Christos Frangonikolopoulos

Professor of International Relations at the School of Journalism and Mass Communications, Aristotle University and Holder of the Jean Monnet Chair on European Integration Journalism

Christos Frangonikolopoulos (https://auth.academia.edu/ChristosFrangonikolopoulos) is Professor of International Relations at the School of Journalism and Mass Communications, Aristotle University and holder of the Jean Monnet Chair on European Integration Journalism (http://jeanmonnetchair.jour.auth.gr/?page_id=2112). He is also the Director of the English-taught Master of Arts (MA) in Digital Media, Communication and Journalism (http://media.jour.auth.gr) at the University of Aristotle is the first of its kind among Greek public Universities (http://media.jour.auth.gr), He studied Politics and Government (BA Honors) and International Relations (PhD) at the University of Kent at Canterbury (England).

Nikos Panagiotou
Assistant Professor, School of Journalism and Mass Media Communication, Faculty of Economic and Political Sciences, Aristotle University and DAAD Scholar to Deutsche Welle

Dr. Nikos Panagiotou is Assistant Professor, School of Journalism and Mass Media Communication, Faculty of Economic and Political Sciences, Aristotle University and DAAD Scholar to Deutsche Welle. He has been a Google Research Scholar, Chevening Scholar of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Scholar at Sabanci University Scholar of the State of Luxembourg, and RCAP Scholar, APU University, Japan, Scholar to Beijing Foreign Studies University. He is the initiator and organizer of Thessaloniki International Media Summer Academy. He is a member of the advisory board for Networking Knowledge, War and Media Network, Member of the board of Municipal Company of Information, and Communication of Thessaloniki, member of Radicalization Awareness Network of European Union and member of International Relations Committee of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Christoph Schmidt
Professor of Media Management and Economics
Head of the Academic Department at Deutsche Welle Akademie

Prof. Dr. Schmidt studied Business Administration at the University of Siegen, Germany and received a post doctorate (PhD) from the University of Cologne. Prof. Dr. Schmidt worked for different companies as a Consultant and Manager. In 1995, he joined Deutsche Welle, where he held a series of managerial positions. Since 2006, Prof. Dr. Schmidt is Head of Administration and Head of the Academic Department at Deutsche Welle Akademie. Since 2000, he also teaches as a (Guest Lecturer at different universities in Germany and abroad. His main research projects focuses on International Media Systems and Human Resource Management. Prof. Schmidt teaches, amongst other topics, International Media Studies, General Media Economics, Business Management, Editorial Management, Project Management, Organization and Human Resource Management.

Anna Kynthia Bousdoukou

Anna Kynthia Bousdoukou is a journalist with 13 years of experience in radio and TV at Greek media organization SKAI. In 2018 she co-founded iMEdD, incubator for Media Education and Development, where she serves as Managing Director. She serves also as an advisor on grants related to journalism at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) since 2016 and she is presenting SNF’s monthly forum DIALOGUES. For 8 years, she worked as a reporter on the radio, and then as a news editor, journalist and broadcast producer. At the same time, she has contributed as a freelance columnist in various magazines. In 2011 she was assigned to present the night news of SKAI television and in 2013 she started hosting the morning news program of SKAI TV “NOW”, focusing on domestic as well as international news, politics, economy, science and innovation. She holds a degree in Sociology from Panteio University with specialization on the Sociology of Mass Media. In 2016, she joined the team of TEDxThessaloniki, which she has been presenting in recent years.

Kirstine Foge Jensen 
Interim Executive Director Guardian Foundation

Kirstine Føge Jensen is interim Executive Director and oversees the strategy and operations of the Guardian Foundation. Kirstine passionately believes that freedom of information, news literacy and a diverse media sector are cornerstones of an informed and empowered society and thereby essential for democracy itself. She has been with the Foundation for 3 years and has taken a lead role in supporting Syrian and Turkish independent media under threat.
She previously worked in documentary production, mainly working on a series about unaccompanied refugee children for DR, the Danish National Television.
Kirstine is an Anthropologist and holds a M.Sc. from the University of Copenhagen.

Clara Attene
Google News Lab Teaching Fellow

Data journalist and co-founder of Viz&Chips, an Italian journalistic startup specialised on data games and interactive visualisations. I am also a trainer on data and online journalism. Previously, I worked as a freelance business writer. 

