Ino Afentouli is the Executive Director of the Institute of International Relations (IDIS), Greece’s leading university research institute, affiliated to the Department of International and European Studies at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences.
During 2002-2022, she served as Program Manager at NATO’s Public Diplomacy Division. In this capacity, she was responsible for the design and implementation of the communications strategy of the Organization towards the member states of the Southern flank as well as towards the partner countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Prior to joining NATO, she was a journalist specialized in foreign and European affairs and she worked for Greek media outlets (Kathimerini daily, Sky Radio, Star Channel, Athens News Agency) as well as the Economist Intelligence Unit-Greek edition.
For her work, she was awarded with the Calligas prize attributed by the European Journalists Association. She studied Law at the University of Athens and Political Science and Political Communication at the University of Paris I – Sorbonne and Paris II.
She is the author of three books and numerous articles and founding member of the Israeli-Hellenic Forum and the Greek-Turkish Forum.
Niki Aloupi has been Professor of Public International Law at the University Paris-Panthéon-Assas since September 2018. She is currently a member of the Legal and Technical Commission of the International Seabed Authority (2023-2027). From her agrégation in 2012 up to 2018 she was Professor at the University of Strasbourg. She has taught as a visitor at the Universities of Sciences Po Paris, Roma Sapienza, Jena, Alabama, Padova, Bordeaux, Le Mans, Galatasaray and at the International Institute of Human Rights. She has been invited by the Curatorium of The Hague Academy of International Law to deliver a special course in 2025. Niki Aloupi has also been a judge representative of the UNHCR at the French National Court of Asylum Law (CNDA) from 2013 to 2023.
Author of numerous publications relating to the Law of the Sea, to Public International Law and Systems Reports, she teaches, other than the Law of the Sea, Public International Law, Law of International Spaces, International Organizations Law, Asylum Law and General Principles of International Economic Law. She has co-coordinated, with Gabriele Goettche-Wanli, the White Paper on the Ocean for the International Law Association’s 150 years celebration.
Niki Aloupi is the Director of the Master’s degree in International Administration and the codirector of the Environmental Studies Division at the University Paris-Panthéon-Assas. She is the director of the quarterly column on “International Jurisprudence” of the Revue Générale de Droit International Public, of which she is also a member of the Editorial Board. She is also the director of the column “International Spaces” of the Annuaire Français des Relations Internationales, as well as member of the Editorial Boards of the French Journal of Legal Policy and of the American Yearbook of International Law. She is deputy treasurer and a member of the Board of the French Society for International Law (SFDI). From 2011 to 2021, she has been serving as a secretary-editor of the Institute of International Law.
Aleida Assmann studied English Literature and Egyptology at the universities Heidelberg and Tuebingen. From 1993 – 2014 she held the chair of English Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Konstanz, Germany. She taught as a guest professor at international universities (Rice University, Princeton, Yale, Chicago or Vienna). Main areas of her research are history of media, history and theory of reading, cultural memory, with special emphasis on Holocaust and trauma. The Max Planck Research Award allowed her to establish a research group on ‘memory and history’ (2009-2015). Together with her husband Jan Assmann she received the peace Price of the German Book Trade in 2018. From 2020-2023 she directed a research group at the university of Konstanz on the topic ‘Civic Strength’.
Recent Publications in English: Memory in a Global Age. Discourses, Practices and Trajectories (ed. with Sebastian Conrad, 2010), Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives (2012), Memory and Political Change (ed. with Linda Shortt, 2012), Introduction to Cultural Studies: Topics, Concepts, Issues (2012). Shadows of Trauma. Memory and the Politics of Postwar Identity (2016). Is the Time Out of Joint? On the Rise and Fall of the Modern Time Regime (2020).
Cameron Bell is a lecturer, independent risk consultant, and research fellow at the Institute for International Relations (IDIS), Athens, Greece. He teaches university courses on the contemporary politics of the Eastern Mediterranean, political risk management (ESG) and corporate disinformation. From 2018 - 2020, Cameron was associate director at Veracity, a risk advisory firm, where he provided private equity clients with transaction due diligence in the EMEA region. Prior to Veracity, Cameron was a visiting fellow at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani, where he conducted field research on energy infrastructure and subsequently presented his work in Iraq, Israel, and Egypt. Previously, Cameron was associate at Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC Group) and focused on project delivery and digital transformation. From 2009 - 2011, Cameron worked at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, for former Secretary of State Dr. Rice, as aide and lead researcher on international politics and security, in the service of two books.
