Organisation chart

Executive Board

Ludovic Thilly (Chair)

Poitiers

Ludovic Thilly is Full Professor of Physics at the University of Poitiers and, since 2012, Vice-Rector in charge of European Strategy and EC2U Alliance. Member of the Coimbra Group Executive Board since 2015, he was elected Chair in June 2017 and re-elected twice since then. His current mandate goes until 2028.

Professor Thilly is Coordinator General of the EC2U European University Alliance and co-coordinator of FOREU4ALL, the community of practice of the 65 selected Alliances. Professor Thilly is still teaching and supervising PhD students. In his research, he works on the deformation mechanisms of (nano-)materials. He has co-authored 80+ publications in international peer-reviewed journals (incl. 4 book chapters) and given 60+ invited lectures at international conferences and institutions.
Beatrix Busse (Vice-Chair)

Köln

Beatrix Busse is Professor of English Linguistics and the Vice-Rector for Student Affairs and Teaching at the University of Cologne. From 2011 to 2019 she held the Chair of English Linguistics at Heidelberg University where she was appointed as Vice-Rector for Teaching and Student Affairs twice, from 2013 to 2019. Beatrix Busse has a broad range of research interests that include stylistics, corpus linguistics, history of English and historical pragmatics, socio-linguistics, language in urban space with a focus on Brooklyn, New York, and transfer linguistics.

Beatrix Busse is part of the steering committee and the person responsible on behalf of the University of Cologne for the EUniWell Alliance – the European University for Well-Being.
Daniel Donoghue (Treasurer)

Durham

Daniel Donoghue is Professor in the Department of Geography, Co-director of Durham University Institute for Data Science at Durham University. He recently served as University Dean for Internationalisation and as Deputy Head of Faculty in the Faculty of Social Sciences & Health. He has published over 100 articles and books and pursued research in the field of deforestation and forest degradation, land use change and archaeology. In 2009 he shared the Talbert Abrams and the ERDAS awards for the best paper in remote sensing from ASPRS, and in 2012 was awarded the President’s Prize by the Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry Society.
Antonella Forlino

Pavia

Antonella Forlino is full Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Pavia. She teaches in the Degree Course in Medicine and Surgery (in the Harvey and Golgi Courses) and in the Degree Course in Medical and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology. Since 2019 she is Pro Rector for Internationalization and President of the Center for Global Strategic Engagement (GLOBEC) of the University of Pavia. She is also the person responsible for the European University Alliance EC2U (European Campus of City-Universities) at the University of Pavia. She is coordinator of research projects funded by national and international agencies. For years she has been studying the biochemical and molecular basis of hereditary bone diseases with a translational approach.
Dorota Malec

Krakow

Dorota Malec is the Jagiellonian University Vice-Rector for International Relations, a lawyer, professor of jurisprudence, and former Vice-Dean of the JU Faculty of Law and Administration (2008-2016) and JU Vice-Rector for University Development (2016-2020). She chairs the JU Department of Administrative History and Thought and JU Source Text Publishing Unit. She is a member of the International Affairs Committee of the Conference of Rectors in Poland, and former Disciplinary Spokesperson of the General Council of Higher Education. She teaches and publishes in legal history, history of administration, law codification and is the author and co-author of about 160 publications.
Coco Norén

Uppsala

Coco Norén is Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Uppsala University and Professor of French. She is the former Dean of the Faculty of Languages (2014-2020). After receiving her PhD in 1999, she was a Pro Futura Fellow at the Swedish Collegium of Advanced Studies (2002-2008) and an Academy Research Fellow at the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities (2008-2013). In 2015 she was elected a member of the Research Leads Group in the Matariki Network (2015-2020) and she chairs Uppsala University’s Steering Committee for ENLIGHT, a European University Alliance, since 2021. Her field of research is argumentation, text linguistics and polyphony in modern French, in particular European parliamentary discourse and spoken practices. She joined the Executive Board in June 2021.
João Ramalho-Santos

