Tal Arditi is an Israeli guitar player, living currently between Basel and Berlin. In his latest album ”Colors”, Arditi astonishes with his wide-ranging playing style and powerful compositions. Tal’s music consists of a rich, original sound that blends jazz, rock, classical and Brazilian accents.
Nika Bakhsoliani is an expert on youth policy and human rights education. He has been a member of the Council of Europe’s Advisory Council on Youth (CCJ) since 2020, and he chairs the Board of Human Rights Education Youth Network (2018–). He also conducts informal education-based training, mainly on human rights education and education for democratic citizenship.
Tjark Bartels, former district administrator and mayor, is an executive coach for the civil service and other organisations. As district administrator and mayor he constantly launched projects and was regarded as a »doer with a political vision«. His focal areas, besides building infrastructure, included the integration of refugees, the establishment of a learning centre in Bückeberg, and the development of an alliance between administrative districts that might be able to bring about changes in a planned electricity highway. In 2019 Tjark Bartels fell ill after being subjected to serious threats online, to such an extent that he was no longer able to remain in office. Today, he is a consultant, coaching executives in the public sector on the illusion of strength, building up resilience and personal defence mechanisms. For organisations he develops mechanisms for coping with external attacks.
Julia Bläsius is a policy adviser in the gender & family policy team at Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung’s head office in Berlin. Before that she worked for Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit) in Eastern Europe, among other places in the South Caucasus and Ukraine. Her focus areas are democracy and social justice, especially in Eastern Europe. She holds a Master degree in political economics as well as a degree in international business and cultural studies.
According to her Instagram account Louisa Dellert is actively involved in politics, feminism and sustainability. Her aim is to make politics more approachable, especially for young people.
Dr Karamba Diaby was the first black person born in Africa (Senegal) to be elected to Germany’s Bundestag, in 2013. From 2009 to 2015 he was also city councillor in Halle (Saale) and from 2011 to 2013 worked as a desk officer at the ministry for labour and social affairs of the Land of Saxony-Anhalt. In his mid-20s he came to the German Democratic Republic on a scholarship, studied chemistry in Halle-Wittenberg, graduating in geo-ecology. He then worked for various non-profit organisations in the area of education, youth policy, diversity and human rights. In the Bundestag (18th legislature) Diaby was deputy chair of the committee for human rights and humanitarian aid, as well as a member of the committee for education, research and technological impact assessment. He entered the Bundestag again in 2017 and is a member of the committee for education, research and technological impact assessment, the subcommittee on active citizenship, and the curatorium of the Federal Agency for Civic Education. Since March 2018 he has also been a member of the SPD Group Executive Committee in the Bundestag. In September 2018 he was elected his group’s new integration commissioner.
Karoline Edtstadler was a judge at Salzburg Regional Court from 2008 to 2011 and was seconded to the Federal Ministry of Justice from 2011 to 2014. Subsequently, Karoline Edtstadler worked as an adviser in the cabinet of the Federal Minister for Justice, Wolfgang Brandstetter, until 2016. In 2016 she was posted to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHRECtHR) in Strasbourg as a legal expert. From 2017 to May 2019, she was secretary of state at the Federal Ministry of the Interior in Chancellor Kurz’s first government. From July 2019 to January 2020, Edtstadler was a Member of the European Parliament and Head of Delegation of the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP). Since 2020 she has been Federal Minister for the EU and Constitution at the Federal Chancellery.
Stefanie Fächner is media literacy officer at the State Media Authority of Rhineland-Palatinate, involved in, among other things, the media skills initiative klicksafe (www.klicksafe.de) and the EU project SELMA (www.hackinghate.eu) against online hate speech. Previously she was a research assistant at the teaching training college in Schwäbisch Gmünd (project: »Quality in research«), as well as at the Media College in Stuttgart (studying the media industry). She also has practical experience with media education with children and young people from freelance work with the Baden-Württemburg media centre. Fächner studied American studies, communication science and media education (BA and MA) at the universities of Augsburg and Pittsburgh.
Emilija Gagrčin studied media and political communication at the Freie Universität Berlin and at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. She is currently a doctoral candidate at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society at the Freie Universität Berlin. Within the scope of her project, she is investigating how the digital transformation and datafication have changed the way in which young people perceive and play their role in democracy. Since 2018, she has been a member of the Advisory Council on Youth of the Council of Europe, in which she is responsible for internet governance and artificial intelligence. In this capacity, she is currently a member of the Ad Hoc Committee on Artificial Intelligence of the Council of Europe (CAHAI).
