Alpbach Seminars

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Seminar Chair:

• Nona Shepphard is one of the Associate Directors at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and International Consultant at the Lir Academy in Dublin, RADA’s sister school. She is also a freelance writer and director, with over 160 productions and 50 commissioned plays to her credit.
• Hosted by RADA students!

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Seminar Chairs:

Diana Urge-Vorsatz is elected IPCC Vice Chair in 2023, she served as Vice Chair of Working Group III and Lead Author for AR4 and AR5 (Fourth and Fifth Assessment Report). She is Vice President of the Hungarian Scientific Panel on Climate Change, holds a PhD from UC Berkeley and UCLA, led many research projects, and delivered 200+ keynotes.

Karin Reiss, with over 15 years of experience, she is currently managing a portfolio of projects and programmes in the field of sustainable energy, industrial decarbonisation and climate change adaptation in industries with a geographical focus on Sub-Saharan Africa.

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Seminar Chairs:

• Maja Nenadovic (Reflectory) is monitoring-evaluation-learning and program design consultant, facilitator, and civic education and human rights trainer with 20 years of experience in over 40 countries. She is author of “Across Divides – Training Workshops for Depolarization of Communication” methodology.

• Alison Goldsworthy (Accord) advises organisations from Disney to the UN on navigating polarisation, and is also a lecturer at Stanford University. Her previous career was as a political adviser and campaigner.

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Seminar Chairs:

• Petra Herczeg leads the AI in Higher Education working group at the University of Vienna, is the co-editor of “Media Journal” and specialises in migration media, intercultural communication, and journalism research. Her post-doc research from 2016 was on human rights communication.
• Armin Scholl (University of Münster) pursued studies in communication science, political science, and literature. Scholl has held the position of full professor since 2010. His research topics include journalism research, theories and methods of communication research, and alternative media und counter-public.

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Seminarleiter:innen:

• Josef Mitterer (University of Klagenfurt) published “The Beyond of Philosophy” and “The Flight from Contingency”. Works on Mitterer are “The Third Philosophy. Critical Contributions to Josef Mitterers Nondualism” (2010), “The Non-dualizing Philosophy of Josef Mitterer” (2008) and “Non-dualism: A Conceptual Revision?” (2013).
• Katharina Neges (Graz University of Technology, University of Music and Performing Arts Graz) has held over 40 courses at various Austrian universities on a wide range of philosophical topics and their applicability to other disciplines. Her main areas of research are ethics, metaethics and philosophy of science.

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Seminar Chairs:

• Felix Creutzig heads the Land Use, Infrastructure and Transportation working group at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC). He is lead author of the fifth IPCC report and the Global Energy Assessment. He teaches Climate Change and Infrastructure at the Technical University of Berlin.
• Nina Kolleck is a full professor of education and socialisation theory at the University of Potsdam and has won several teaching awards. Kolleck is a member of several advisory boards including for the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, and Bucerius Law School.

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Seminar Chairs:

• Nona Shepphard is one of the Associate Directors at RADA and International Consultant at the Lir Academy in Dublin, RADA’s sister school. She is also a freelance writer and director, with over 160 productions and 50 commissioned plays to her credit.
• Hosted by RADA students!

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Seminar Chairs:

• Lucy English (Bath Spa University) is a poet and filmmaker. Her poetry film project “The Book of Hours” was shortlisted for the New Media Writing Prize in 2018. Her most recent project is “Cancer Alley”, a hologram installation created with Outlier Moving Pictures. English is co-director of the Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival.
• Charley Lane-McElroy (student at Bath Spa University) is a poet and playwright working in the English language. His work explores themes of identity, the body, surrealism, and folk.
• Cassandra McLaughlin (student at Bath Spa University) is passionate about nature and travel writing,. She is thrilled to step into the global conversation of how to make this world a more diverse, regenerative, peaceful, creative, and attentive place through the transformative practice of creative writing.

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Seminar Chair:

Charlie Wilson is working as a scientist at the intersection between innovation, people and policy in the context of energy and climate change mitigation, he researches the drivers and dynamics of energy transitions at micro and macro-scales, both historically and into a low-carbon future.

Elena Verdolini, she assesses the economic and distributional implications of climate and energy policies and studies how to overcome the barriers and challenges of sustainable innovation and digitalisation. She was a lead author of the IPCC (AR6) and leads the project “Disruptive Digitalisation for Decarbonisation”.

