Karen Vandekerckhove

Karen Vandekerckhove  studied law in Belgium at the   KU Leuven   and the    Université de Namur  , in Germany (  University of Heidelberg  ) and in the United States at the   Harvard Law School  . She has been a practicing lawyer in New York and Brussels with   Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP  , for 6 years and prepared a Ph.D in private international law at the KU Leuven. She joined the   European Commission   in 2004, working at the Commission’s justice department since then. In this capacity, she has been in charge of the negotiations with the Council of Ministers and the   European Parliament    of many of the EU instruments and international conventions in the area of civil justice, as well as the monitoring of implementation of EU law and the preparation of European Commission’s positions in cases before the   Cour de justice de l'Union européenne   (European court of justice). In parallel, she has been teaching at the   Universiteit Antwerpen   and   UCLouvain - Université catholique de Louvain  . Since 2017, Karen is head of the gender equality unit in the European Commission where she is in charge, among other matters, of the legislative proposals on the signature and conclusion of the Istanbul Convention on Violence Against Women, the directive on work-life balance for parents, and carers, and the legislative proposals on pay transparency and violence against women which are currently being negotiated. Karen was a European Union fellow in    University of California, Berkeley   during 2019-2020.

Nidesh Lawtoo

Nidesh Lawtoo is originally from Switzerland, was trained at the crossroads of literary studies, philosophy and the social sciences in the US, the UK, and France, and he is currently Assistant Professor of philosophy and English at KU Leuven . He is also the PI of an European Research Council transdisciplinary project titled, Homo Mimeticus ( www.homomimeticus.eu ), whose goal is to explore the role of imitation (or mimesis) in the formation of subjectivity, culture, politics, and the arts. His books include The Phantom of the Ego (2013), Conrad’s Shadow (2016), and (New) Fascism (2019).

Twitter: @nideshlawtoo
Facebook: @HOM_GMproject

Pieter Daelman

Pieter Daelman is guest professor Creativity & Innovation at Karel de Grote Hogeschool. With his innovation agency BEDENK, he specializes in employee driven innovation and innovation culture. To do this, he co-created the Cromax® framework (Creative Organization Matrix) together with researchers from Universiteit Gent and Erasmushogeschool Brussel . This framework brings together the latest scientific insights in innovation culture. It helps organizations to accurately assess and improve their culture of innovation. On this topic he wrote the successful management book ‘Van Tanker naar speedboot’ (2020, LannooCampus, Dutch)

Website: www.bedenk.be
LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/dGSesGyi

Nicolas Grootjans

Digital creative, marketeer and content creator Nicolas Grootjans (24) “Nicogs” is not sitting still in the digital world. Besides projects with Charlotte de Witte, Tomorrowland, Bazart, Lost Frequencies and ParadiseCity, he’s a pioneer of emerging trends, tools and tech before they break through.
Nicogs is known for his innovative insights and creative way of working with everything that revolves around content, communication and marketing within the event and music world.


Website : http://nicogs.com/
Facebook : Nicolas Grootjans
Instagram : @nicogscollection