to culture and knowledge. In the same year she joined the lettera27 Foundation as the communication director.
In 2017, she became the co-founder of the Moleskine Foundation and since 2019 she has been AtWork programme director, the key educational framework of the foundation. She is also in charge of the Moleskine Foundation Collection.
She has 13 years’ experience working at advertising agencies, including Ogilvy&Mather, Goodby, Silverstein&Partners and Leo Burnett, where she was a client service director on multiple key international accounts on a European and worldwide basis.
DEREK LUTTERBECK
Deputy Director and Holder of the Swiss Chair, Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies MEDAC, University of Malta, Malta
DEREK LUTTERBECK
Dr Derek Lutterbeck is deputy director and holder of the Swiss Chair at the Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies in Malta (MEDAC). Lutterbeck holds a master’s degree and a PhD in Political Science from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, as well as a master’s Degree in Law from the University of Zürich.
Prior to joining MEDAC, he was at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP). He has also worked as a consultant for the Geneva Centre for Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF), the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), and the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA).
His current research interests focus primarily on migration, as well as security and security sector reform issues in the Mediterranean region. His teaching interests also include 20th century international history.
His recent publications have appeared in journals such as Armed Forces and Society, the Journal of North African Studies, Mediterranean Politics, Mediterranean Quarterly, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, the Journal of Borderland Studies, Sicherheit und Frieden, the European Journal of International Relations, Contemporary Security Policy, European Security, and Cooperation and Conflict.
SAFWAN M. MASRI
Executive Vice President for Global Centers and Global Development, Columbia University, USA
SAFWAN M. MASRI
Professor Safwan M. Masri is executive vice president for Global Centers and Global Development at Columbia University and a senior research scholar at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). He is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations, an honorary fellow of the Foreign Policy Association, and a member of the International Advisory Council of the World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies (WOCMES).
A scholar on education and contemporary geopolitics and society in the Arab world, his work focuses on understanding the historic and postcolonial dynamics in religion, education, society and politics.
His writings on education and current affairs have been featured in the Financial Times, the Huffington Post, The Hill and Times Higher Education.
He is the author of ‘Tunisia: An Arab Anomaly’ (Columbia University Press, 2017), which examines why Tunisia was the only country to emerge from the Arab Spring as a democracy. The book has received positive coverage in a number of media outlets, including the Financial Times, Le Monde, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, and the Journal of Democracy.
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.
EDUARDO SANTANDER
Executive Director, European Travel Commission (ETC), Belgium
EDUARDO SANTANDER
Mr Eduardo Santander is executive director of ETC and holds a PhD, as well as an MBA. Having been educated in Spain, USA and Austria, and having worked in various private companies and public institutions in the tourism and hospitality sector, his experience in tourism marketing, advocacy and public affairs is wide-ranging.
He is a guest lecturer on tourism marketing at international business seminars in a number of US and European universities. Santander is a frequent speaker in tourism, the hospitality industry and destination marketing forums, and is also a panellist.
BENEDETTO SARACENO
Psychiatrist; Director Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse of WHO, SG Lisbon Institute for Global Mental Health, Italy and Portugal
BENEDETTO SARACENO
Benedetto Saraceno is General Secretary of the Lisbon Institute of Global Mental Health and Global Ambassador of Special Olympics.
He is full professor of Global Health at the University of Lisbon where he directed the Global Mental Health project of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. In Lisbon he also heads the International Diploma in Mental Health Policies.
He served as Commissioner of the Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health. In Milan he leads the SOUQ Study Centre of the House of Charity. From 1999 to 2010 he had been the Director of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse of the World Health Organization and since 2008 he has also been leading the Department of Non-Communicable Diseases.
During his time at the WHO, Saraceno promoted the World Report on Mental Health and World Mental Health Day (2001) and developed mental health policies and human rights promotion in Africa, North and South America, the Middle East, South East Asia and the Far East. Saraceno is a psychiatrist and public health expert.
He has worked as a psychiatrist in Trieste under the direction of Franco Basaglia and in Milan as head of the Community for serious psychotic patients “Nuova Legge”. In 1985 he left the medical practice and became involved in research at the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan. In 1990 he became director of the Laboratory of Epidemiology and Social Psychiatry at the Mario Negri Institute. In 1990 he was one of the promoters of the Caracas Conference, which spread throughout the Latin America community models of psychiatric care inspired by the defense of the human rights of psychiatric patients, and taught at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
Saraceno has received an Honorary Degree from the Universities of Birmingham and Lisbon and is an honorary member of the Royal College of Psychiatry.
HERWIG FRANZ SCHOPPER
Advisor, Experimental Physicist, Former Director General CERN and one of the Founding Fathers of SESAME, Middle East, Jordan
HERWIG FRANZ SCHOPPER
Herwig Schopper has a diploma in Physics and a PhD from the University of Hamburg and is currently professor emeritus. He has held professorships at Erlangen, Mainz, Karlsruhe and Hamburg. He has also been the director of DESY in Hamburg, as well as the director general of CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. He has been the president of DPG and European Physical Society, and has been on the scientific council of The Cyprus Institute and the first SESAME Council.
Schopper has carried out research in Stockholm with Lise Meitner, at the Cavendish Laboratory in the UK with O.R.Frisch, and at Cornell University, USA, alongside R.R.Wilson. He has also carried out research in optics, as well as in nuclear- and elementary particle- physics.