Athina Pachatouridi 
Google Strategic Partner Manager, Greece, Cyprus, Malta

Athina is currently managing the Strategic Partnerships for Greece, Cyprus and Malta at Google. Before that she worked with the private equity market in London and NY for Salesforce where she helped her customers improve their companies efficiencies and processes. She has a broad experience in the software and hardware markets as she has also worked for Cisco where she managed a diverse portfolio of clients including the London Boroughs, where she helped grow innovation within the UK public sector with the help of technology.

Athina is also a Yoga Teacher in Dublin and she is extremely interested in mindfulness and meditation and how these practices can improve employees day to day behaviours and productivity at work and at the moment she is running wellness courses on these topics for the Irish community.

Elli Narewska 
Digital programme manager, NewsWise, Guardian Foundation

Elli is the digital lead for the Guardian Foundation's NewsWise news literacy programme which teaches nine to 11-year-olds about news: what it is, what it does, how to navigate things like fake news, bias, speculation and opinion, and how to create your own reports in your own words for a real audience.

Elli manages the digital content for the project as well as designing and delivering workshops and training for children, families and teachers in all areas of the UK. She has many years’ experience in news literacy and previously worked in the Guardian Education Centre, before helping to set up the NewsWise programme. 

Before working in news literacy, Elli was an English teacher in London comprehensive schools as well as in various special needs settings.

Sherri Hope Culver
Associate Professor, Klein College of Media and Communication, Temple University

Sherri Hope Culver serves as Director of the Center for Media and Information Literacy at Temple University, USA where she is an Associate Professor in the Klein College of Media and Communication. She teaches courses on the business of media and media management. Prior to her academic appointment, Sherri worked in the media industry for over twenty-five years as a producer and television executive. Her industry experience ranges from serving as a reporter for a public television news organization to writing and producing educational programs for young viewers. She currently produces and hosts the television series, “Media Inside Out”. Sherri is a three-term past president of the National Association for Media Literacy Education and a member of the steering committee for the North America chapter of GAPMIL. She regularly presents internationally on media literacy and children’s media topics. Sherri has authored and co-authored several books, including a chapter in the latest edition of “20 Questions about Youth and the Media” (2018).

Renate Schroeder
Director of the European Federation of Journalists

Renate Schroeder is the Director of the European Federation of Journalists, In 1993 she started working for the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and since 2003 she works for the EFJ. Advocacy at EU and Council of Europe level; presentation of EFJ at international meetings and fact-finding media freedom missions; project work, communication and assistance in several EFJ expert groups including on freelances, broadcasting media literacy and digital journalism, are part of her work-load in the small dynamic Brussels office.

Renate Schroeder studied International Relations and Political Science at Boston University (Bachelor’s Degree in 1988) and in Berlin at the Free University (Masters in 1992). Major themes during her Masters program were nationalism, integration and refugee policy.

Renate worked among other at the United Nations, New York, the research institute FAST in Berlin and the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation in Brussels before she joined the IFJ/EFJ team. She is of German nationality and speaks English, French, Italian, German and Spanish (passive).

Nico Drok
President of the European Journalism Training Association (EJTA)

Dr. Nico Drok has been working in journalism education for more than 35 years. His main research interests are civic journalism, journalism education and news media use of young people. He is professor of Media & Civil society at Windesheim UAS, Zwolle, Netherlands. Next to that he is President of the European Journalism Training Association (EJTA), which has 70 members in 30 European countries. Furthermore he is member of the Steering Committee of the World Journalism Education Council (WJEC). He is married, has two daughters and four grandchildren.

Gregory W. Pfleger
Consul General, Us Consulate Thessaloniki 

Principal Officer Gregory W. Pfleger, Jr., a career member of the Foreign Service, arrived in Thessaloniki in August 2018.
Prior to Thessaloniki, Mr. Pfleger most recently served as Director for Baltic and Eastern European Affairs at the National Security Council under both the Obama and Trump administrations. Since joining the State Department in 2006, he has also served in Dushanbe, Tajikistan; Shanghai, China; as Special Assistant in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor; and in Kyiv, Ukraine. Prior to joining the Foreign Service Mr. Pfleger served in the Peace Corps in Russia (2000-2002).
Mr. Pfleger speaks Greek and Russian, and has studied the Ukrainian and Chinese languages. He graduated from Rice University with degrees in History, Political Science, and Policy Studies, and from the London School of Economics in 2004 with an MSc in Russian and Post-Soviet Studies. He is from New Jersey and is father to a three-year-old daughter.

