Keynote speakers, panelists and session contributors (in progress)

Mark BROWN is development director of Social Spider CIC, ex-editor of One in Four magazine, one of Nursing Times/Health Service Journal Social Media Pioneers 2014, mental health writer, doer. One of the people behind the regular We Mental Health Nurses chats on Twitter. His digital work includes: the Leeds Mental Health and Wellbeing Innovation Lab, supporting the development of young people’s mental health app Doc Ready, Step Up CAMHS platform, A Day in the Life funded by Public Health England, a development of A Day in the Life focused upon adult learners with mental health difficulties, and an app to  support advice seekers. Mark regularly writes and speaks on mental health and technology.

Anna BUTZIN studied spatial planning with specialization in regional economic development and European structural policy at Technical University of Dortmund and at Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm. Her doctoral thesis on „Knowledge Dynamics in Innovation Biographies” was achieved at the Department of Geography, Philipps-University of Marburg. Anna’s research focuses on different forms of innovation from a local and regional perspective. She is a senior researcher at the department Innovation, Space & Culture of the Institute for Work and Technology, Germany.

Radhika BYNON is a Programme Leader at The Young Foundation.  She is working on Social Innovation Community, a Horizon 2020 project, leading the work on Experimentation to support innovators in four cities to co-create solutions to pressing local issues.  Radhika specialises in working with and in communities to understand their perspectives local challenges. She leads on the Young Foundation’s engagement work on the Places Programme, working in Northern Ireland, Leeds and Essex to support communities to develop innovative solutions to tackling inequality. She is also working with Oxfam and the Global Fund for Women to support young feminist activism in Lebanon through social innovation.
Prior to joining the Young Foundation Radhika worked with the Prime Minister’s Council on Social Action, working with innovators from business, government and the voluntary sector scale social action across the country.

Basudeb CHAUDHURI is Seconded National Expert and Policy Officer at the DG Research and Innovation, on deputation from the Faculty of Economics, Management and Geography of the University of Caen, Normandy and the French government. He holds a PhD in Economics of the University of Paris I Pantheon Sorbonne, as well as a Habilitation of the University of Caen. Basudeb is specialised on Development and Public Economics, Institutional Economics and Interdisciplinarity in the Social Sciences. Previously Basudeb worked as NCP Coordinator for Societal Challenge 6 in France, Chargé de Mission CNRS (2013-2016). Prior to that he was Director and Adjoint Director of the CNRS Research Centres, Centre de sciences Humaines (New Delhi) and Savoir et Mondes Indiens (New Delhi and Pondicherry) (2007-2013), and Vice President at the University of Caen (2006-2007).

Steven DHONDT has a doctoral degree in social sciences and is currently senior researcher at TNO (The Netherlands) and visiting professor at the University of Leuven (Belgium). He has been involved in many research projects in the field of work, technology and health, both qualitative and quantitative, and covering various topics like the quality of work, working conditions, technology and work, social innovation, health and well-being. For the European Commission, he managed the European learning network on Workplace Innovation. His interest lie in better work for all, more self-control for employees and better performing organisations.

Dmitri DOMANSKI is senior researcher and lecturer at Sozialforschungsstelle – TU Dortmund University. Co-founder of the European School of Social Innovation (ESSI). Lecturer and co-ordinator at summer schools and courses on social innovation in Europe and Latin America. Keynote speaker at several social innovation conferences. Co-author i.a. “Rethinking Social Entrepreneurship” and “Social innovation: towards a new innovation paradigm”. Co-editor “Theoretical Approaches to Social Innovation – A Critical Literature Review”, “Innovación Social en Latinoamérica” (“Social Innovation in Latin America”) and “Exploring the Research Landscape of Social Innovation”. Currently working on the global research project “SI-DRIVE: Social Innovation – Driving Force of Social Change” (lead partner) and the international project “Social Innovation Community (SIC)”.

Gayani FERNANDO is an independent UK researcher. She is also a senior lecturer in Business Management with her most recent post being at London Brunel International College (Brunel University London) where she lectured for 7 years in both the 1st degree and the Pre-Masters Business and Management Programmes. Gayani has been working on her PhD in the area of Social Innovation. She holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) and a Bachelor of Business in Business Administration, also from RMIT. Prior to Gayani’s academic career, she had an extensive background in the financial services sector spanning a period of over 20 years. She worked in various senior management roles in organisations within Australia, including Commonwealth Bank of Australia, ANZ Banking Group, Australian Unity Limited and Perpetual Trustees Limited. Before relocating to the UK, her last position was with MacathurCook Limited, where she was responsible for project managing the listing of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) on the Singapore Stock Exchange. Gayani also worked in the US Territory of American Samoa where she held the role of Deputy Executive Director of the American Samoa Government Employees Retirement Fund.