In addition to having received several honorary doctorates, he is a member of various academies. He is also a recipient of the Grosses Bundesverdienstkreuz (The Great Federal Cross of Merit), the Grand Cordon of Order of Independence from Jordan, the Great Cross of Order of Merit from Cyprus, the UNESCO Albert Einstein Gold Medal, and the Niels Bohr Gold Medal.
ROLLA SCOLARI
Journalist, Italy
ROLLA SCOLARI
Rolla Scolari is a journalist who works with the Italian daily newspapers La Stampa and Il Foglio. Since 2005, she has worked in the Middle East for several Italian and international newspapers and television stations, including: Il Giornale, Il Foglio, Panorama, IL magazine (Il Sole 24Ore), Sky TG24 and The National.
From 2015 to 2018 she was editorial and communication director at Fondazione Internazionale Oasis, a research centre based in Milan and Venice, which studies the interaction between Christians and Muslims within the global context. From 2011 to 2013 her reporting on the ground focused on explaining to readers the Arab revolts and their aftermath in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Morocco.
She has covered the Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip, the rise to power of Hamas, and the subsequent Palestinian struggle. In November 2006, she was in Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey, for the historic visit of Pope Benedict XVI. From December 2007 to January 2008 she was embedded within the American army in Iraq.
In 2005, she reported for Il Foglio in Beirut, a period during which the country was going through testing times. During her time in Cairo from 2005 to 2006, she reported on the Egypt’s historic first presidential elections and the subsequent parliamentary vote that saw the ascendance of the Muslim Brotherhood.
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.
TARIK M. YOUSEF
Director, Brookings Doha Center, Qatar; Board Member, Central Bank of Libya, Libya
TARIK M. YOUSEF
Tarik M. Yousef is senior fellow and director of the Brookings Doha Center. His professional career has spanned the academic world at Georgetown University and the Harvard Kennedy School; the public policy arena at the IMF, the World Bank, the UN, and more recently the NGO space at Silatech.
His research has focused on the political economy of policy reform and the dynamics of youth inclusion in the Arab world. He has contributed to more than 50 articles and chapters, and co-edited several volumes, including: ‘Generation in Waiting: The Unfulfilled Promise of Young People in the Middle East’ (Brookings Press, 2009); ‘After the Spring: Economic Transition in the Arab World’ (Oxford University Press, 2012); ‘Young Generation Awakening: Economics, Society, and Policy on the Eve of the Arab Spring’ (Oxford University Press, 2016); and the forthcoming volume ‘Public Sector Reform in the Middle East and North Africa: Lessons of Experience for a Region in Transition’ (Brookings Press, 2018).
PIO WENNUBST
Vice Director General, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), Switzerland
PIO WENNUBST
Ambassador 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’.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish?
T. S Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922
Cultural Dimension 2019
The exhibition Broken cities. A virtual journey from Syria to Iraq proposed an imaginary route to four cities laid waste by conflicts whose violence has over recent years turned them into theatres of war. Pictures of Damascus, Aleppo, Palmyra, and Mosul told their story, a fragmentary story, of this devastation. The landscape of ruins, in Marc Augé’s words, “cannot reproduce the past in its integrity; rather, it alludes intellectually to a multiplicity of ‘pasts’, somehow metonymically, it supplies our eye and our conscience with a dual proof of a lost functionality and an impressive actuality” (Marc Augé, 2003).
Lines from T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land (1922) and others from The Suspended Ode by Imru’ al-Qays (6th century), invited the viewer to a moment of silence, stillness, and meditation, outside time. The exhibition layout was structured in three stages:
Stage one
Stage one displayed photographs by Iconem, a French start-up. Interspersed with literary quotations, these photographs revealed unusual views of the cities and invited the viewers to raise questions about the rubble, the ruins and the meaning of time. It is in the eye of the beholder that the fragments will come to life and take on meaning. The pictures showed piles of rubble: wreckage present of ruins past.
Stage two
In stage two, the documentary Mosul year zero by Roberto Antonini and Philippe Blanc beared testimony to what is left of Mosul, three years after the Isis Caliphate and one year’s fighting. The voices of witnesses are heard over the images, narrating their sad tales of loss and destruction. Besides the documentary, a number of freeze-frames represented crumbled landscapes of Mosul, as well as of Damascus, Aleppo, and Palmyra.
Stage three
Stage three consisted essentially in an immersive cam, the work of e-REAL Logosnet, whereby visitors were able to watch videos produced by Iconem and by Unesco. With extremely striking images, this all-absorbing experience engulfed the eye of the visitors, who found themselves suspended between past and present, here and there, destruction and reconstruction.
The Lugano Initiative 2019
‘The Lugano Initiative. Proposals developed by young change-makers during the Middle East Mediterranean Summer Summit 2019’ is a document that collects concrete proposals for development and growth in the MEM region, developed and drawn up during the MEM Summer Summit 2019. The main contributors are the 100 young change-makers, who worked together across cultural differences and national identities.
Download the document: The Lugano Initiative – MEM Summer Summit 2019
Partners 2019
We would like to take this opportunity to thank our Partners, who supported both the vision and realisation of the MEM Summer Summit 2019.
Patronage
Institutional Partners
Partners
Cultural Partners
Media Partners
Event Partners
Sponsors 2019
We would like to take this opportunity to thank our Sponsors. The MEM Summer Summit 2019 could not exist without their generous support.
Donors
It is better to debate a question without settling it, than to settle a question without debating it.
Gallery 2019