Hanna Gleiß is a political scientist. Since 2017 she has been working at the think-and-do-tank betterplace lab gGmbH (www.betterplace-lab.org), where she heads the »Das NETTZ - Vernetzungsstelle gegen Hate Speech« [The NETTZ networking centre against hate speech] (www.das-nettz.de) project. NETTZ’s aim is to support the constellation of actors related to digital civic courage. Since 2018 Hanna has been ISD project fellow and since 2019 a member of the steering committee of the DIDAT (Digital data as subject of transdisciplinary processes) research project. Previously she worked as project manager in the area of intercultural understanding at the Robert Bosch Foundation. She focused on projects related to conflict prevention, understanding and media, as well as development of the Robert Bosch Academy.
Rita Hagl-Kehl has been a member of the Bundestag for the constituency of Deggendorf, Freung-Grafenau and the western district of Passau since 2013. She is also responsible for the districts of Landshut, Kelheim and Regen. During the eighteenth parliamentary term Rita Hagl-Kehl served as SPD parliamentary rapporteur on organic farming, pesticides, fertilisers, soil protection, water protection and sustainability. Since 2018 she has been Parliamentary State Secretary for Justice and Consumer Protection, responsible for economic consumer protection.
Anne Haller is a researcher at the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. She studied languages as well as international cultural and business studies at the University of Passau. For many years, she worked as a trainer and moderator for intercultural communication. Since 2016, she has headed the KommunalAkademie. This organisation develops and runs training and information courses for those engaged in local politics.
Christoph Hebbecker is a prosecutor at the Central Cybercrime Department of North Rhine-Westphalia (ZAC NRW), based in Cologne. He studied law in Trier and Athens, obtained his doctorate with a thesis on criminal procedure and then worked as a defence counsel. Since 2015 he has been a prosecutor and is responsible for digital hate crime at ZAC NRW. One of his particular responsibilities is the pilot project »Verfolgen statt nur Löschen« (Don’t just delete, prosecute). ZAC NRW cooperates in this project with the Media Authority of North Rhine-Westphalia, the NRW Department of Criminal Investigation (LKA NRW) and various media partners with the aim of specifically identifying criminal hate speech, establishing who is responsible for it and bringing the perpetrator to justice.
Tanja Hille is a freelance organisational consultant in the area of digital transformation and a moderator at political and digital events. Previously she was senior consultant at Nordlicht Management Consultants, dealing with trade unions and public administration. Her main areas of focus are digitalisation, agility, service design, self-organisation and innovation. During her studies she was actively involved in debating competitions and public events, and was head of the Berlin Debating Union for two years. Today she leads training courses in rhetoric and argumentation aimed at strengthening democracy. Since 2017, together with Vincent Venus, she has produced the Y Politik podcast, in which she pursues and presents political solutions for the new millennium.
Tímea Junghaus is an art historian, a leader of the Roma cultural and political movement, and a contemporary art curator. She is the executive director of the Berlin-based European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture founded in September, 2017 by the Council of Europe, the Open Society Foundations and the Alliance for the European Roma Institute. She has researched and published extensively on the conjunctions of modern and contemporary art with critical theory, with reference to issues of cultural difference, colonialism, and minority representation.
Christine Lambrecht studied law in Mannheim and Mainz. After completing her second state examination in law in 1995, Ms Lambrecht worked as a lawyer and taught commercial and company law at Berufsakademie Mannheim. Since 1982 she has been actively involved in politics as a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), and since 1998 she has been involved in legal policy work as a member of the German Bundestag. From 2011, she was responsible for domestic and legal policy as deputy chair of the SPD parliamentary group. From 2013 to 2017, she was first parliamentary secretary of the SPD parliamentary group. After her re-election to the German Bundestag in 2017, she initially became deputy parliamentary group chair for financial and budgetary affairs. Subsequent to this, she was responsible for these matters as Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of Finance. In June 2019, she was appointed Federal Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection.
Sina Laubenstein is a political scientist and has been working at the Neue Deutsche Medienmacher*innen since 2016. There she heads the project “Die Würde des Menschen ist unhassbar – No Hate Speech“ (Human dignity is unhateable – no hate speech), which, among other things, is responsible for the Council of Europe initiative “No Hate Speech Movement” in Germany. Furthermore, she is working with the Council of Europe on the joint project “WE CAN for human rights speech”, which is being implemented with project partners from Belgium, Italy and Romania. She writes articles on digital civic courage and hate on the internet, advises civil-society and political stakeholders on strategies to deal with extremism and hate speech online and is recognised internationally as an expert in this field.