Madeleine GABRIEL is “Head of Inclusive Innovation” at Nesta. She leads international projects that explore how new models of innovation can tackle big social challenges. She is passionately interested in the relationship between innovation and inequality, and in exploring the role that innovation – and innovation policy – can play in promoting greater equality.
Before joining Nesta early in 2014, Madeleine was Head of Impact, Research and Evaluation at UnLtd, where she developed new ways of measuring the organisation’s impact and led its programme of research on social entrepreneurship. Prior to UnLtd, Madeleine spent nine years at public policy consultancy Shared Intelligence, where she carried out research and evaluation for a wide range of clients.
Madeleine has a BA in History from the University of Cambridge and an MSc in Public Health with Economics from City University and Queen Mary University of London.

Sandra GULYURTLU is Principal Researcher at the Young Foundation. She works directly with the Director of Research to develop and lead pioneering research on social innovation and civic action, understanding inequality dynamics and how people across society are working to make change happen.
Prior to working at the Young Foundation, she was the Head of Research for the Office of the Children’s Commissioner (OCC) for England, where she led research into promoting and protecting children’s rights, including two national Inquiries into Child Sexual Abuse and Child Sexual Exploitation. Previously Sandra worked for the voluntary sector and academia, mainly conducting research into health and social care with a main focus on children and young people. At the University of Edinburgh she conducted research into early childhood education for the EU funded network of excellence, RECWOWE (Reconciling Work and Welfare in Europe). Sandra has also taught on courses on European social policy and social and political inquiry.
Sandra has a PhD. Social Policy and MSc. Childhood Studies from Edinburgh University and BSc. (Hons) Psychology and Physiology from the University of Reading.

Josef HOCHGERNER, Founder and Scientific Director (1990-2014), now Senior Strategy Adviser of the Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI). Initiator (2011) and Chairman of the European School of Social Innovation (ESSI). Professor (sociology), currently teaching at University of Vienna, Danube University Krems, IMC-University of Applied Sciences, and Alpen-Adria University Klagenfurt (AT). Since 2004, member of the Jury awarding ‘SozialMarie’, the annual Austrian Social Innovation Prize (also open to Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia).

Jürgen HOWALDT, director of Sozialforschungsstelle Dortmund, TU Dortmund University and professor at the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences. He is an internationally renowned expert in the field of social innovation. He has consulted German as well as European policy-makers and has also presented his concept of social innovation in all parts of the world. In 2011 he was one of the organizers of the international conference “Challenge Social Innovation” in Vienna. Affiliate of SIERC (Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research Centre, Massey University, New Zealand); Co-founder of the European School of Social Innovation; Expert of the German Federal Chancellor’s Dialog for the Future; Scientific Coordinator of the global research project SI-DRIVE.

Christoph KALETKA is senior researcher and member of the management board at Sozialforschungsstelle, TU Dortmund University. His main fields of work are social innovation and digital inclusion. He is teaching these topics at TU Dortmund’s Faculty of Rehabilitation Sciences. Christoph Kaletka is coordinating the FP7 large-scale project “Social innovation – Driving Force of Social Change (SI-DRIVE)”.

Juan-Luis KLEIN is a Full Professor at the University of Quebec at Montreal (http://www.uqam.ca) and the Director of the “Centre de recherche sur les innovations sociales” (Center for research on social innovations – CRISES: http://crises.uqam.ca), which is an interuniversity and multidisciplinary research center funded by the “Fonds de recherché du Quebec—Société et Culture” (FRQ-SC: http://www.frqsc.gouv.qc.ca). Since the 1980s, Juan-Luis Klein has been an active scholar in many fields related to local and regional development and space-based social innovation. He leads several funded research teams. Since the beginning of his career, alone or in collaboration, he has published 7 books, edited or co-edited 31 books, and published some 180 texts in refereed journals and collective books. He assumes several duties in editorial committees of scientific journals and is the director of the Series on Contemporary geography (Collection Géographie contemporaine) at the “Presses de l’Université du Québec” (University of Quebec Press). He is currently co-president of a non-governmental organisation for knowledge transfer in social innovation, social economy and territorial development called “Territoires innovants en économie sociale et solidaire” (TIESS: http://www.tiess.ca).
Juan-Luis Klein was born in Chile in 1951 and migrated to Canada in 1974. After finishing his undergraduate studies at the Universidad de Santiago (Santiago UTE, 1972), he obtained a M.A degree (1977) and a Ph.D degree (1981) in economic geography from the Université Laval (Quebec).