Andreas Veglis
Head of Media Informatics Lab
School of Journalism & MC
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki - Greece

Andreas Veglis is a Professor of media technology, and head of the Media Informatics Lab at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He has served as and editor, member of scientific board and reviewer in various academic journals. Prof Veglis has more than 150 peer-reviewed papers on media technology and journalism. Specifically, he is the author or co-author of 12 books, he has published 74 papers on scientific journals and he has presented 125 papers in international and national Conferences. Prof Veglis has been involved in 30 national and international research projects. His research interests include information technology in journalism, new media, data journalism, big data, social media, open data and fake news - verification.

George Pleios

Head of the Department of Communication and Media Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

George Pleios is Professor and Head of the Department of Communication and Media Studies of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Director of the Laboratory for Social Research in Mass Media, Board member of the of National Council for Radio and Television (NCRT) of Greece, President of the Hellenic Sociological Society and former member of the Supervisory Board of the European Center for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF). He has taught also in Hungary, Portugal, Cyprus, Bulgaria China, Turkey and Ukraine. He is author of 6 books, 22 chapters, more than 40 articles and more than 50 presentation in Greece and internationally, and PI in more than 25 research projects. Works of him have been published in UK, USA, Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria, Romania, China, Australia and Turkey.

 Holger Briel

Professor of International Business Communication at Monarch University, Switzerland, and Graduate Programme Director in the School of Film and TV Arts at Xi'an Jiaotong Liverpool University

Holger Briel is a Senior Associate Professor in Media, Journalism and Communication at Xi'an Jiaotong Liverpool University and a journalist for a number of newspapers in Germany, Greece and China. He has taught and conducted research at universities in the UK, the USA, Germany, Austria, Greece, Cyprus, The Philippines, South Africa and China and has written books and articles on Digital Media, Cultural Changes in the Digital World, Media Theory and Intercultural Communication.  Apart from teaching in the academe, he has also engaged in field work for digital ethnography and oral history in countries such as Cyprus, Borneo, Russia and China, recording and analysing how indigenous people have come to live in deeply mediated worlds and how their expressions of their lives have changed and are changing accordingly. 

Anita Fabos
Professor of International Development, Community and Environment,Clark University

Dr. Anita Fábos, Associate Professor of International Development, Community, and Environment and Social Change, Clark University, is an anthropologist who has worked with refugees and other forced migrants in urban settings in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States.

Formerly the Director of the Forced Migration and Refugee Studies program at the American University in Cairo, and Programme Coordinator for the graduate program in Refugee Studies at the University of East London, Anita has developed integrated teaching, research, and praxis programs incorporating refugee and forced migrant perspectives in collaboration with refugee-led organizations, scholars, practitioners, policy makers, and international agencies.

Anita’s research with Muslim, Arabic- speaking Sudanese in the diaspora has resulted in numerous publications, including her book Managing Muslim Mobilities: Between Spiritual Geographies and the Global Security Regime (Palgrave 2014) with Riina Isotalo, ‘Brothers’ or Others? Propriety and Gender for Muslim Arab Sudanese in Egypt (Berghahn Books 2010)

Shin Dong Kim
Professor, The Media School, Hallym University, Chuncheon, Korea & Chief Director, Knowledge Cooperative for Good Governance, Seoul, Korea

Shin Dong Kim is a professor at the School of Media and Communication, Hallym University, Korea. He founded the Institute for Communication Arts and Technology (iCat) and served as the Vice President for International Affairs for the university. He has been an active advocate and innovator for the globalization of higher education throughout his professional career. His area of research and teaching covers culture and creative industries, media policy and political economy, global communications, and film studies. He is currently leading a five-year national research project on modeling the Korean ICT developments. He is preparing a book on the political economy of the Korean media industries and culture, and writing on colonial experiences represented on the Korean cinema. Dr. Kim has also been teaching at many universities globally including Dartmouth College, Sciences Po Paris, Peking University, City University of Hong Kong, University of the Philippines, Shanghai University, etc. Dr. Kim earned his PhD from Indiana University in Mass Communications.

