Meet the speakers and the contributors

Meritxell Chaves has more than thirty years of experience in the higher education sector, in four universities of the Catalan university system, in different functional areas of the University such as academic management, strategic planning, quality and accreditation, and international relations in different organisational cultures. As Secretary General of European University of CHARM-EU since the start of the initiative in 2019 she has been leading CHARM-EU team.

Laura Colò, the Project Officer for ED-AFFICHE, is a dedicated representative for Una Europa and KU Leuven in the consortium. She previously contributed to a prominent network of over 50 universities from the capitals of Europe, UNICA. Laura's professional journey reflects her passion for higher education policies. She is deeply committed to shaping the strategies of European University Alliances, striving to enhance the landscape of academia. As she continues to contribute her expertise, Laura envisions a future where she remains actively engaged in the strategic development of European University Alliances, furthering her commitment to shaping the future of higher education.

Mirko Varano serves as Senior Advisor International Projects at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. Mirko has been active in the field of internationalisation of higher education for the past 30 years. He covered different positions of responsibility at the Turin Technical University between 1992–2008 in the field of international relations. He was appointed as CLUSTER network coordinator from 2008 to 2010. He was previously internationalisation officer at KTH Royal Institute of Technology where he was appointed a member of the international strategy group from 2013 to 2016. He is currently an adviser for international projects at the same institution, with a focus on European funding programmes, university networks, and joint programmes. He has coordinated a number of projects and studies over the past 10 years on the impact of joint programmes on HEIs and graduates and he has been involved in the development and implementation of Erasmus Mundus Master Programmes since the piloting phase in 2003. Since 2019 he covers the position of Key Liaison Officer (project manager) on behalf of KTH in the framework of the Unite! European University Initiative Alliance. Mirko is currently co-chairing the FOR-EU subgroup on the Joint European Degree. Mirko was elected Chair of the EAIE Expert Community European Collaborative Programmes for the 2020–2022 term and confirmed for the 2022-2024 term. Mirko holds a Master’s degree in Political Science with a specialisation in International Relations and European Studies from the University of Turin, Italy.  

Prof. Antonella Forlino is a Full Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Pavia where she is Vice rector for international affairs and Director of the Centre for Global Strategic Engagement (GLOBEC). Prof Forlino is the Group Leader of the UOR on Targeted therapies, gene editing, and pre-clinical models in rare diseases and innovative therapies of the IRCCS San Matteo Hospital in Pavia. She is the University of Pavia referent person for the European Alliance Project EC2U and represents the EC2U Alliance in the ED-AFFICHE Erasmsu+European Degree Label project. Prof. Forlino obtained her PhD in Biochemistry in 1994 and the Speciality Degree in Genetic in 1997 at the University of Pavia and she spent five years as Research Fellow at the National Institute of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.

Her research activity is focused on the molecular, biochemical, and functional study

of genetic skeletal diseases, in particularly the brittle bone disease Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI). She participates to national and international research project focused on bone disorders and recently coordinates the MSCA-DN project CHANGE.

Prof. Willems is professor in education law at the University of Leuven. He is head of the Leuven Centre for Public Law and president of ICOR (Flemish Interuniversity Centre for Education Law and Policy). He is also head of the educational master for social sciences (teacher training programme). He assists the rectory in education matters for KU Leuven and the European University Una Europa. He is project coordinator of ED-AFFICHE. 

Neringa Narbutiene  is EU-CONEXUS institutional coordinator at Catholic University of Valencia and liaison between ED-AFFICHE consortium and EU-CONEXUS. She has experience in international programmes management, international students recruitment, foreign qualification recognition, and, lately, in European projects management through her professional career at Lithuanian and Spanish higher education institutions. 

The main policy maker for Department of Quality of Education of Accreditations of Charles University focused on international joint programmes. His responsibilities range from keeping up to date with latest policy development in European Higher Education Area and incorporating it into CU’s own internal regulations, exchange with national and transnational stakeholders, methodological support for academics seeking to establish a cooperation with HEIs from abroad, and subsequent quality assurance of already established collaborations.

Jan Potoček currently works at the Department of Quality of Education and Accreditations of the Rectorate of Charles University, located in Prague. In this position, he is responsible for the interuniversity studies agenda focusing on PhD studies with dual supervision of dissertations (cotutelle). In 2023, he was a member of the working group of the 4EU+ alliance, which addressed the issue of micro-credentials within the alliance.