Stefan KUHLMANN is Chair of the Department of Science, Technology, and Policy Studies (STəPS) and leader of the Twente Graduate School programme “Governance of Knowledge and Innovation”. He is an Editor of “Research Policy” and he was President of the “European Forum for Studies of Policies for Research and Innovation” (Eu-SPRI Forum, 2010-16). For more than 30 years Stefan Kuhlmann has been involved in studies of research and technological innovation as social and political processes. Since the late 1980s he has analysed science, research and innovation systems and public policies, focusing on the dynamics of governance. Until 2006 he was at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI), Karlsruhe/Germany, and Professor of Innovation Policy Analysis at the Copernicus Institute, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. His background includes political science and history.

Armelle LEDAN, Social Innovation Policy Officer at AEIDL – Association Européenne pour l’Information sur le Développement Local (European Association for Information on Local Development). Armelle began her creer in the French Ministry of Labour in 1992, with responsibility for the implementation of the Objective 3 programme “fighting long-term unemployment and exclusion”, and was closely involved in the negotiation of the programme for 1994-99. Based in Brussels then, she held various positions at the European Commission’s Employment and Social Affairs DG: ESF Desk Officer for France, Policy Adviser to the ESF Director. She was also involved in the Initiatives of the ESF, working on ADAPT for the technical assistance Office EUROPS, before joining the Commission again as EQUAL Desk Officer for Northern Ireland. In parallel, she worked as a teacher and trainer (Paris XII University, CNFPT, EIPA). She graduated in European legal studies (DEA European Law, Rennes and Master in European Legal Studies, College of Europe, Bruges). Presently, she is pursuing a professional Master in Social and Solidarity Economy at Montpellier University, dedicating her research to social innovation. As wells as Armelle coordinates the currently running Horizon 2020 project SIC – Social Innovation Community.

Jeremy MILLARD is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bradford, and Senior Policy Adviser at the Danish Technological Institute in Denmark. He coordinated the recent TEPSIE project on SI in Europe, looking especially at digital SI, and is current working on the SI-DRIVE project responsible for the poverty reduction WP. He has worked for many years on e-inclusion issues and published on the digital divide. He is currently working with the UN on innovating public service delivery for sustainable development and the role of good governance in addressing poverty and social marginalisation.

Nóra MILOTAY is a policy analyst at the European Parliamentary Research Service, working on issues of European social policy at the Economic Policies Unit. She joined EPRS in November 2015 after having worked on several aspects of education policy, particularly in relation to schools, in Hungary and then for many years at the European Commission. From 2010 onwards she has built up European policy cooperation within the field of early childhood education and care that has gained an increasingly important role within the Europe 2020 Strategy. Her main areas of interest at EPRS are issues of inequality, governance and social innovation. With a background in both research and practice, Ms Milotay’s focus is on the intersection of research, policy, and practice. A historian by training, she holds a BA Hons. from Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, an MA from the Central European University, Budapest and a PhD  from the University of Cambridge.

Monica NAGORE is a project manager at the Young Foundation. She is currently directly involved in two challenging and inspiring Horizon 2020 projects: Social Innovation Community (SIC) – contributing as Experimentation leaders and leaders of intermediaries and community-led innovation networks- and Dolfins – contributing to create awareness on the role of finance in society and on the influence exerted over the policy process by European citizens. Before joining the Young Foundation Mónica worked for the City of York Council as Innovation manager. These two years were an enriching experience for her. They led “Genius Open” a transnational project to transfer our open innovation model to involve citizens in the design of the solutions for their city challenges to the cities of Siracusa, San Sebastián and Tallinn. In Spain Mónica worked as director in the Council of Minorca in the areas of Housing, Employment and Innovation in different exciting projects and the implementation of the electronic administration, the creation of a one stop shop housing office and the training and employment office during the worst years of the financial crisis.

Peter OEIJ is a senior researcher at TNO, the Netherlands. Peter leads the WP Employment in the SI-Drive project. Peter is fascinated by what happens at the crossing border of organisations and people. His projects are in the field of innovation management, workplace innovation and social innovation. He for example studies the dynamics of teams responsible for innovation, and helps teams to become more ‘innovation resilient’. An international reader on ‘Workplace Innovation: Theory, Research, and Practice’ (2017), jointly edited with Diana Rus and Frank Pot, has been published recently by Springer.