Henri Bohnet

Director of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) office in Athens

Henri Bohnet is the Director of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) office in Athens, covering Greece and Cyprus. He has been working for thirteen years for KAS, having previously been stationed in Berlin, Belgrad, Skopje, Moscow and Kiev. With a M.A. in Political Science, he started off his career working for the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs and for the OSCE, before joining KAS in 2005.

Bill Murad
Press Attache, U.S. Embassy in Athens

Bill Murad currently serves as the Press Attache at the U.S. Embassy in Athens. He joined the U.S. State Department in 2004 and has served in Jerusalem, Lagos, in Washington and in a previous tour in Athens. He has won several State Department awards for his work on social media outreach and communications. Prior to the State Department, he studied ancient Greek and Roman literature and history, with a focus on Homer and Aischylos, at the University of Virginia, where he received an M.A. in the Classics. He also holds an A.B. degree in Politics from Princeton University. He is married with two children.

Klimentini Diakomanoli

Head of Press, Athens European Commission Representation

Mrs Klimentini Diakomanoli is as of September 2015 the Head of Press at the Athens European Commission Representation. Ms Diakomanoli assumed the same function at the EC Representation in Cyprus since the country’s accession to the EU and has previously worked as a Press Officer in Brussels in different Commission services namely on Environment, Research and Technology. She is a Law graduate (University of Athens), has a Master's Degree in Penal Law and Criminology (Université de Pau et Pays de l'Adour) and worked as a Lawyer (Athens Bar. She is also a graduate of the Greek National School of Public Administration (Press Attachés section) with her first diplomatic posting at the Greek Permanent Representation in Brussels in 1998. She is active in solidarity events' organisation as a member of different associations (Cultural Hellenic Circle of Brussels,ARGO, "Agora in Brussels" and the annual fundraising concert "12 heures pour la Grece".

Yannis Kotsifos
Director general of the Journalists’ Union of Macedonia and Thrace Daily Newspapers (ESIEMTH)

Born in Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1969, he has studied Greek Literature (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki). He lives and works in the city and is the director general of the Journalists’ Union of Macedonia and Thrace Daily Newspapers (ESIEMTH) and its Cultural Foundation. Having worked as a journalist in both newspapers and radio, he has also edited numerous books and collaborated with various magazines, either as a contributing editor or as an editor-at-large, or as both. Since 2013 he is a member of the Steering Committee of the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ). As ESIEMTH director he has coordinated numerous projects regarding journalists’ training, media literacy, diversity reporting and ethics.

Elsa Poimenidou
Journalist, Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation

Elsa Poimenidou received her MA in the field of Digital Media from the Department of Journalism and Mass Communications, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She is currently working at the news and information department of the Greek State TV channel ERT3, inThessaloniki. She serves the channel almost 20 years, form which the last six she runs her live daily show about current affairs. Besides her work on television, she also collaborates with newspapers and websites. Due to her love in news content production and dissemination, she is highly interested in Social Media and Networking, and she has participated in projects and campaigns as a content manager in Greece and abroad. She follows the latest developments on a local and international scale and new formats on tv video. Her research interests are Crisis Management, Social Media, new forms and tools on tv content.

Nadezda Azhgikhina

Journalist, Human rights activist

Journalist, writer, human rights activist, executive director of PEN Moscow, vice president of European Federation of Journalists. Graduated from Moscos State Univresity, Faculty of Journalism (1982), Ph.D in Russian literature, Moscow State University, Faculty of Journalism ( 1990). Worked as journalist and editor in Ogonyok ( Little Flame), front line of perestroyla Magazine in 1989-1995, in Nezavissimaya Gazeta ( Independent) in 1995-2001, in Russian Union of Journalists ( as board member) in 2003-2016. Senior lecturer in MSU Faculty of Journalism, since 2012. Lectures in Tampere University, Finlamd (special courses), Barnard College, Columbia Universoity, USA ( spceial course), London School of Economics, Bath, Sheffied, Yall, Princeton, NYU, Sorbonna, Sodertorn and other universities. Member of Union of Russian Writers since 1991, member of Russian PEN 2010-2016, member of Gender Council of International Federatuon of Journalists since 2001, member of the board of GAMAG- Europe since 2015, co -founder and co-president of the Associatoon of Women Journalists (1994-2001), co -founder of Free Word Association since 2017. Author and editor of 19 books and collections on contemporary culture, media development , human rights and gender equality. Regular contribibutor for The Nation magazine, editor of New Review web site. Awarded with Northern Star Swedish oder for development of Russian-Swedish cultural contacts, AWASS award в for Russian- American women’s cooperation , Grant Dink medal for human rights development and professional awards for journalism.

