She holds a PhD degree in the Humanities, MA in English Philology and in Political Studies. In the period 1993–1999, she was director of the Cultural Department of the Municipality of Krakow and following it, the Regional Director of the USAID programme in Poland. She is the European Commission expert in the European Capitals of Culture programme selecting and monitoring all ECOC since 2009. Director of the Villa Decius Association in 2001-2016, she is now the Plenipotentiary of the Board for International Affairs, responsible for its initiating and implementing programmes which advocate international cultural and intellectual cooperation and promotion of intercultural dialogue and human rights.Lecturer at the Jagiellonian University and the Humanistic Studies Department of the University of Technology in Krakow. Her research field covers relations between culture and politics and European integration. Author of numerous articles and publications. An avid traveler.
Experts - civil society
Danuta Glondys
Dorota Ilczuk
An Assistant Professor of Social Economics, at the Faculty of Management and Administration, Jagiellonian University, (Cracow). Wrote over fifty publications, studies and articles (mainly in Polish) which center upon civil society, culture, economy and non-profit sector. Most recent works include a research into civil society in Europe entitled Cultural citizenship: civil society and cultural policy in Europe. Lead many research projects commissioned by the Ministry of Culture and Art.and the Polish Scientific Committee (KBN). Has been a Council of Europe expert and consultant for: The Program of Evaluation Cultural Policies in Europe (1995); The Latvian Report (1997); Privatization and Desetatisation: National cultural institutions in Transition (1998/1999); Mosaic project for Romania and Bulgaria (2001).
Joanna Mieszkowicz
Graduated in Environmental Protection from the Poznan University of Life Sciences. A graduate of the XIV school of the Liders of the Civil Society (2006), graduate of the course: "Challenges of Sustainable Development” (2004). Coordinator of the project: Polish Forum of Ecological Education: “Eko Media Forum 2003”. Member of international conferences about Sustainable Development.
Grzegorz Pożarlik
MA in Sociology at the Jagiellonian University. PhD in Humanities at the Jagiellonian University. Assistant professor at the Centre for European Studies, Jagiellonian University. Coordinator of the MA in European Studies programme. Authors of numerous articles about European citizenship, enlargement, the entrance of Poland into the UE. Participated in international conferences relating European issues. Teaches in the Centre for European Studies at Jagiellonian University, in Department of Politics at the University of Bristol, in the Institute of European Integration at the National University of Lviv and in the Centre for European Studies at the University of Vienna.
Mykola Ryabchuk
Mykola Ryabchuk (Mikolaj Riabczuk) is a senior research associate at the Ukrainian Centre for Cultural Studies in Kyiv and a co-founder and member of the editorial board of Krytyka monthly (www.krytyka.kiev.ua). He penned five books and many articles on civil society, state/nation building, nationalism, national identity, and post-communist transition in the post-Soviet countries, primarily in Ukraine. Two of his books were translated into Polish (“Od Malorosji do Ukrainy”, 2002; “Dwie Ukrainy”, 2004), and one into Serbian (“Od Malorusije do Ukrajine”, 2003), French (“De la 'Petite Russie' à l'Ukraine”, 2003), and German (“Die reale und die imaginierte Ukraine”, 2006). He was distinguished with the POLCUL Award (1998) and Polish-Ukrainian Capitula Award (2002) for his contribution to Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation.
Michal Vašečka
Doc. PhDr. Michal Vašečka, PhD (1972) is sociologist by background and focuses his interests on issues of ethnicity, race, antisemitism, and migration studies. As an Associate Professor he operates at the Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts (BISLA) since 2015 and he is a director of Bratislava Policy Institute. He operated at the Faculty of Social Studies of Masaryk University in Brno in 2002-2017 and at the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences of the Comenius University in 2006-2009. As a visiting scholar he operated at the New School University in New York (1996-1997) and at the University of London (1998), in 2008-2009 he lectured at the Georgetown University in Washington, DC, in 2015 at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, in 2016 he was a scholar-in-residence in the ISGAP at Oxford University. Michal Vašečka is a founder of the Center for the Research of Ethnicity and Culture, he served a director of the CVEK (2006-2012). In 1998-2005 he operated at the Slovak think-tank Institute of Public Affairs as a program director on expert analysis of the Slovak transformation process with a focus on national minorities and the state of civil society in Slovakia. He has been a consultant for the World Bank in 2000-2008 and in 2011-2012. Since 2012 Michal Vašečka serves as a representative of the Slovak Republic in the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), human rights body of the Council of Europe. He is also as a vice-chairman of the governmental committee VRAX tackling extremism and racism in Slovakia. Michal Vašečka serves as a non-resident research associate at the European Centre for Minority Issues in Flensburg. In 2018 Michal became a laureate of the Award for special contribution in the field human rights of Minister of Justice of Slovakia.