Merel OOMS is a researcher at TNO, the Netherlands. In the SI-DRIVE project she leads the work package on Energy. She has a background in Sociology and policy research. As a researcher she has been involved in several European and Dutch national projects on topics related to the way new technologies influence society. Following that she studies the changes in the energy system under the influence of sustainable energy production technologies. One big change is concerned with the new players that enter the market such as social innovation initiatives, and their role in developing a sustainable energy system. She is fascinated by the question what added value these initiatives can bring for society.

Stijn OOSTERLYNCK is Associate Professor in Urban Sociology at the University of Antwerp, Sociology department. His research and his lectures are concerned with local social innovation and welfare state restructuring, the political sociology of urban development, urban renewal and community building, civil society innovation and new forms of solidarity in diversity. He coordinated a large-scale research project on place-based forms of solidarity in diversity (DieGem, IWT-SBO) and was involved in several European collaborative research projects on local social innovation and urban diversity (respectively ImPRovE, EU FP7 and Divercities, EU FP7). He currently coordinates the research project CSI Flanders on innovation in the social service and political role of Flemish civil society organisations. Amongst his publications are the recently published volume ‘Place, Diversity, Solidarity’ (Routledge, 2017) and a chapter on social innovation and poverty reduction in the volume ‘Decent incomes for the poor’ (Oxford University Press, 2017).
Before his current post at the University of Antwerp, he was post-doctoral fellow of the Fund for Scientific Research Flanders at K.U.Leuven. Before this he was coordinator of the Spatial Planning team of the Flemish Policy Research Centre Spatial Planning and Housing. He also worked as a post-doctoral research associate at the School of Geography at Oxford University for the European Framework 6 programme Demologos. He holds a PhD in Sociology from Lancaster University in the UK. He graduated as a sociologist at Ghent University in Belgium and obtained a MA degree in Economy and Society from Lancaster University.

Klaus PETERS, Secretary General ESTEP. Klaus Peters, born in 1964, qualified as Doctor of Engineering in 1993 and as state doctorate (Habilitation) in 1998, started his industrial career with ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe (tkSE). From 2011, Dr. Peters joined several working groups and committees of the European Steel Technology Platform (ESTEP) and was in charge of international research projects and European funding of tkSE. He became in July 2015 Secretary General of ESTEP. Amongst others, he is member of the Steel Advisory Group (SAG) of the Research Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS) and vice-president of the contractual public-private partnership (cPPP) for sustainable resource and energy efficiency in the process industry (SPIRE).

Maria PODLASEK-ZIEGLER is policy officer at the Directorate-General for Education and Culture, European Commission. She joined the European Commission in Brussels in 2007, where she has been working in the youth policy field with a focus on entrepreneurship education. She also managed European Union funding programmes for the benefit of youth work and non-formal learning sector as well as small businesses. Before working at the European Commission, she co-founded and managed a Polish-German publishing company based in Warsaw for 13 years. She also translated German books into Polish and published in various Polish newspapers and magazines.
Maria Podlasek-Ziegler holds a Master degree in German Philology from the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland, and a Postgraduate Degree in Journalism from Warsaw University.

Sophie REYNOLDS works as a Senior Researcher in Nesta’s International Innovation Team. Sophie is interested in public sector innovation, and how innovation can be used for public good. She leads Social Innovation Community’s policy work, a large European Commission-funded project, which explores practical new ways that policymakers and social innovators can work together more effectively to tackle public challenges. Sophie has worked on a number of research projects on topics like scaling social innovation, collaborative economy and digital social innovation, and has collaborated with Nesta’s Skills Team and the OECD on a skills study identifying some of the core skills public servants need to innovate. Sophie regularly presents to national and international organisations, including the UNDG and various governments from around the world.
Prior to working at Nesta in 2013, Sophie worked in the Science Gallery in Dublin, as an English and Social Studies Teacher in Muscat, Oman, and as an Attendance Coach at Southwark College. In addition to her BA (Hons) in English, Media and Cultural Studies, Sophie has an LLM in Law and Social Justice from Birkbeck College, University of London.

Doris SCHARTINGER graduated in Economics and works as a scientist in the Innovation Systems Department at the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT). Her primary research focus is on the economics of innovation and technological change. Doris has been involved in a number of research projects ranging from theoretical and empirical studies of innovation, and on questions of technology management and technology strategy at the firm level, to managerial and policy dimensions of these issues. She has been involved in a number of research projects for different clients including various Austrian Ministries, the OECD and the European Commission.

