Advisory Board
Éva Bördős
is currently the director of DemNet, the foundation for the Development of Democratic Rights, one of the largest and oldest development NGOs in Hungary that organised the Climate Citizens’ Assembly in Budapest
She is also a member of the board of the Hungarian Association of NGOs for Development and Humanitarian Aid (HAND), and is actively involved in numerous pan-European networks, such as CONCORD (European Confederation of Relief and Development NGOs) and Eurodad (European Network on Debt and Development).
Helene Falch Fladmark
manages the industrial cooperation Eyde cluster, the Norwegian Centre of Expertise (NCE) for Sustainable Process Industry, working for the transition towards a sustainable future, with members ranging from MNCs to regional suppliers along with education and research institutes. Helene holds many public board positions and is a city council representative for Arendal municipality, in Agder.
Liesbet Hooghe
is the W.R Kenan Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Research Professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Florence
Her research and teaching are chiefly on comparative politics, multilevel governance, international organization, political behaviour, and measurement
In 2024, jointly with Gary Marks, she received an Honorary Doctorate of Maastricht University for their work on multilevel governance.
Justus Schönlau
is a political advisor at Committee of the Regions (CoR).
Based in Brussels, Dr. Schönlau has published extensively on the role of the CoR, which gives regions and cities a formal say in EU law-making, ensuring that the position and needs of regional and local authorities are respected. Dr. Schönlau is advising the project in a personal capacity and not on behalf of the CoR
Eva Sørensen
is professor in Public Administration and Democracy at the Department of Social Science and Business at Roskilde University, Denmark
She is an expert on policy innovation, citizen involvement, co-creation and changing role perceptions among citizens, professionals, politicians and public administrators.
Jacob Torfing
is professor in Politics and Institutions and research director of the Roskilde School of Governance, Denmark
He is part of numerous research projects on the co-creation of innovative solutions to complex societal problems and the impact of leadership and institutional design on cross-boundary collaboration.
Diarmuid Torney
is an associate professor at the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University where he researches climate change politics, policy, and governance
He is also director of the DCU Institute for Climate and Society. He is also director of the DCU Institute for Climate and Society. He is also a member of two Irish government advisory councils, the National Economic and Social Council and the Just Transition Commission
He is a member of the Executive Group of the All Island Climate and Biodiversity Research Network and the Climate Change and Biodiversity Advisory Group of Community Foundation Ireland.
He is the co-ordinator of the Horizon Europe RETOOL project, which seeks to both address the climate crisis and reinvigorate and strengthen democratic processes and structures, and DCU Principal Investigator in the tri-jurisdictional Co-Centre for Climate + Biodiversity + Water.
Hege Wallevik
is an Associate Professor in Development Studies at the Department of Global Development and Planning (IGUS) at the University of Agder (UiA), where she teaches and conducts research on migration, integration, and citizen aid actors, as well as gender and everyday life in various contexts
In recent years, she has also focused her research on gender and diversity in academia. Wallevik is also engaged in research projects on interdisciplinary methodologies.
Zora Kovacic
is a Ramón y Cajal research fellow at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. Zora works on the challenges of uncertainty and complexity that emerge when scientific knowledge is used in the governance of environmental issues.
Her research line develops around three main themes: (i) the study of how scientific evidence is used in environmental policy, with a particular interest in metrics and numbers, (ii) how uncertainty affects decision-making, based on the study of energy policies in urban slums and innovative sustainability policies such as the circular economy, and (iii) the role of innovation in environmental governance, with a specific focus on the ‘twin’ digital and green transitions. Zora was co-PI of the research project “The digital turn in environmental governance” (DEMO) on the twin transitions (www.digitalturn.es).
She has previously held positions at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), the Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities at the University of Bergen (SVT-UiB), and Stellenbosch University. She is co-director of the European Centre for Governance in Complexity (ECGC) https://www.ecgc.no/
Kristine Kern (†) 1959 – 2025
was an internationally renowned professor who sadly passed away in February. Her most recent positions were at the Governance of Urban Infrastructure and Global Change at the University of Potsdam, the Leibniz institute for Research on Society and Space, and Åbo Akademi University in Turku.