SPEAKERS

Kerry McCall Magan

Kerry McCall Magan is the Country Director for British Council Ireland. As Director, Kerry leads British Council Ireland in strategic cultural relations activity between Ireland and the UK. Excited by the possibilities and untapped potential in Arts and Education in the bilateral relationship, Kerry works constructively to convene and broker relationships between people and organisations, fostering mutual understanding, trust, knowledge and respect.

Prior to this role, Kerry’s career spanned senior roles in higher education and the cultural sectors in Ireland. She has been a Steering Group member of the National Campaign for the Arts; the Expert Panel of Creative Ireland; the Expert Committee of Culture2025: a national cultural policy for Ireland; co-founder of the Arts Management Research Studies Stream in the European Sociological Association; co-founder of Cultural Policy Observatory Ireland: an all-island research network (2014) and the Irish Journal for Arts Management and Cultural Policy (2013).

In 2023, she published Cultural Participation: the perpetuation of middle-class privilege in Dublin, Ireland (Palgrave MacMillan) and, with academics in Queen’s University Belfast and University College Dublin, she is co-editing Cultural Policy: Perspectives on the Island of Ireland (Routledge, forthcoming 2025). Kerry is a Board member of Dublin City Council Culture Company.

Dr. Anneli Portman

Dr. Anneli Portman is a Senior Specialist in the Safety and Protection unit at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL). Her main tasks are related to developing the professional competence of social and health care professionals, which includes the creation of the vulnerability/risk assessment tool Valiant, and local and international networking. She is a member of the National Coordination Group for the Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Extremism, as well as a member of the Thematic Panel on Local prevention of the EU Knowledge Hub on Radicalisation. Her expertise includes the local prevention of violent extremism and multiprofessional collaboration, with a strong focus on violence prevention, social inclusion, and youth crime. Her research interests cover values, societal trust, and political rhetoric. She holds a PhD in social psychology from the University of Helsinki.

Prof Wolfgang Merkel

Prof Wolfgang Merkel is a German political scientist. In 2020 - 2022 he was a Fellow at the Democracy Institute of the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, prior to that from 2004 to 2020 he was Director of the Department of Democracy and Democratization at the Berlin Social Science Center and Professor of Comparative Politics and Democracy Studies at Humboldt University of Berlin. In 2007 he was appointed as a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Merkel is one of the most respected representatives of comparative politics in the German-speaking world. He has significantly shaped research on democratization processes, system changes, and system collapses, his most recent publications open up the topic of democratic resilience.

Merkel has received numerous academic honours and memberships for his research. In January 1996, Merkel received a first prize from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation for his article "Restrictions and Opportunities for Democratic Consolidation in Post-Communist Societies of East Central Europe in Comparison." Since 1998, Merkel has been a non-partisan full member of the SPD's Basic Values ​​Commission. Since December 2007, he has been a full member of the social science class of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He was appointed to the academic advisory board and the university commission of the University of Heidelberg (2006–2012). Merkel is a member of the advisory board of the Bertelsmann Transformation Index.

Prof Zsuzsa Csergő

Prof Zsuzsa Csergő is The Sir Edward Peacock Professor of Nationalism and Democracy Studies in the Department of Political Studies at Queen’s University, Canada. She specializes in the study of nationalism and contemporary challenges to democracy, with particular expertise on Central and Eastern Europe. Before joining the Queen’s faculty, she was Assistant Professor of Political Science and Coordinator of the Women’s Leadership Program in U.S. and International Politics at the George Washington University. From 2013-2020, she was President of the Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN), the largest international scholarly association in the field of nationalism and ethnicity studies. She currently serves as Director of the association’s online initiative, “Virtual ASN.”

Dr. Csergő's research contributes to the understanding of tensions between nationalism and democracy in multiethnic societies. Her articles about nationalism, majority-minority relations, kin-state politics, and minority democratic agency in the EU context have appeared in leading journals in her field, including Perspectives on Politics, The Journal of Global Security Studies, Foreign Policy, Publius, Nations and Nationalism, Europe-Asia Studies,Problems of Post-Communism, East European Politics and Societies, and other venues. She is the author of Talk of the Nation: Language and Conflict in Romania and Slovakia (Cornell University Press, 2007), co-editor and co-author of collaborative volumes (books and special issues) focused on Europeanization and minority political agency, the securitization of cross-border kinship, and Central and East European politics. She is currently writing a book about the sources of minority democratic agency in majoritarian states, based on comparative research on six linguistic minorities in Central and Eastern Europe (Hungarians in Romania and Slovakia, Poles in Lithuania, and Russophones in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania).

Dr. Csergő leads the comparative Minority Institutions Database, which officially launched in March, 2023. She is also the Principal Investigator of a collaborative research project entitled “Major crises and minority life in majoritarian states” (funded by SSHRC). Csergő is a General Editor of the European Yearbook of Minority Issues, and a member of KINPOL: Observatory on Kin-State Policies, hosted at the University of Glasgow.

Prof Stefano Braghiroli

Prof Stefano Braghiroli is an Associate Professor of European Studies at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies, University of Tartu, where he also serves as Director of the Master's programme in European Studies. He received his PhD from the University of Siena (Italy) in 2010 and has previously held positions at the ARENA Centre for European Studies (University of Oslo) and the Bahçeşehir University Center for Economic and Social Research (BETAM) in Istanbul.

His research focuses on party politics in the European Parliament, EU politics, Euroscepticism and populism, and comparative politics. His recent work has appeared in leading academic journals, including the Journal of Contemporary European Studies, New Perspectives, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, Journal of Legislative Studies, East European Politics, and Religion, State and Society, as well as in edited volumes published by renowned academic presses.

In 2025, he was awarded the Order of the Star of Italy (Ordine della Stella d’Italia), rank of Knight (Cavaliere), by the President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella. 

Andero Uusberg

Andero Uusberg is a professor of affective psychology at the University of Tartu and the scientific director of the Centre of Excellence in Welfare Studies. His research group studies understanding and influencing the “hotestt” side of human nature. How do emotions and desires arise? How do people try to manage them? How can solutions be designed to support people in this? In addition to basic research, Andero promotes the application of psychology and other behavioral sciences to solving societal problems.