Keynotes & panel contributions 

Ricardo Mairal Usón is Full Professor of Linguistics at UNED since 2002. He has been the Vicerrector for Research and Knowledge Transfer (2013-2016), Vicerrector for Teaching Staff and Academic Planning and First Vicerrrector (2016-2018), and he is currently the Rector at the UNED. He has also been the President of the Spanish Association for Applied Linguistics during 2011-2017.

His main areas of research interest are lexical knowledge representation, neurolinguistics and computational linguistics.

Ricardo Mairal Usón is the current President of EADTU.

Pierpaolo Limone is Rector of the University of Foggia. As a full professor of learning sciences, his scientific work is primarily concerned with applied research in the area of digital media in education. Limone is also Director of the laboratory for “Educational Research and Interaction Design” (ERID LAB). His current work focuses on MOOCs; Methodologies for teacher training; Ubiquitous learning and future scenarios in higher education.

Michael Murphy is President of the European University Association (EUA). Murphy graduated in Medicine from University College Cork in 1973. After his postgraduate training in Dublin and at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School in London, he received his doctorate from the National University of Ireland in 1984. During the next eight years he held faculty positions in Pharmacology and Medicine at The University of Chicago before returning to Cork as Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics in 1992. An expert in drug therapy for cardiovascular disease, he has led several large international clinical trials of interventions to reduce cardiovascular mortality.

Michael Murphy has held a variety of leadership roles including President of UCC for a decade, Vice-Chancellor of the National University of Ireland, Chair of the Health Research Board of Ireland, Chair of the Irish Universities Association, Chair of the Permanent Working Group (PWG) of European Hospital Doctors. A past member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the US National Dairy Council he has been active in many academic organisations in Europe and the United States.

Dr. Annelies Raes works as senior researcher within itec, an imec research group at KU Leuven. She is also affiliated with the Centre for Instructional Psychology and Technology (CIP&T). Within itec, she is one of the co-Principal Investigators within imec’s Smart Education Program. Dr. Raes is currently leading different research projects, including the STEAMS project on Supporting Teamwork in Ambient Learning Spaces and the European DigiTelPro project on Professional Development in Higher Education. Since November 2020, Raes is Chair on Technology-Enhanced Learning Spaces (TELS) at Université de Lille. Her current research focuses on hybrid synchronous teaching has been awarded by AERA Learning Environments and EUNIS

Professor Rory McGreal is the UNESCO/International Council for Open and Distance Education Chair in Open Educational Resources (OER) at Athabasca University, Canada. As such he is charged with promoting OER internationally, particularly in developing nations in support of UNESCO Strategic Development Goal 4: Education for all. He is also co-Editor of IRRODL (International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning) a leading open access educational technology journal.

McGreal is the founder of the OER Knowledge Cloud, a repository of research articles on OER. He is also a Senior Fellow of the European Distance Education Network and the recipient of several national and international awards for open and distance learning.

Sophia Eriksson Waterschoot is Director for Youth, Education and Erasmus+ at the European Commission’s Directorate General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture.. She has previously held various positions within the Commission in the field of strategy and investment in education, higher education policy, employment policy and the European social fund. She studied international economics at Uppsala University in Sweden and did an Erasmus student exchange in Montpellier in France.

Magalie Soenen has more than 20 years of experience in internationalisation in higher education, on institutional level (Ghent University), Erasmus+ national agency level (EPOS) and national policy level (Ministry of Education and Training of Belgium/Flemish Community).

Magalie Soenen represents the Flemish Community in the Bologna Follow Up Group and the ASEM process. She was a member of the BFUG secretariat in the past and is currently co-chair of the Bologna Thematic Peer Group on Quality Assurance and co-chair of the Bologna Coordination Group on Global Policy Dialogue. She is coordinator of several European projects, within the field of quality assurance, inclusion, digitalisation and micro-credentials. She also develops the national policies concerning internationalisation and mobility in higher education.

PhD, cum laude, in Communication from Ramon Llull University (URL), Master's in the Information and Knowledge Society from Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and graduate in Advertising and Public Relations from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). She worked as copywriter in multinational agencies for over 15 years and joined the UOC in 2006 to take charge of the online learning design for the Faculty of Information and Communication Sciences' creativity and innovation courses. Sivera was academic director of the Master's Degree in Social Media: Management and Strategy, and the Master's Degree in Strategy and Creativity in Advertising. For the past two years, she has also been associate dean for Emerging Programmes, focusing on competitiveness and employability.

Sivera received the Jaume Vicens Vives Award for University Teaching Quality from the Government of Catalonia (in 2020) and the 6th Prat Gaballí award (in 2015).

Klaus-Dieter Rossade is Associate Dean Curriculum in the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (WELS) at The Open University, UK. He is also Director of the Assessment Programme for the university and leads on several institutional change programmes, including the implementation of an end to end Exams and Assignments solution. Other roles focus on quality assurance and validation. He brings to his work over 30 years of experience in language and literature, communication, and leadership in Higher Education. More recently he shifted his focus on assessment in HE. He started his professional career as a sound editor for German Public Broadcasting which initiated a lifelong passion for the spoken word.

Klaus-Dieter chairs EADTU's Special Interest Group (SIG) on Online Assessment.

Odysseas Zoras is President of the Hellenic Open University. He is a full Professor in Surgical Oncology at the University of Crete, Head of the Department of Surgical Oncology at the University Hospital of Heraklion and member of the European Society of Surgical Oncology (ESSO) Board of Directors. Zoras received the Order of the Star of Italy.

Professor Josie A Fraser is Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the Open University (OOUK). She joined the OOUK in 2017 as Executive Dean of the Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. She describes her interest in the Open University and it's mission as 'long term' after being a tutor on an OU MSc course back in the early 2000s, an experience that influenced her teaching for many years.

Josie started her academic career as a neurobiologist. Josie's focus shifted towards teaching and making a difference to a wide range of students from varied backgrounds.

She has championed team-based learning as a teaching style on the national and international stage, resulting in invitations to consult at other Universities, and to sit on the board of an international healthcare education organisation.

Dr. Pashiardis is a Professor of Educational Leadership at the Open University of Cyprus and since October 2020 he serves as Rector of the University. He has worked as Visiting Professor in a number of universities in the USA (University of Texas), Europe (Lincoln University, University of Thessaly, University of Münster) and Africa (Stellenbosch University and University of Pretoria). During 2013-2014, he was a Visiting Professor at the Center of Development of Education Leaders at the Umeå University, Sweden.

Dr. Pashiardis is a member of the editorial boards and reviewer of numerous scientific journals, i.e. Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, International Studies in Educational Administration, Leadership and Policy in Schools and International Journal of Educational Management. He is an external evaluator of PhD thesis of students in the UK, Australia, India and South Africa.

Björn Fisseler is a research associate at the FernUniversität in Hagen. His work focuses on digital teaching and learning in higher education with an emphasis on diversity and inclusion. He is particularly interested in digital accessibility, artificial intelligence in education and in understanding how students with disabilities can succeed in academia. International collaborations (e.g., in Canada, USA, Israel, and Great Britain) provide new insights and data to these research topics.

Image: FernUni/Hardy Welsch