Antonius SCHRÖDER is a senior researcher at Technische Universität Dortmund and member of management board of the Sozialforschungsstelle sfs (central scientific unit of the University of Dortmund), responsible for international research. He is the coordinator of the European funded 7th Framework large scale project SI-DRIVE – Social Innovation: Driving Force of Social Change and has worked in and managed several European projects (mainly in the Lifelong Learning Program). He is Vice-Chairman of Working Group People within the European Steel Technology Platform ESTEP and the Chair of the senate of the German Sociologists Association BDS.

Greet VERMEYLEN is a policy officer in the gender unit in DG Justice of the European Commission. Her main focus of work is work –life balance as well as gender pay gap. Previously she worked in Eurofound, where she was responsible for the theme of sustainable work over the life course, for which job quality,  work organisation and reconciliation between work and private life are crucial elements. She was working extensively on European-wide survey, namely the European Working Conditions Survey, capturing a wide range of aspects of working conditions,  and the European Company Survey, on workplace innovation and social dialogue in workplaces. She also worked previously on social protection issues in the European Commission and for the Belgian Presidency of the EU. She is a Belgian national and has degrees in law and European law.

Nadia VON JACOBI studied advanced development economics at the University of Florence and obtained a PhD in Economics, Law and Institutions at the Institute for Advanced Study, Pavia, with a doctoral thesis on „Meso-Factors of Development: the Role of the Context for Human Development Achievements”. She participated in the writing of the EU-FP7 project CrESSI – Creating Economic Space for Social Innovation, within which she is currently post-doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford. Nadia’s research focuses on different ways in which social innovation may produce institutional change, how citizens improve their agency through it and which policy approaches may support promising initiatives.

Greet VERMEYLEN is a policy officer in the gender unit in DG Justice of the European Commission. Her main focus of work is work –life balance as well as gender pay gap. Previously she worked in Eurofound, where she was responsible for the theme of sustainable work over the life course, for which job quality,  work organisation and reconciliation between work and private life are crucial elements. She was working extensively on European-wide survey, namely the European Working Conditions Survey, capturing a wide range of aspects of working conditions,  and the European Company Survey, on workplace innovation and social dialogue in workplaces. She also worked previously on social protection issues in the European Commission and for the Belgian Presidency of the EU. She is a Belgian national and has degrees in law and European law.

Matthias WEBER is Head of Center for Innovation Systems & Policy at Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT). He has been working for more than twenty years as researcher and policy advisor on matters of research, technology and innovation policy, foresight, and the governance of socio-technical transitions. His background includes process engineering, political sciences and economics. He coordinated several EU-funded projects, including RIF (Research and Innovation Futures 2030) and BOHEMIA (Beyond the Horizon: Foresight in Support of the European Union’s Future Research and Innovation Policy). He is regularly advising national governments, the European Commission and the OECD on matters of research and innovation policy, and UNIDO on strategies to foster research- and innovation-led economic development.

Frances WESTLEY is renowned scholar and consultant in the areas of social innovation, sustainable development, strategic change, visionary leadership and inter-organisational collaboration. Her most recent book, The Evolution of Social Innovation (Edward Elgar, 2017) takes an historical approach to understanding the dynamics of social innovation and institutional entrepreneurship in complex adaptive systems. Before joining University of Waterloo, where she established the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience, Frances Westley was the Director of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies (2005-2007) at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Other positions she has previously held include the James McGill Professor of Strategy at McGill University’s Faculty of Management, Director of the McGill-Dupont Initiative on Social Innovation and Director of the McGill-McConnell Master’s program for National Voluntary Sector Leaders.

Julia WITTMAYER works as senior researcher at DRIFT, the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. With a background in Social and Cultural Anthropology, her research focuses on social innovation and social sustainability in urban areas and on local scale. She is interested in the interaction and roles of actors in sustainability transition processes, with a specific interest for (socially innovative) science. Since 2014, she coordinates the EU-FP7 funded project TRANSIT (TRANsformative Social Innovation Theory).

Raúl ZAMBRANO For the past 30 years, Mr. Zambrano has supported the deployment and use of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) in nearly 100 developing countries to foster development agendas and promote social inclusion, working together with national governments, the private sector and civil society organisations. Mr. Zambrano’s current focus is on innovation and technologies that can enhance access to public information, advance service delivery for under-served populations and promote the participation of stakeholders in public policy and decision-making processes. Mr. Zambrano is also working on open government and open data, social innovation, blockchain and artificial intelligence, tackling these topics from a human development perspective. Mr. Zambrano worked for UNDP for over 21 years. Before joining UNDP, he worked in academia in the United States. Mr. Zambrano holds a BA in sociology and a MA in Economics (major in Economic Development).