Jens Siegert

Team leader of the EU project „Public Diplomacy. EU and Russia“

Jens Siegert is the team leader oft he EU project „Public Diplomacy. EU and Russia“. He is a publicist and Special Advisor to Board of the International Memorial Society. Until summer 2015 he was the director of the Moscow office of the Heinrich-Böll- Stiftung, a foundation closely linked to the German Green Party. He set up the office in 1999. He is an expert on Russian domestic and foreign politics and provided many publications about that, Russian-EU and Russian-western relationship and especially about Russian civil society issues. He writes a Russlandblog and a regular column in the “Russland-Analysen”. He was born in 1960 in Germany, studied political science, sociology and economy in Marburg. From 1988 to 2001 he worked as a free lanced journalist for German, Austrian and Swiss media, based in Cologne and Moscow. He lives and works in Moscow since 1993.

Dimitris Xenakis
Journalist and Co-founder of Inside Story

Dimitris has been working since 1994 on shaping media strategies and on the development of applications and services for digital media. He has taken on top management roles in some of the most important news media organizations in Greece including in.gr, skai.gr and 24 Media (news247.gr). In 2016 he co-founded inside story, an innovative subscription-based investigative and explanatory journalism site, with Tatiana Karapanagioti and a great team of co-workers. He holds a PhD in Physics and has worked for a number of years as a researcher.

Leora Kahn

Founder and executive director of PROOF: Media for Social Justice

Leora Kahn is founder and executive director of PROOF: Media for Social Justice. She works on global projects with Amnesty International and the United Nations. Her 2007 book Darfur: 20 years of War and Genocide has won several awards and an exhibition travels in the US under the auspices of the Holocaust Museum of Houston.

Leora curated an exhibition on child soldiers in collaboration with the UN’s Office on Children and Armed Conflict. An exhibition on rescuers during genocides, Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia and the Holocaust, originated at Yale University, travels worldwide. She produced and curated an exhibit on Legacy of Rape, which features the voices and photos of women who have experienced rape during conflict, partnering with UNFPA and TRIAL, in Bosnia,Nepal, DRC and Colombia. She just finished two exhibits on the American border and mass incarceration

Leora’s film credits include Rene and I, an award-winning documentary about the life an extraordinary woman who was experimented on by Josef Mengele during the Holocaust. She also co-produced Original Intent; a documentary that explores the judicial philosophy promoted by President George W. Bush.

Leora has been a fellow in the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University where she conducts research on rescuers and rescuing behavior and was the Cathy Cohen Lasry Visiting Lecturer at Clark University holocaust and Genocide Center. She is fellow at the Adrienne de Rothschild/Columbia University and Cambridge University for social entrepreneurs that involve starting a network between Jews and Muslims. This year she was a Fulbright Senior Specialist and taught a University of Haifa. She teaches human rights and media at International Center for Photography in New York. She is is human rights lecturer at University of Dayton where she founded the moral courage program.

Franak Viačorka
Vice President, Digital Communication Network

Franak Viačorka is the Vice President of the Digital Communication Network. He concurrently works as the consultant for U.S. Agency for Global Media, and Creative Director of RFE/RL Belarus service. As a journalist, he is a co-author of award-winning multimedia projects, documentaries, and feature films. Franak has conducted more than 50 training courses on digital communication and New Media for activists and journalists from Europe and the United States. Franak is the organizer and mentor of LaunchMe Media Accelerator, aiming to build collaboration between media and IT in Eastern Europe.Franak graduated from American University in Washington D.C. and Warsaw University in Poland; he also studied at Georgetown University and the College of Europe and European Humanities University.