Coimbra

João Ramalho-Santos is Vice-Rector for Research at the University of Coimbra. Full Professor at the Department of Life Sciences, he teaches and researches Development, Reproduction, Metabolism, Bioethics, Biomedicine and Science Communication. He is a reviewer and editor for over 100 scientific journals and international agencies and has (co-)authored over 200 scientific publications. His h-index is 42 (ISI), and he was recently considered one of the top 2% of influential researchers worldwide. He is the co-author of several comic books or comic book related works for both research purposes and scientific dissemination in partnership with the newspaper “PÚBLICO” or with the national agency for science outreach “Ciência Viva”.
Eva Voldřichová Beránková

Prague

Eva Voldřichová Beránková is Full Professor of Romance literatures and Vice-Rector for International Affairs at Charles University (Prague). For nearly twenty years, she has directed the French Department of the Institute of Romance Studies and from 2014-2018 she was Vice-Dean for International Affairs at the Faculty of Arts of the same university. As a graduate of Sorbonne University, she specializes in French literature from the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, literary theory, the history of film, and the Francophone Quebec novel. She has published four monographs, more than twenty collective monographs, many chapters of books and articles in international scientific journals. She is currently the key manager of two major European projects targeting collective security.

In terms of international cooperation, she has been very actively involved in the inter-university alliance 4EU+ since 2018. She was at the origin of cooperation with the main strategic partners of Charles University. Since taking up her position, she has also coordinated activities aimed at assisting Ukrainian universities in the field of research, development and European funding. Eva Voldřichová Beránková was elected on the Executive Board in June 2024.
Efrem Yildiz Sadak

Salamanca

Efrem Yildiz Sadak is a Full Professor at the Faculty of Philology, Department of Hebrew and Aramaic Studies, of the University of Salamanca. He is specialised in Aramaic history, language and literature. He is a member of the Commission of the Degree in Hebrew and Aramaic Studies. He is a committee member of several scientific journals, the (co-)author of books and articles in journals on Aramaic language, literature, history and culture of the Aramaic-speaking peoples. Prof Yildiz served as Vice-Rector for International Relations at the University of Salamanca from 2017 to 2022.

Rectors’ Advisory Group

Marjo Kaartinen (Honorary President)

Turku

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

Barcelona

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

Bergen

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

Prague

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

Granada

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

Bologna

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

Leiden

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.

Administrative & Financial Committee

Patricia Pardon (Chair)

KU Leuven

Patricia Pardon has been since 2012 the Head of the Research Project Administration department at KU Leuven.

Patricia obtained a Master’s degree in Applied Economic Sciences at KU Leuven in 1990. She worked for more than 10 years as external auditor with KPMG, followed by 5 years as a company controller, before joining the Central Financial Services of KU Leuven in 2006.
Ana Coimbra

Coimbra

Ana Coimbra works as Head of the Audit and Management Risk Prevention Office under the Rectorate of the University of Coimbra, since 2021.

She previously served as Director of Financial Management Service (2015-2020) and before that, as Head of the Procurement Division (2011-2015).

Ana graduated in Economics at the University of Coimbra in 2001, and has a postgraduate degree in Public Accounting and Management.
Danny Donoghue

Durham

Daniel Donoghue is Professor in the Department of Geography, Co-director of Durham University Institute for Data Science at Durham University. He was elected Coimbra Group Treasurer in June 2023 and as such, also serves as ex officio member of the Administrative and Financial Committee.
Geraint Howells

Galway

Geraint Howells was the Executive Dean for Business, Public Policy, and Law at the University of Galway until December 2024. Previously he was Professor of Commercial Law, at Manchester University, where he remains a visiting professor. He has been Dean of Law at the City University of Hong Kong and Head of the Law Schools in Manchester and Lancaster.

He was called to the bar in 2002 through a special route for distinguished academics and was awarded an LLD in 2014. He is a former President of the International Association of Consumer Law.
Jessica Levyne

UCLouvain

Ms Jessica Levyne works at the Internal Audit Service of UCLouvain since 2009. She has been serving on the CG Administrative and Financial Committee since 2013.

She graduated in Master Economics, Social Sciences and Business Administration in FUNDP Namur in 1999.

She worked in Deloitte Luxemburg & Financial sector, BNP Paribas Luxemburg and CitiBank Dublin.