Organisation chart

Executive Board

Ludovic Thilly (Chair)

Poitiers

Ludovic Thilly is Full Professor at the University of Poitiers. Since 2012, he is Executive Vice-Rector in charge of European Networks. Member of the Executive Board of the Coimbra Group since 2015, he was elected Chair in June 2017 and re-elected in June 2020 for four years.

Ludovic Thilly is a Physicist and works on the deformation mechanisms of (nano-)materials. He has co-authored 70+ publications in international peer-reviewed journals (incl. 4 book chapters) and given 50+ invited lectures at international conferences and institutions.

Professor Thilly is Coordinator of the EC2U European University Alliance and coordinates the informal group of the 24 newly selected Alliances.
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.
Piia Björn

Turku

Piia Björn is the Vice-Rector (Education) of the University of Turku since the beginning of year 2020. She has held positions in several Finnish universities. As for international experience, she has served in the Board of the Fulbright Finland Association since 2015 (incl. positions as Vice-chair of the Board 2017-2018, Chair of the Board 2019-2020). Currently, she leads the actions of the European University Alliance EC2U (European Campus of City Universities) at the University of Turku.
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”.
Lenka Rovná

Prague

Lenka Rovná is a Jean Monnet Chair Ad Personam and three times the bearer of Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence in European Studies at Charles University. She served as a Vice-Rector at Charles University for European Affairs from 2014 – 2022. Currently she is a Rector’s Board Member and Rector’s Representative in 4EU+. Lenka Rovná is a Professor at the Department of European Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences. She is publishing and teaching in the field of European Politics and British History and Politics. She is a member of the Executive Board of Coimbra Group, member of the Academic Council of Europaeum, and a member of Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions’ Advisory Group at the EC. In 2002-3 she served as an Alternate to the Czech Government’s Representative in the Convention preparing European Constitution, the basis for Lisbon Treaty.
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

Axel Freimuth (Honorary President)

Köln

Axel Freimuth is the Rector of the University of Cologne since 2005. After his doctorate and subsequent postdoctoral lecture qualification (Habilitation) in physics in Cologne, he became professor at the University of Karlsruhe in 1996.

In 1998, he accepted the Chair for Experimental Solid-State Physics at the University of Cologne. From 1999 to 2000, he was managing director of the Institute of Physics II, and from 2000 to 2002, head of the Department of Physics. Following a research stay in 2002 at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, he was Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences from 2003 to 2005. Since 2007, Professor Freimuth has served as chair of the advisory board of the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research (Cologne) and as a member of the advisory boards of the Max Planck Institutes for the Study of Societies (Cologne), Radio Astronomy (Bonn), Biology of Ageing (Cologne) and Metabolism Research (Cologne).

From 2008 to 2010, Professor Freimuth chaired the Rectors’ Conference of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (LRK). In February 2018, Professor Freimuth was awarded an honorary doctorate from Tbilisi State University.
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.
Jukka Kola

Turku

Jukka Kola is the Rector of the University of Turku and the Chairman of the national Forum for International Affairs in Higher Education and Research of Finland. He previously held the posts of Rector (2013-2018), Vice-Rector (2010-2013) and Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry (2004-2009) at the University of Helsinki where he started his career as Professor in the 1990s. His academic field is Agricultural Economics and Policy.

Jukka Kola has also served as a trustee in several international associations, including the Executive Committees and the Board of Directors of e.g. the European Association of Agricultural Economists (EAAE), the International Food and Agribusiness Association (IFAMA), for which he still acts as a Counsellor, and the League of the European Research Universities (LERU) where he was a member of the Board of Directors and the Rectors’ Assembly.
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.
Daniela Mapelli

Padova

Daniela Mapelli is the Rector of the University of Padua since October 2021. She graduated in Experimental Psychology from the University of Padua before obtaining her PhD in the same discipline from the University of Trieste. She spent two years (1993 to 1995) at Carnegie Mellon University in the Department of Psychology’s Cognitive Neuroscience Lab. Between 1997 and 2003 she held post-doc positions in the Department of General Psychology and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Medicine of the University of Padua.

In 2003, she became a university researcher. In 2010, she became an Associate Professor and in 2016, she obtained a Full Professorship position at the University of Padua where she teaches Neuropsychology and Neuropsychological Rehabilitation. She has held several management positions at the University of Padua, including Vice-Rector of Teaching (2015-2021) and President of the University Presidium for Quality and Teaching Accreditations (2015-2021). She is a member of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, the Herbert Simon Society, the Italian Association of Psychology, and the Italian Society of Neuropsychology.
Annetje Ottow

Leiden

Annetje Ottow is 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

Markus Gelhoet (Chair)

Göttingen

Markus Gelhoet heads the Department of Finances and Control at the University of Göttingen. Since 2014, he is member of the Administrative and Financial Committee. He act as Chair since 2017.

Markus Gelhoet graduated in Business Administration with a focus on Information Systems. After his PhD in 2009, he joined the University of Göttingen and served in different positions in financial and research administration.