Hannes Ley is founder and managing director of business consultancy Sasserath Ley Plus. As a strategic advisor he supports businesses in addressing purpose, community and communications. In late 2016 he launched the award-winning Facebook group #ichbinhier (#iamhere). The group’s 45,000 members and associated network are successfully tackling online hate speech, using counter-speech, public relations work and training courses. In 2018 Hannes Ley wrote the book #ichbinhier – Zusammen gegen Fake News und Hass im Netz (#iamhere – together against fake news and online hate speech), dealing with hate speech and potential solutions.
Heiko Maas was appointed Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs on 14 March 2018. Before that, he served as Federal Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection in the previous government from 2013 until 2018. Before he was appointed Federal Minister in 2013, Heiko Maas had been a member of the Saarland Government and a member of the Saarland Landtag (State Parliament) since 1994. In the Saarland, he served as Minister of Environment, Energy and Transport between 1998 and 1999 and as Minister of Economics, Labour, Energy and Transport as well as Deputy Minister-President of Saarland from 2012 until 2013. He holds a law degree from the University of Saarland.
For the last 8 years, Carl has been the founding Research Director at The Centre for the Analysis of Social Media (CASM) at Demos, the UK’s leading cross-party political think tank. He presents programmes for the BBC's flagship technology show Click, and is the author of "The Death of the Gods: The New Global Power Grab" (Penguin RandomHouse) which won the 2019 Transmission Prize. He’s a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London, a member of the Society Board of the British Computing Society, an Associate of the Imperial War Museum, a member of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, a member of the advisory board of the Global Network on Extremism and Technology, and a Commissioner of Newham’s Democracy and Civic Participation Commission.
Originally from Hungary, Julia studied Marketing and Business Management in Denmark, France and England. After working for two years in Hungary and China in various communication positions, she completed her Master degree in Media and Public Relations at Leicester University, where she wrote her dissertation on ageism in the media. Dedicated to spreading the word of good causes, Julia joined CEJI in October 2016 as a Communication Officer and having worked extensively on the topic of hate speech, she now also works as Policy Officer on hate speech and online harms.
Sabrina N’Diaye is a Franco-German journalist and moderator. She regularly presents the RBB24 late news for RBB and works for the news magazine Abendschau as live reporter and writer, both behind and in front of the camera. She also moderates events on a regular basis. Last year she came third in the Female Journalist of the Year competition, in the Regional Reporter category. She has lived in Paris and Dakar for two years. Within the framework of her ethnology studies she carried out field research on the influence of Chinese retailers on local traders in Senegal’s biggest daily market.
Peter Niedermüller studied history, ethnography and literature at the University of Debrecen. From 1977 to 1990 he was a research fellow at the Institute of Ethnology at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Afterwards he worked as lecturer and professor at various Hungarian and European universities until 2011. He was a founding member of the Democratic Coalition (political party in Hungary) in 2011 and became vice president of the party until 2019 with a focus on European issues, human rights and discrimination. From 2014 to 2019 he served as a Member of the European Parliament. He was a member of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs and worked on the Special Committee on Terrorism. Other positions during that period include membership of the Working Groups against Antisemitism and against Racism and Discrimination. In October 2019 Peter Niedermüller was elected Mayor of Budapest’s Erzsébetváros district (VII).
Marija Pejčinović Burić is the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, the preeminent pan-European organisation in the field of human rights, democracy and the rule of law. Prior to being elected to her current position, Ms Pejčinović Burić was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign and European Affairs of the Republic of Croatia, having served previously, on two occasions, as State Secretary for EU Affairs. She has also served as a deputy in the Croatian Parliament.
Anne Pütz has been teaching yoga for many years. Her style has been described as "singular". It is based on Hatha yoga, but she also integrates elements of other styles in her approach, including fascial-, flexi- and yin-yoga. She always strives to satisfy the needs of her students and to make her classes varied.
Simone Rafael is a journalist and editor-in-chief of www.belltower.news – network for a digital civil society. She also heads the Digital project area for the Amadeu Antonio Foundation and advices organisations, media and civil society on tackling hate speech and right-wing extremism in social networks.
