Marjo Kaartinen is the Rector of the University of Turku since 1 August 2024. She is full professor of Cultural History (on a leave of absence). In 2022–2024 she served the University of the Arts Helsinki as Vice-Rector for Education.
Kaartinen has served the University of Turku for more than three decades as teacher and researcher. She was appointed as professor in 2015. She served as Head of the School of History, Culture and Ats Studies in 2017–2022. Her keen interests as Rector are, among others, ethics, developing academic leadership, staff and student welfare, facilitating young scholars’ career development, and intensifying international cooperation.
Kaartinen’s research interests have focused on the cultural history of religion, gender and bodiliness. She has published two monographs in English, one on the cultural history of English monasticism in early Reformation and the other on the history of breast cancer in the eighteenth century.
Joan Guàrdia Olmos is the Rector of the University of Barcelona. Full Professor at the Faculty of Psychology, he has been teaching since 1984 on the topics of the research methodology in psychology. Doctor of Psychology from the same university, he did postgraduate studies in Statistical Data Analysis at the University of Essex (England).
He has participated in more than thirty doctorate courses (national and international). He is a visiting professor at various universities and has given more than one hundred seminars in areas of his research activity at European and American universities. His research activity has led him to the direction of more than 20 doctoral theses, both in his own university and others, and to the presentation of more than 250 communications in congresses and scientific meetings, as well as the publication of more than 40 books and chapters and finally to the generation of more than 250 scientific articles, of which more than 200 in indexed journals and more than 180 in own journals of the Journal Citation Reports. He is currently the coordinator responsible for the Consolidated Research Group (SGR 266) on Quantitative Psychology and also for the Consolidated Teaching Innovation Group on Learning Statistics.
He has held various academic positions in university management both at his university and at other institutions. He is also an evaluator of different calls and programmes of various national and international evaluation agencies and indexed journals.
Margareth Hagen is the Rector of the University of Bergen since January 2021. As the elected pro-rector of the institution between 2017 and 2021, she was overseeing research ethics, PhD Programs, and the university’s research engagement. She chaired the university’s research committee which advises the University Board on research policy and long-term strategic research issues. In the period 2013-2017 Hagen held the position as the elected Dean of the Faculty of the Humanities. She has served as Head of Research at the Department of Foreign Languages. Hagen has also chaired the University’s Committee for Equal Opportunities.
A board member of the European Alliance for Social Sciences and Humanities, Hagen also chairs the Nordic/Baltic advisory Board of Academia Europaea’s Bergen knowledge Hub. She is board member of SNL (Encyclopedia of Norway) and member of the scientific committee of the journal Critica Letteraria. Margareth Hagen is Professor of Italian Literature. Her research has focused on the relationship between poetics, literature, and history in 16th century Italy. In recent years, she has worked particularly on issues at the intersection between the humanities and the natural sciences.
Milena Králíčková is the Rector of Charles University since February 2022. She graduated from the Faculty of Medicine in Pilsen at Charles University in Prague in 1996, after which she worked at the Department of Histology and Embryology and at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology of the University hospital and Faculty of Medicine in Pilsen. In 1997 she was awarded by The Fulbright Commission Scholarship for the academic year 1998/1999 and she has worked at The Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard in Boston, U.S.A. in the team of Reproductive Endocrine Unit. In 2016, Mrs. Kralickova became a professor of medical histology and embryology. She was the Vice Dean of the Faculty of Medicine in Pilsen between 2010 and 2014 and the Vice Rector for Education of Charles University between 2014 and 2022.
In June 2023, Rector Milena Králíčková was elected President of the Czech Rectors Conference until 2025.
Pedro Mercado Pacheco is Rector Magnífico of the University of Granada. He is a Professor of Philosophy of Law at the Faculty of Law, where he lectures on the inter-university Master’s Degree in Culture of Peace, Conflicts, Education and Human Rights, among other programmes. He was a visiting professor at the Universities of Edinburgh (UK), Catania (Italy), Guanajuato (Mexico), and at the Centre for Legal Studies of Puebla (Mexico). He also lectured on, and coordinated, the UGR Master’s Degree in Legal Responses to the Phenomenon of Globalisation at the University of Camagüey (Cuba). Moreover, he has served as the Coordinator of the Master’s Degree in Human Rights at the UGR, which is offered in collaboration with the Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office of the State of Guanajuato (Mexico).
In the field of research, Mercado is the recipient of an Outstanding Doctorate Award. He is the author of several books, book chapters, and research articles on the economic analysis of law, as well as on globalisation, the State and law. His latest lines of research focus on the fields of governance, democracy and law, new forms of slavery, and human rights. He is a member of UGR’s Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPAZ) and of the Iberoamerican Research Network on Modern-day Slavery and Human Rights.
Mercado has held multiple university management positions in a variety of roles. He has been a member of the University Senate during several terms (2004-2008 and from 2012 to the present). More recently he served as Vice-Rector for Institutional Policy and Planning (2019-2022).
Giovanni Molari has served as Rector of the University of Bologna since 2021. He has been employed at the University of Bologna as full professor in Agricultural Machinery and Mechanisation since 2016, after working as an associate professor (2010-2016) and as a researcher (2000-2010). He holds a PhD in Materials Engineering from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. He is qualified to practice as an engineer and has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Bologna.
Molari’s research activity mainly focused on issues in designing agricultural machines and testing the reliability of agricultural tractors. In addition, he dealt with tillage machines, crop harvesters and machines for animal husbandry, as well as the use of biomass to produce energy.
He coordinated national projects, acted as a scientific supervisor in numerous research agreements with companies, and authored more than 150 manuscripts, 53 of which published in journals indexed on Scopus. He was managing editor (2006-2014) and editor-in-chief (2014-2018) of the Journal of Agricultural Engineering.
At the University of Bologna, he served as Deputy Head (2015-2018) and Director (2018-2021) of the Department of Agricultural and Food Sciences He was also a member of the University’s Academic Senate and human resources committee from 2018 to 2021.
He is the President of the Magna Charta Observatory.
Annetje Ottow has been the President of the Executive Board of Leiden University since 2021. She is also a professor of Public Economic Law at the Faculty of Law. In the Board, she focuses on: Sustainability Strategy; Valorisation; Alliances, external and international relations; Social safety; Diversity and inclusion. Annetje Ottow studied at Leiden University, receiving a Master of Laws (cum laude) in business law, and went on to receive a Master of Laws from Queen Mary College in London in 1990. She then worked in the legal profession for 16 years, first at De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek and later as a partner at Houthoff Buruma. From 2006 to 2013, she was a member of the Board of the Independent Post and Telecommunications Authority (OPTA).
In 2006, Ottow obtained her PhD from the University of Amsterdam, with a study on regulation of the telecoms sector. In her research, which focuses on regulators and market forces, she combines academic expertise with practical experience.
In 2007, Ottow was appointed professor of Public Economic Law at Utrecht University. From 2014 to 2018, she was dean of the Faculty of Law, Economics, Governance and Organisation there, and Vice President of the Executive Board from 2018 to 2021.