Events

Nika comes from a small town in Slovenia called Metlika, she studies sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana and in her ‘free’ time she works with different local societies and organisations, such as MC BIT Črnomelj, through which she received a chance to participate in the KID_ACTIONS co-creation sessions.

Francesca is an experienced Senior Manager with a history of work in international organisations and non-profit sector, a human rights educator and facilitator with more than twenty years of experience and – most of all – a Human Rights activist.

Gareth works on a number of projects as part of the Digital Citizenship team, including the development of the KidActions educational toolkit. He also provides consultancy for the UK Safer Internet Centre, as well as delivering education and awareness sessions to youth and adults on safe, healthy and positive internet use. Gareth holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and is a qualified primary school teacher.

Igor Jojkic has extensive experience of more than 15 years in providing and designing technical and mentor support to youth organizations, networks and other CSOs in the field of non-violent communication, social inclusion and human rights protection through various non-formal approaches. Currently, as a freelance consultant supports various civil platforms and business entities in their learning and development projects. Igor holds M.A. in Media and Communication.

Bill has had a long career in the delivery, development and management of specialist advice and support services in a variety of statutory and third sector settings. After joining Stop Hate UK in 2015, Bill has been extensively engaged, both in the delivery of front-line services and, over the last 7  years, has had the privilege of taking a lead role in the development and delivery of a number of projects largely concerned with understanding and responding to manifestations of ‘online hate’.  This has now become the primary focus of Bill’s role within Stop Hate UK.

Valbona Makovci holds a BA Degree with first-grade honours in International Relations and Diplomacy from the American College of Thessaloniki and is currently pursuing her Master degree in International Education Management at the University of Ludwigsburg Germany and Helwan University in Cairo. Previously she has worked in the development and civil society sector with a focus on education in numerous organizations and international development agencies operating in Kosovo some of which include the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), Save the Children, OSCE Kosovo, USAID and Peer Educators Network (PEN) local NGO which focuses on youth empowerment and social inclusion of marginalized groups in Kosovo. Having quite an extensive experience in international projects and collaboration, she has established the NGO “e’du: Dedicated to Education”; whereas, at the moment she is doing a job-shadowing at the German Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BiBB) as part of her studies.

Enrico’s research focuses on the design and evaluation of remote monitoring technologies and applications. His main research interests are related to the organizational and interpersonal adjustment related to the adoption of ICTs in the medical practice, with particular regard to patient-provider interactions. His research spans over a decade resulting in over 60 publications in international journals and conferences.

He has coordinated the requirement gathering phase in European projects aiming at exploiting AI tools to support prevention 1) for elderly people with mild frailty (WellCo, H2020) 2) negative effects of cyberbullying among teenagers (CREEP, EIT Digital).

João holds a Master’s in Informatics Engineering from the University of Coimbra, specialising in Intelligent Systems. He has an active role in online safety, digital literacy discussions, and best practices, being a Better Internet for Kids Youth Ambassador since 2012.  João collaborates at the national and international levels to roll out initiatives and resources that contribute to a better internet. He is an active member of several youth groups in the Internet Governance field like the Youth IGF Movement and EURid Youth Committee and participates in youth programs of CoE, ICANN, and ITU. 

In 2014 after finishing two years of obligatory military service, he started his studies at the University of Cyprus in the department of Educational Sciences. His primary school teacher training focused on the inclusion of children with disabilities, art and self-expression, and on Environmental Sciences. In 2018 after graduating as a primary school teacher, he enrolled in the interdisciplinary program MA in Gender studies at the same department and University. His Master’s thesis investigates media discourses and silences around the first case of serial femi(ni)cides in Cyprus and the community of migrant female workers. Since August 2022, Charalambos is the ESC officer at YEU CYPRUS and the director of the ESC project Cap the Gap which aims to cover the gap of under-representation of marginalized youth in society.

David works as a teacher since 2012, acquiring experience with students of a broad range of ages, from 11 to 19 years old. During these years, he has often been appointed as the school’s referent for Technological Innovation, Civics, and/or School Orientation. He holds a Master’s in Italianistics and Literary Criticism (University of Trento).

Celina Sieg Sørensen has spent her entire career working in the intersection between technology and policy with a focus on online safety, rights and wellbeing. In her current role at the LEGO Group her work is to create policies that align with LEGO’s values, business objectives, new legislative requirements and industry best practise. She creates policies that serve to strengthen the LEGO groups position as an industry leader on online safety issues, liberate employees to drive innovation and most importantly keep children playing, safe and well. Her career started at META where she worked on complex issues around user safety, moderation at scale and content policy implementation.

Sara holds a PhD in Language Sciences from Università Ca’ Foscari in Venice. She has been involved in several national and European projects dealing with historical archives, event and temporal information extraction and political stance detection and, more recently, with social media monitoring and hate speech detection. Her research interests are highly interdisciplinary, trying to apply and adapt advanced text analysis approaches to social sciences and historical investigation.