Markus Reinisch joined Facebook in March 2018 as the Vice President for Public Policy in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. His portfolio includes the management of the company’s regional public policy strategy and key relationships with senior policy stakeholders. Prior to this, Markus was Global Public Policy Director at Vodafone, where he was responsible for leading the company’s work on developing policy strategies and engagement with policy makers. He has also held other executive policy roles within the communications industry including at Colt Group, Orange Group and Deloitte Consulting. Markus holds an LLM from the University of Warwick and a law degree from the University of Vienna.
Michael Roth has been a directly elected member of the German Bundestag since 1998; he was spokesperson on Europe of the SPD parliamentary group from 2010 to 2013; from 2009 to February 2014 he was Secretary-General of the SPD in Land Hesse and since 2017 he has been a member of the SPD Executive Committee. As Minister for Europe at the Federal Foreign Office, he is the Commissioner for Franco-German Cooperation and Special Representative of the Federal Government for the German Presidency of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe.
Gilda Sahebi is a journalist, political scientist and physician. Her journalistic focus is on science, public health, antisemitism, racism and the Middle East. She works for taz, WDR and Die Welt, among others. As a diversity trainer, she gives workshops and training courses on discrimination-sensitive language, hate speech and antisemitism for the public service, civil society, the media and private companies. She completed her journalistic traineeship at Bayerischer Rundfunk in Munich and then worked as a writer for Jan Böhmermann's Neo Magazin Royale. Since 2018 she has been a consultant on hate speech, social media and public relations at Neue Deutsche Medienmacher*innen in Berlin.
Snežana Samardžić-Marković has been the Director General of DG Democracy at the Council of Europe since 2012. Under her responsibility, the Directorate General works to help the member states in creatingto foster a favourable environment for sustainable democracy and democratic security in Europe. Previously, Ms Samardžić-Marković has held numerous positions in the Serbian Governmentgovernment, including as Deputy Director in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for Neighbouring Countries; Assistant, Deputy Minister of Defence (2005-2007) and Co-President of the Serbia-NATO Defence Reform Group;, member of the Foundation Board of WADA, Minister of Youth and Sports (2007-2012) and President of the Fund for Young Talents.
Juliana coordinates ENAR’s Advocacy Strategy in the field of anti-racism and anti-discrimination at both EU and Member States Level.member state levels. She has extensively covered issues related to migration, integration, strategic litigation and national action plans against discrimination. She is an expert inon the different intersections of structural and institutional discrimination with race, gender, migrant status, LGBTI and other minoritiesminority legal frameworks and policies. With strong expertiseAn expert on gender-based violence, Juliana also Ms Wahlgren provides, as volunteer, voluntary legal support to victims of domestic violence across Europe. Previously she worked as a Lawyerlawyer at Companhia Brasileira de Petróleo Ipiranga and as a solicitor at ASTI (Association de soutien aux travailleurs immigrés) in Luxembourg. She is the founder of REVIBRA, the European Support Network for Brazilian and Latino women victims of domestic violence. She was recently nominated as an Expertexpert to the EC Expert Group on Migration, Integration and Asylum.
Jeroen Schokkenbroek studied law at the University of Leiden. Since 1993, he has held various positions in the Council of Europe Secretariat, mainly in the field of human rights, including head of the Human Rights Development Department and head of the Secretariat of the Parliamentary Assembly's Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights. In November 2010, he was appointed Special Representative of the Secretary General for Roma Issues. He subsequently served as Special Adviser of the Secretary General for Ukraine until 1 July 2014, when he was appointed Executive Secretary of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT). Since June 2018, Jeroen Schokkenbroek is Director of Anti-Discrimination in the Directorate General of Democracy of the Council of Europe.
Martin Schulz is President of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and member of the German Bundestag. He was party chairman of the SPD, candidate to become chancellor of Germany and long-time member of the European Parliament, where he served as president for two terms, from 2012 to 2017. Martin Schulz is a laureate of the Charlemagne Prize for his outstanding contribution to the strengthening of the European Parliament and democratic legitimacy in the EU.
Svetlana Zakharova is a feminist, LGBT+ activist and a human rights defender from Russia. She has worked with the Russian LGBT Network as a Communications Manager since February 2014. She was a Board Member of the Network from November 2017 until December 2020. Since December 2020, Zakharova has been a director of the Charitable Foundation Sphere, an organization that works to promote equal rights for all, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.