Keynotes & panel contributions 

Futurist, inventor and author

Pölönen has studied future technologies at Singularity University, based at NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, co-founded an edtech company in Myanmar and won EU’s biggest science competition for youth. In 2018 MIT Tech Review honored him among the 35 Innovators Under 35 in Europe. His book, 'Future Skills',

has been translated to seven languages.

President EADTU, Rector Open Universiteit

Prof. Dr. Theo J. Bastiaens is President of EADTU and rector of the 'Open Universiteit' in the Netherlands. He is professor of Educational Technology and has contributed to numerous international publications in his field. Bastiaens was Vice-President for Digitalization and Internationalisation at the Fernuniversität in Hagen.

Vice-President EADTU, President Fernuniversität in Hagen

Prof. Dr. Ada Pellert is Vice-President of EADTU and President of the FernUniversität in Hagen. Pellert is chair of the cooperative platform Digital University NRW and was a member of the German Federal Government’s Digital Council.

A trained economist, she is particularly concerned with the issues of education and university management, human resources and organizational development, and the topics of higher education in an international context, continuing education research, gender and diversity management, and lifelong learning.

Rector Anadolu University

Fuat Erdal is full professor of economics. He graduated in economics from Middle East Technical University (Ankara) and got his MA from Leeds University and PhD from Nottingham University. His main research areas are macroeconomics, development economics and international economics. Having acted as department chair, dean and vice rector in various universities, he is currenty the rector of Anadolu University (Eskisehir, Türkiye).

Chair in Digital Learning and Director, National Institute for Digital Learning, Dublin City University

Mark Brown is Ireland’s first Chair of Digital Learning and the current Director of the National Institute for Digital Learning (NIDL). Mark serves on the EADTU Supervisory Board. In 2017, the Commonwealth of Learning recognised Mark as a world leader in Open, Distance and Digital Education. Shortly before the outbreak of the COVID-19 crisis, Mark was Chair of the 2019 ICDE World Conference on Online Learning. Mark has published extensively in his fields of interest and serves on several journal editorial boards. He is active in leading and contributing to externally funded projects, with his most recent contracts involving the development of new quality assurance guidelines for digital education work with the OECD and Qualifications and Quality Ireland (QQI).

Rector Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

Àngels Fitó has a PhD in Business and Economics from the University of Barcelona, is a senior professor at the UOC, and has been Vice President for Competitiveness and Employability since 2019. In 2023 she was appointed as Universitat Oberta de Catalunya President.

Her research interests focus on financial reporting harmonization processes, management control systems and the transformative power of higher education for employability given the complexity of labour market dynamics.

University College London. University of Stavanger

Dr Melissa Bond is a Research Fellow at the EPPI Centre (University College London), an Adjunct Associate Professor in Qualitative Evidence Synthesis at the University of Stavanger (Norway), and a Research Fellow at the National Institute of Teaching. She is a member of the Center for Open Education Research and is on the Editorial Board of the new Nordic Journal of Systematic Reviews in Education. Melissa’s research draws on over 15 years of high school and higher education teaching experience, and she is particularly interested in student engagement through digital learning, the applications of AI in education, digital evidence synthesis tools and systematic review methodology.

Professor of Inclusive Teaching in Higher Education, Open University UK

John Butcher is Professor of Inclusive Teaching in Higher Education at the Open University (UK), where he is Director (Access and Open). He is responsible for the university’s UK-wide Access Programme, is Deputy Director on the Open Programme and leads the Access Observatory (the OU’s research centre for Widening Participation). He was Principal Investigator on the research projects ‘Understanding the impact of outreach on access to higher education for disadvantaged adult learners (OFFA, 2017) and ‘Shoe-horned and side-lined: Challenges for part-time learners in the new HE landscape’ (HEA, 2015). Publications include: Developing Effective 16-19 Teaching Skills and Leading Professional Development in Education (both Routledge) as well as numerous journal articles. He is Managing Editor for the international journal Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning.

Managing Director AI Campus, Stifterverband

Florian Rampelt is Programme Director for Digital Education & Future Skills and Managing Director of the AI Campus at Stifterverband in Berlin. Previously, he was Deputy Managing Director of Hochschulforum Digitalisierung, Director of Education at Kiron Open Higher Education and research assistant at the Centre for Teacher Education at the University of Passau. The education scientist works on future-proof education and training for the digital transformation. His research focuses on knowledge, skills and qualifications for artificial intelligence, micro-credentials and recognition of prior learning.

Director European Quality Assurance Register (EQAR)

Magalie Soenen had more than 20 years of experience in international higher education policy, on institutional level, Erasmus+ national agency level and national policy level, before she started as Director of the European Quality Assurance Register (EQAR) in May 2023.

Magalie Soenen is a representative within the EU, the Bologna Process and ASEM education since many years. She was co-chair of several of their working structures, e.g. the Bologna Thematic Peer Group on Quality Assurance and the Bologna Coordination Group on Global Policy Dialogue.

Up till now, she has been coordinator of multiple European projects, within the field of quality assurance, inclusion, mobility, digitalisation and micro-credentials.

Team Lead Digital Education & Future Skills, AI Campus

Mike Bernd is Team Lead in the field of Digital Education & Future Skills and Head of Content of AI Campus at the Stifterverband in Berlin. Previously, he worked as Quality Assurance Manager at Kiron Open Higher Education and as Instructional Designer at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences. During his four years at the University of Shanghai for Science & Technology, he developed digital micro-learning content for use in blended learning settings. In collaboration with more than 50 AI Campus partners from higher education and labour market stakeholders, he is intensively engaged in questions of innovation in education and the recognition of prior non-formal learning in the context of AI.

Associate Professor of Distance Education, Anadolu University

Aras Bozkurt is a researcher and faculty member in the Department of Distance Education, Open Education Faculty at Anadolu University, Turkey. He holds MA and PhD degrees in distance education. Dr. Bozkurt conducts empirical studies on distance education, open and distance learning, online learning and networked learning to which he applies various critical theories, such as connectivism, rhizomatic learning, and heutagogy. He is also interested in emerging research paradigms, including social network analysis, sentiment analysis, and data mining.

Associate Dean Teaching Excellence, Open University UK

With more than twenty years’ experience in the sector, Mychelle’s work has focused on enabling students to achieve to the best of their abilities, improving student voice/engagement, and quality assurance and enhancement. In her current role, Mychelle has strategic responsibility for student success including retention, continuation and completion, access & participation, and recognising and rewarding teaching excellence. Most recently, Mychelle has led the development of the Open University in UK’s position on Generative Artificial Intelligence in learning, teaching and assessing. Mychelle’s scholarship and research focuses on student mental health, access & participation, student success, Generative AI in education, and practitioner-led and scholarly co-creation.