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Seminar Chairs:

• With a background in sociology, Katja Mayer (University of Vienna) works at the intersection of science, technology, and society, focusing on Open Science and Citizen Science through the lens of critical data and infrastructure studies. Currently she is exploring power dynamics of digital commons and open-source machine learning.
• Claudia Müller-Birn (Freie Universität Berlin) leads the Human-Centered Computing research group and focuses on human-computer collaboration. Her goal is to find ways to combine human and algorithmic intelligence in value-driven, meaningful interactions.

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Seminar Chairs:

• As an expert on cybersecurity and emerging technologies, Joe Burton served as a ministerial advisor in New Zealand and the UK, and is the coordinator of the CYDIPLO Jean Monnet Network on Cyber Diplomacy.
• Simona Soare (Lancaster University) is a well-published author and expert in the field of defence innovation, the applications of emerging technologies in defence capabilities, software-defined defence, digital transformation of defence, and the future of war.

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Seminar Chairs:

• Nadine Schratzberger is the founder of the Vienna-based sustainable outdoor label MONTREET and Co-founder of Fashion Revolution Austria. Her work is well known for its combination of functionality, sophisticated designs, and circularity.
• Sabinna Rachimova (Fashion Revolution Austria, SABINNA) graduated from Central Saint Martins College and the University of Cambridge. As a founder, consultant and lecturer in the fields of ethical leadership and sustainable fashion, she was part of Forbes’ 30 under 30 list and Drapers Ones to Watch 2022.

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Seminar Chair:

• Daniel Bayer (Fingu GmbH) has founded two fintech start-ups and brings nearly a decade of professional stock market investing experience. He serves on the advisory boards of various companies and is an initiator of major projects across Austria and Europe, driving forward the financial sector.
• Katharina Schiretz

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Seminar Chairs:

• Ronak Gopaldas (Signal Risk) is a political economist, academic , writer and speaker. His work focuses on the intersection of politics, economics, and business in Africa.
• Velina Tchakarova is a geopolitical strategist and certified Strategic Foresight Expert, member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the European Forum Alpbach, Visiting Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation India, and member of Eastern Circles India and WICCI’s India-EU Business Council.

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Seminar Chairs:

• Jason Frasca (Emergent Futures Lab) is a strategic innovation consultant pioneering award-winning innovation processes, frameworks, methods, tools, and practices that transform organisations into disruptive innovators. He thrives by addressing two questions: “What is innovation?” and “How do you innovate?”
• Iain Kerr (Emergent Futures Lab) is a designer working at the intersection of creativity, ecology, and emergent systems. He focusses on designing novel collective processes to transform seemingly intractable problems into novel problems worth having for worlds worth making.

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Seminar Chairs:

• Throughout her 17 years of experience in academia, international development, and philanthropy, Amollo Ambole (Amollo.com) has consistently delivered exceptional results through rigorous research, strategic partnerships, and a passion for creativity.
• Sinead O'Sullivan leads global research into deep tech, capital markets and global innovation systems. Formerly leading Harvard Business School’s Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness and MIT’s AI Policy for the World Group, O’Sullivan currently writes for the Financial Times.
• Hans Stoisser (Ecotec GmbH) supports European companies to gain a foothold in East Africa. In the 1980s he lived in West Africa, in the 1990s he worked in development in Southern Africa, in the 2000s as a management trainer. His latest book is on African-European collaboration (Kesho Business, 2021).

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Seminar Chairs:

• Alexander Gstrein is a researcher and consultant in the field of Organisational Culture as well as a trainer for personal, team and organisational development within the Austrian Armed Forces.
• Alexander Schiller has been an officer in the Austrian Armed Forces since 2000 and is the former commander of the Austrian unit for psychological operations (PSYOPS). He has gained international operational experience in Bosnia & Herzegovina, Chad and Afghanistan and is currently responsible for the training of leadership trainers (Train the Trainer).

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Seminar Chairs:

• Irene Giner-Reichl (EFA) has spent more than 40 years promoting peaceful international relations, sustainable development, human rights (especially of women), and global issues. She represented Austria as Permanent Representative to the UN in Vienna, and as Ambassador in Beijing and in Brasília.
• Kandarp Mehta (IESE Business School) has done his PhD at IESE Business School in Barcelona. He has also been a visiting fellow at Kellogg school of Management. His primary areas of teaching, research and writing are negotiation and creativity. He has also worked as an actor in theatre, TV, and cinema in Spain.