Cameron holds a Master of Science in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Stanford University, a Master of Public Policy from the University of Oxford (Balliol College), and a Bachelor of Arts with honors, also from Stanford University. At Hellenic American University, he is an adjunct faculty member teaching in the Social Sciences and Business programs, and is a doctoral candidate at Panteion University in the Department of International, European, and Area Studies.
Zohar Kampf is a Professor of Language and Communication at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a visiting faculty member at the Hellenic American University. He is the author of two books (Transforming Media Coverage of Violent Conflicts 2013; Media at Times of War and Terror, 2012) and more than 80 chapters and articles in language, communication and international studies journals. Between the years 2008-2009 and 2014-2015 he held visiting resident scholar positions at the UCLA center of Language, Interaction and Culture, and at Scholars Program in Culture and Communication at the Annenberg School for Communications (University of Pennsylvania).
Prof. Kampf is a member of several editorial boards including Communication Theory, Cambridge Elements in Pragmatics, Contrastive Pragmatics, and Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict. Since 2017 he serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Pragmatics. At the Hebrew University he held several management positions, including the head of the Swiss Center for conflict research (2013-2014) and Vice-Dean of the faculty of social sciences (2020-2023). His current research project (funded by the Israel Scientific Foundation in the amount of 350,000 American dollars) focuses on the consequences of interpersonal connections on interstate relations.
Riva Kastoryano is a research director at the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research), affiliated with the Center for International Studies (CERI- SciencesPo) and Professor at SciencesPo Paris. Her work focuses on identity and minority issues and more specifically to their relations to states in France, Germany, the United States. She was a lecturer at Harvard University 1984-1987, and has been teaching at the Institute for Political Studies in Paris (SciencesPo.) since 1988. She has been visiting Porfessor at Harvard (2018 and 2024) at Columbia University (2007 and 2023) and as a visting professor at the New School for Social Research since 2006.
Her books are Negotiating Identities. States and Immigrants in France and Germany Princeton University Press 2002. She also edited Quelle identité pour l’Europe ? Le multiculturalisme à l’épreuve (Paris, Presses de Sciences-Po 1998 and 2005 for the second edition) – An Identity for Europe. (Palgrave 2005) ; Nationalismes en mutation en Méditerranée Orientale (Changing Concept of Nationalism) (with A.Dieckhoff) Paris, Ed.du CNRS 2002 ; and Les codes de la différence. Religion, Origine, Race en France, Allemagne et Etats-Unis, (Codes of Otherness. Religion, Ancester and Race in France, Germany and the United States) Presses de Sciecnes-Po, 2005. Turkey Between Nationalism and Globalization, London Routledge 2013. Her last book is : Que faire des corps des djihadistes? Territoire et identité, Paris Fayard 2015, Burying Jihadis: Bodies between State, Territory and Identity, London, Oxford U. Press and Hurst Pbl 2018.
Thodoris Koutsogiannis is the Chief Curator of the Hellenic Parliament Art Collection.
He studied archaeology and Art History at the University of Athens (BA 1996; MA 2000), where he successfully presented his PhD (2008) on Ciriaco d’ Ancona’s drawings and their influence in the Art and Antiquarianism of the Renaissance.
Additionally, he attended seminars and conducted research, on scholarships, in various universities and institutes abroad (La Sapienza, Rome 1998 and 2000; Warburg Institute, London 2001-02; Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa 2003; Istituto di Studi Umanistici, Florence 2005-08; Princeton University 2011).
He has curated various exhibitions and their catalogues at the Hellenic Parliament and the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, as well as at the Municipal Art Gallery of Chania, in Crete. His last exhibition “Beholdig Liberty!”, on display at the Hellenic Parliament building, commemorates the Greek War of Independence.
He has presented many papers in international conferences and published various essays in collective volumes, as well as a monograph on Philhellenism in the Arts (2017).
