Experts

Mr. Gjergj Murra, the Executive Director of the Western Balkans Fund is a career diplomat from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Albania, where served as the Head and the Director of Regional Initiatives Department. With more than sixteen years of diplomatic experience, he is a recognized expert of multilateral diplomacy with a deep knowledge concerning regional cooperation processes in South Eastern Europe and Western Balkans.

As the Albanian National Coordinator on different regional initiatives, he is familiar with their activities, scope of work, their progress and challenges and with the practices and procedures of the Association Stabilization Process for Western Balkan countries. During his long career, Mr. Murra was Director of the Stability Pact Secretariat for Albania and a member of the Senior Review Group of the Stability Pact, which proposed its transformation into the Regional Co-operation Council. For two and half years, he worked as an expert to the Regional Cooperation Council Secretariat, in Sarajevo.

Before joining the MFA, Mr. Murra had an academic career as a professor of social-psychology and sociology at the Tirana University and other high educational institutions. He holds a PhD degree in social-psychology.

Research fellow in the Institute of Economics at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (agricultural and rural policy group). 1996-1997 visiting researcher at the Centre for the Study of Democracy in the Institute of Westminster, London. Main fields of interest: recent economic and social transition in Hungary, changes of labour market, small-scale agriculture and the coping strategies of former industrial commuters in disadvantaged rural areas.   

A young scholar and a journalist. Holds BA in Media an Communication Studies with Journalism specialization, currently researching the public discourse on Holocaust in post-WWII Hungary for her master degree in Media Research at Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest. From this September Eszter will focus on Nationalism Studies at Central European University. Besides her academic activities Eszter is a permanent guest author of hvg.hu (the online edition of HVG weekly) writing mostly about civil society, the social welfare system and covering topics related to unprivileged groups of society. She is a VSS alumna from 2012.

Luděk Niedermayer was born on 13 March 1966 in Brno, Czech Republic. In 1989 he graduated in Theoretical Cybernetics, Mathematical Informatics and Systems Theory at the Faculty of Science at the University of Jan Evangelista Purkyně in Brno (now Masaryk University) and holds RNDr. degree.
In 1991 he joined the Czech National Bank where he worked for 17 years in area of financial markets and monetary policy. He served twice at the Bank Board (8 years in a position of Vice-governor). From 2008 to 2014 he was a Director of Consulting Department in Deloitte.
During his work he cooperated with IMF, IBRD or BIS on several projects and working groups, contributed to publications on reserve management, risk management and monetary policy. He publishes regularly economics articles in press and cooperates with the non-profit sector. He is a member of Advisory board of Central banking publications and leads training programs for central bankers.
In 2014 he was elected as a Member of European Parliament where he acts as a full member of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) and a substitute member of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE).
Luděk Niedermayer lives near Prague, is married and has three children.