Lecturers

Director of Centre for Innovation Studies at the University of Economics and Management in Prague, PhD and assistant professor in economic policy, member of team of specialists of UNECE on Innovation and Competitiveness Policies in Geneva,  social innovation consultant at the CR Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, and in the Agency for Social Inclusion at the CR Government Office, member of international jury for SozialMarie, European prize for social innovation. Specializes in social innovation research, analysis and social impact evaluation, mentoring social innovators and counselling organizations on social impact assessment and development.

Mgr. Lenka Kissová is a PhD student at the department of Sociology at Masaryk University in Brno. She has completed studies of Social Anthropology and International Relations at Comenius University in Bratislava (Slovakia). Her research interests focus on migration, political discourse and securitisation as well as on human rights and minorities, especially the Roma.

She worked in a human rights NGO Milan Šimečka Foundation on projects aiming at the social inclusion of the Roma in Slovakia. She worked also as an impact evaluator in a social innovation project aiming at the inclusion and employment of immigrants living in Brno.

Elena Gallová Kriglerová completed her sociology studies at the Faculty of Arts at the Comenius University in Bratislava. She is a co-founder of the Centre for the Research of Ethnicity and Culture and has been its director since 2012. Cultural integration, access of children with minority background to education, and interethnic relations are among the issues she deals with most frequently. Currently she has immersed herself into various aspects of the rights of children with minority background.

Within the field of inclusive education, she is one of the well recognized experts on the national level. She has been a co-creator of the national campaign We want to know more about the future of education in Slovakia which put together perspectives on education of children, parents, teachers and also the public and opened a long needed public discussion about the reform of schooling. She has authored and co-authored a number of publications, within the field of inclusive education mainly Škola ako ghetto (School as a ghetto), Škola pre všetkých? (School for everyone?), O krok bližšie k inklúzií (One step closer towards the social inclusion) and Kľukaté cesty k inkluzívnemu vzdelávaniu na Slovensku (Winding roads towards inclusive education in Slovakia).

She has a daughter, Lila, who is very much interested in exploring unicorns and their relations with humans. When Elena does not work or play savannah animals with her daughter, she seeks solace in good books.

A father of three. I am an organization developer and a sociologist since 1994. For past 15 years I have worked as a CEO of an NGO, and also lectured in a few European universities as an associate professor (Brno, Budapest, Vienna and Milan). By education I am a Ph.D. in Social Sciences and a former IT engineer.

In the past 20 years I have launched digital journals on ethnic and social issues, completed numerous countrywide and international research projects, and worked for businesses in the field of business ethics and organization development.

Since 2013 in "BeyondPhD" programme I do thesis management for Ph.D. students, especially in the field of research methodology, writing and career management.

I produce stop-motion animation movies aka “LittnerBudapest” through which I want to call attention to social injustice. You can see one of the movies on the following link.

Sociologist, ethnologist, PhD in Human Sciences. She is a researcher and lecturer in the Institute of Sociology at the Jagiellonian University. Her research interests concentrate on the issues of social exclusion, social problems, communicative behaviors and processes – including social cognitive problems and territorial behaviors. Currently she is involved in two research projects:

• from 2013: “The social closing of space. The influence of social exclusion on perception and cognitive schematization of physical space and territorial behavior of the excluded people”. Role in the project: the Principal Investigator. Sources of funding: National Centre of Science” [DEC-2012/05/B/HS6/03876].
• from 2015: “Differences and boundaries in the process of creating neighbourhood communities in large cities. A social-spatial study”. Role in the project: contractor (other team members: M. Smagacz-Poziemska, A. Bukowski, K. Kurnicki). Sources of funding: National Centre of Science [UMO- 2014/15/B/HS6/01949].

Author, editor and co-author of books and articles related to the topic of social problems, exclusion, social cognition. In her teaching and papers she deals additionally with problems of social work, especially methods and rules of assistance process. Within the last 10 years, she participated in several research projects, nationwide and international conferences on the issues of poverty, exclusion and marginalization, social cognition and behavior, social work and social welfare.

Ivana Rapošová graduated from the Faculty of Social Studies at the Masaryk University, majoring in sociology and international relations. At her alma mater, she is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in sociology as a full-time PhD student. Academically, she is interested in cultural and pragmatic sociology, particularly in relation to social inclusion of minorities and migrants in the urban landscapes. She indulges in qualitative research methods, especially in combination with visual materials. Ivana is spending the academic year 2016/2017 at the University of Vienna, where she is conducting her Ph.D. research on civic and cultural participation of the minority groups in the Central European cities.

Since 2013, she has been working for the Centre for the Research of Ethnicity and Culture as a junior research fellow, focusing primarily on inclusive education and minority rights. She considers this opportunity to be a precious addition to her academic career which helps her to understand the society far better than solely from the academic table.

In the past she has spent one semester at the Bosphorus University in Istanbul, four months working as a volunteer in a rural community in Nepal and completed a fellowship in community organizing in the USA. All these pieces of experience significantly shaped her sociological thinking and attitude towards social inclusion.

Dr. Michal Vašečka (1972) operates at the Department of Sociology of the Masaryk University in Brno since September 2002. Since 2005 Michal Vašečka lectures also at the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences of the Comenius University Bratislava, since 2012 at the ISES Koszeg and at the Bratislava International School of liberal arts since 2015.

Dr. Michal Vašečka is a founder of the Center for the Research of Ethnicity and Culture, he served a director of the CVEK in the period from January 2006 to May 2012. In 1999 - 2005 he has worked at the Slovak think-tank Institute of Public Affairs as a researcher and since January 2000 as a program director on expert analysis of the Slovak transformation process with a focus on national minorities and the state of civil society in Slovakia.

He has been a consultant for the World Bank in 2000-2008 and in 2011-2012. Since 2007 he is a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor Bonn and since 2010 Dr. Vašečka serves as a non-resident research associate at the European Centre for Minority Issues in Flensburg. Since 2010 Michal Vašečka is a member of the Board of the Fulbright Commission in Slovakia (chairman of the Board since 2012). Since September 2012 he serves as a representative of the Slovak republic in the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), human rights body of the Council of Europe. Since 2013 he is a member of the Executive Board of the Platform for Improvement of Health Status of Disadvantaged Groups, in 2012-2013 he served as a pro bono external adviser for Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Slovak republic.

As a visiting scholar he operated at the New School University in New York (1996-1997), at the University of London (1998), in 2008-2009 he lectured at the Georgetown University in Washington, DC and in 2015 at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.