He is studying modern art, especially concerning the artistic reception of Antiquity and the impact of the Greek cultural heritage to the modern visual culture.
Evangelos Livieratos Professor emeritus, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH). Senior member of the AUTH CartoGeoLab. Full professor of Higher Geodesy and Cartography at the AUTH Faculty of Engineering (1979-2015). Doctor of Engineering (1974), National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and Doctor of Mathematical, Physical and Natural Sciences (1976), Uppsala University. Docent of NTUA (1978). His major international academic research and teaching mobility includes Cambridge MA, Uppsala, Munich, Trieste, Delft, Stuttgart, Bologna, Strasbourg, Venice, Vienna. Member of the Council of Europe Higher Education and Research Committee (1994-2002) and elected member of its Bureau (1998-2002). Fellow of the IAG-International Association of Geodesy (1991) and Honorary Fellow of the ICA-International Cartographic Association (2019).
Chair of the ICA Commission on Cartographic Heritage into the Digital (2005-2019). Founder and editor (2006- ) of the international web journal e-Perimetron for sciences and technologies affined to history of cartography and maps. Organiser and head, of the fourteen (2006-2019) annual ICA Conferences on Digital Approaches to Cartographic Heritage (DACH): Thessaloniki (2006, 2019), Athens (2007), Barcelona (2008, 2012), Venice (2009, 2017), Vienna (2010), The Hague (2011), Rome (2013), Budapest (2014), Corfu (2015), Riga (2016), Madrid (2018). Member of the Advisory Board 'Geodesy' of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (2016- ). Chair of the ICA Committee for the Selection of Awards Recipients (2023- ). Doctor et Professor Honoris Causa, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest (2022). Professor Honoris Causa, University of West Attica, Athens (2023).
Evanthis Hatzivassiliou was born in 1966. He graduated from the Law School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 1987, and received his Ph.D. in International History from the London School of Economics in 1992. He currently serves as Professor (Post-war History) at the Department of History of the University of Athens, and as the secretary-general of the Hellenic Parliament Foundation for Parliamentarism and Democracy.
His publications include Greece and the Cold War: Frontline State, 1952-1967 (London: Routledge, 2006); NATO and Western Perceptions of the Soviet Bloc: Alliance Analysis and Reporting, 1951-1969 (London: Routledge, 2014); The NATO Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society, 1969-1975: Transatlantic Relations, the Cold War and the Environment (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2017).
Mario Pezzini is Special Advisor for Social & Human Sciences in Unesco. He is Editor of the Development Cooperation Review based in India and Distinguished Fellow of the Center of Development in Jindal University, in New Delhi. He is member of the Scientific Committee of the Conference Europe in Discourse, based in Athens, Greece.
Mario Pezzini has served as Director of the OECD Development Centre. Moreover, after having served for a year as Acting Director of the OECD Development Co-operation Directorate, he has been nominated Special Advisor to the OECD Secretary-General on Development. Before joining the Development Centre in 2010, Mario Pezzini held several senior management positions in the OECD, where he has been working since 1995. During that time, he organized the OECD work in the fields of Regional, Urban, Rural Development.
Prior to joining the OECD, he was Professor in Industrial Economics at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris as well as in US and Italian Universities. He also served as an Advisor in the field of economic development, industrial organisation and regional economics in international organisations and think tanks (e.g. ILO, UNIDO, European Commission and Nomisma in Italy). His career started in the Government office of the Emilia-Romagna Region.
Professor George Prevelakis, Panthéon-Sorbonne University
George Prevelakis is Professor of Geopolitics at the Sorbonne (Paris 1) and an Associate Fellow at the SciencesPo Center of International Research (CERI) in Paris. He specializes in European, Balkan and Eastern Mediterranean Geopolitics, in Diasporas and in Physical Planning. After leaving Greece in 1984, he has occupied teaching and research positions in Paris, Baltimore, Boston and London. During the academic years 2003-2005 he served as the Constantine Karamanlis Chair in Hellenic and Southeastern European Studies at the Fletcher School and Greek Ambassador at the OECD. He co-directs the academic journal Anatoli (Paris, CNRS Editions).