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Seminar Chairs:

• Berhard Haslhofer leads the Cryptofinance research group at the Complexity Science Hub. He and his team focus on developing and applying algorithmic methods to gain deeper insights into the technical and socio-economic aspects of crypto-asset systems, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.
• Masarah Paquet-Clouston is head of the EconCrimeLab, a research hub focusing on uncovering and understanding profit-driven crimes. She is also an external faculty member at the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna. She presented her research at international conferences, including BlackHat USA, DEFCON and CERT-EU.

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Seminar Chairs:

• Corina Pirvulescu (Civics International) has twelve years of experience in youth electoral engagement in Europe and USA. She was a youth representative and grew to advise public institutions, international organisations, and co-author of publications on youth democratic participation. She holds a degree as Executive Master of Public Administration from the Hertie School.
• Alberto Alemanno is the Jean Monnet Professor of EU Law at HEC Paris, professor at the College of Europe, and founder of The Good Lobby – as well as World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and Ashoka fellow; regular contributor to Le Monde, The Guardian, Politico Europe, Bloomberg, and Euronews.

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Seminar Chairs:

• Johannes Narbeshuber is a business psychologist, management consultant, organisational developer, Member of the Board of the Austrian Coaching Council, teaching and senior coach of the DBVC, head of the “Mindfulness in Organizations” (MIO) certificate course, and author of books on leadership and coaching.
• Esther Narbeshuber (Mindlead Institut GmbH) is an accomplished CEO with expertise in change management, agility, and mindfulness. Leading a dynamic team of 30 trainers, she spearheads innovative training programmes tailored for both large corporations and mid-sized enterprises.
• Paul Plener is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and current Head of Department of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry of the University Hospital Vienna. Research interests include stress and trauma, suicidality and non-suicidal self-injury, as well as resilience and building mental health.

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Seminar Chairs:

• Duyeon Kim makes policy recommendations based on fact-based research regarding the Korean Peninsula, Indo-Pacific security, nuclear issues and arms control. She also teaches at the Yonsei University Graduate School of International Relations in Seoul, Korea.
• Michael Reiterer teaches after 40 years of diplomatic service now at various universities, such as the Brussels School of Governance. Throughout his academic career, he has specialised in EU foreign policy, EU-Asia relations and inter-regionalism; areas in which he has published extensively.

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Seminar Chairs:

• Marina Andrijevic (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis) completed her PhD at the Humboldt University in Berlin and her MSc at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. Her research focuses on integrating quantifications of socio-economic characteristics, such as income, governance, education, and gender equality into climate change assessments.
• Jesus Crespo-Cuaresma is Professor of Economics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU) and Research Scholar at the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). His research interests are applied econometrics, macroeconomics and economic growth and development.

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Seminar Chairs:

• Michel Friedling
• Volker Liebig (Institute for Space Systems, University of Stuttgart) was Earth Observation Director of ESA for twelve years. He is co-author of the Baveno Manifesto (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) and implemented the space component of Copernicus. He began his career in polar research and was later Program Director of the German Space Program.
• Hermann Ludwig Möller is the Director of the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI), the Vienna-based European Think Tank for Space. With the ESPI Team, he supports the work of the High Level Advisory Group (HLAG) . Earlier responsibilities include Head of the Strategy, Programme and Transformation Office at the ESA Telecommunications Directorate and Head of the Copernicus Space Segment Office at the ESA Earth Observation Directorate.
• Sinead O'Sullivan (European Space Policy Institute) leads global research into deep tech, capital markets and global innovation systems. Formerly leading Harvard Business School’s Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness and MIT’s AI Policy for the World Group, O’Sullivan currently writes for the Financial Times.

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Seminar Chairs:

• Anne Leppäjärvi is an award-winning journalism trainer and media literacy expert, shaping European journalism education. Leppäjärvi is President of the European Journalism Training Association and conducts research on journalist competency objectives for a doctoral study at Tampere University.
• Veronika Munk is an award-winning Hungarian journalist, digital expert and journalism educator with over 20 years experience. Munk has a media studies PhD and teaches journalism courses at ELTE University.

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Seminar Chairs:

• Florian Reider (student at Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna) works as a musician in many different fields and genres and strives to always fulfil his own demand for authenticity and artistic conviction. Constructing his activities on an eclectic form of working, he tries to incorporate diverse influences without aiming to serve a certain style.
• Wieda Shirzadeh (student at Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna) specializes in contemporary and hip-hop dance and excels in dynamic collaborations with other artists. Her extensive knowledge and experience make her work accessible and inviting to all, ensuring that each project is a thrilling experience for everyone involved.