Among his books are: Qui sont les Grecs ? Une identité en crise, CNRS Editions, Paris, 2017, Who are we ? The Geopolitics of Greek identity, Economia, Athens, 2017, « Géopolitique des civilisations. Huntington, 20 ans après », Anatoli n° 4, CNRS Editions, 2013, « Pour une nouvelle Entente balkanique », Anatoli n°1, CNRS Editions, 2010, Géopolitique de la Grèce, Complexe, Brussels, 2005.
Dr Sotiris Rizas is Director of Research at the Academy of Athens Modern Greek History Research Center.
He was Visiting Research Associate at the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies of the King’s College/University of London and Visiting Fellow in Research at the Hellenic Studies Program/Princeton.
His publications include America and Europe Adrift - Transatlantic Relations after the Cold War, (Praeger,2022), Realism and Human Rights in US Policy towards Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus, (Lexington Books, 2018), The End of Middle-Class Politics: Cambridge Scholars Publishing (2018), The Rise of the Left in Southern Europe: Anglo-American Responses, Pickering and Chatto (2012/Routledge, 2016).
Ileana Santos is a Franco-Togolese civic entrepreneur who was featured in Forbes Africa's 30 under 30 for 2022. She is a co-founder of "Je m’engage pour l’Afrique" (JMA), a citizen-led public policy incubator inspired by the « Policy Cycle » to build a virtuous cycle of policy ideation, highlighting, and dissemination to transform the African continent. JMA was launched in January 2021 and has brought together a community of 15,000 committed stakeholders. This young Afro - pragmatist also advises key actors in the public and financial industries on their strategy plans and digital transformation.
Ileana holds a Bachelor's degree in Private Law and a Master's degree in Management from EMLyon Business School and East China Normal University.
Rauf Engin Soysal graduated from the University of Marmara, Faculty of Economic and Administrative Sciences, Department of International Relations. He holds two master’s degrees from the College of Europe and Ecole Nationale d’Administration ENA. He joined the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in March 1983.
He worked as the Chief of Cabinet (1997-99) and Special Advisor to Foreign Minister Ismail CEM (2001-02) and Deputy Undersecretary for the Middle East, South Asia, and Policy Planning (2009-10). He served abroad respectively at the Turkish Embassy in Tehran, the Permanent Delegation of the Republic of Türkiye to the European Communities, the Turkish Embassy in Paris, and the Permanent Delegation of the Republic of Türkiye to the UN. Having served at the Turkish Embassy in Washington, D.C. as Counsellor and Minister-Counsellor, Deputy Chief of Mission between 2003-2007, he was appointed to Islamabad as Ambassador in 2007.
Ambassador SOYSAL was appointed as Special Envoy of the U.N. Secretary General for Assistance to Pakistan on 27 September 2010. Assisting the Government of Pakistan in response to the extraordinary situation created by the 2010 monsoon floods was among his main tasks. He also acted as the Special Advisor for the Group of Friends of Democratic Pakistan. He was appointed as the Permanent Representative of the Republic of Türkiye to the Council of Europe in October 2011.
On July 1, 2014, Ambassador SOYSAL returned to Ankara and was appointed as the Undersecretary of the Ministry for EU Affairs. From 2016 to 2021 Ambassador Soysal served as Permanent Representative of Türkiye to the OSCE. Ambassador Soysal served as a member of the Foreign Policy Consultative Council before his retirement in August 2023. Throughout his career, he participated as a speaker or panelist in various conferences and seminars in Turkey and abroad, particularly on the European Project.
Dr. Pericles Vallianos is Professor Emeritus of the University of Athens, where he taught political philosophy for many years. He studied in the United States, where he received his B.A. from Wesleyan University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Brandeis University. His area of interest and research has been the philosophy of German Idealism and especially the way it incorporated and applied in the modern context the legacy of Ancient Greek metaphysics and ethics.
His particular concern has been to show that philosophy is not an obscure subject, but that it deals with issues that are of immediate concern to all human beings. He is the author of many articles and books on the intellectual bases of European civilization, in which he explores the vital significance of Hellenic ideas on human nature and the striving for political liberty. He is currently associated with Hellenic American University as a teacher of philosophy.