Ioannis Papadopoulos
Print reporter and multimedia producer at Kathimerini

Ioannis Papadopoulos is a print reporter and multimedia producer based in Athens, Greece. He works as a feature writer & the video editor at Kathimerini (www.kathimerini.gr). He has also worked as a feature writer at TA NEA, focusing on social issues and immigration. His work has been published at the online edition of the German newspaper Zeit, the German edition of Le Monde Diplomatique, the Greek investigative website Inside Story and the Greek edition of VICE. He is the first reporter in Greece to use a 360 camera to produce VR video. In 2017 he won the 3rd prize at the print category of the EU Migration Media Award. In 2016 he was nominated for the Special Award of the European Press Prize, which was dedicated that year to the refugee crisis. He studied Journalism at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and completed his master's in Print & Multimedia Journalism at Emerson College, Boston. He also taught a journalism lab for one semester at Emerson College as an adjunct faculty.

Veronica Yarnykh

Head of International Programs of UNESCO

PhD in economy (2003), Master of Education (2018). Associate Professor in Media Communication of the Journalism Faculty of the Russian State University for Humanities. Head of Master’s program “International Journalism & Global Communications”. Head of International Programs of UNESCO. Chair of media education (Moscow State Pedagogical University).  In my experience, there are the teaching experience at the University and business-schools and at the same time real business experience on the position of the top management of the organization, as well as more than 20  years of expertise in consulting in the field of management of the organization and control of corporate communications.

The theme of my doctoral research now is the field of brand – journalism, model of media influence in global space  and media literacy in corporate communications.

Apostolos Staikos

Journalist, Euronews

Apostolos Staikos is a journalist and has been working for euronews since 2012. He covers current and international affairs and travels around the world in order to produce special programmes.He has also worked for ERT (Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation) for 6 years. He has studied Ancient History and Archaeology (University of Wales, Lampeter – BA), Politics and the Mass Media (University of Liverpool - MA) and Television Journalism (University of Nottingham Trent, MA). He lives in Athens.

Paul Clemens Murschetz

Berlin University of Digital Sciences
Austrian Academy of Sciences (associated researcher)

PAUL CLEMENS MURSCHETZ (Professorial thesis in media & communication studies, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt; PhD in business studies, Vienna School of Economics and Business Administration; MSc. in media & coms, London School of Economics and Political Science) is researcher, analyst, consultant and conference speaker. Paul is associated researcher to the Austrian Academy of Sciences (CMC – Institute for Comparative Media & Communication Studies), and lecturer at the Berlin University of Digital Sciences, and Macromedia Hochschule Munich. His research work focuses on strategic media management, media economics, media convergence and media innovation management. He has published in journals such as: The International Journal on Media Management, the European Journal of Communication, ICA’s Communication Yearbook, and is a frequent conference speaker on issues of media management and economics (German Communication Association, World Media Economics Conference, European Media Management Association).

Marije Arentze

Project Manager
DROG

Marije Arentze graduated in East-European studies at the University of Amsterdam and works as project manager on Media Literacy for DROG, the Dutch platform of experts on disinformation. Her work is focused on "vaccinating" news consumers against disinformation.

Dejan Pralica

Associate Professor at the Department of Media Studies, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad

Dejan Pralica, PhD (1978, Novi Sad, Serbia) Associate Professor at the Department of Media Studies, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad. He teaches Radio journalism, Media discourse analysis and Nonverbal communication. He received his PhD at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade (Journalism, 2010). He has published two monographs “Radio discourse” and “Who did media choose, and what the parties offered” (co-author with Dubravka Valic Nedeljkovic), many papers in international journals and proceedings, four of which are on the “Thomson Reuters” list. Areas of interest: radio journalism, public media, discourse analysis and nonverbal communication.

Betty Tsakarestou

Associate Professor & Head of ADandPRLAB, Department of Communication, Media and Culture, Panteion University

Betty Tsakarestou is Associate Professor and Head of ADandPRLAB & Director of Mass Media Division, Department of Communication, Media and Culture of Panteion University. She is Branding Chair & European Research Liaison for International Communication Division at The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC).  BoD member of the Institute of Communication. She is an International Exchange Alumna of Study of U.S. Institutes on Journalism and Media of U.S. Department of State, named as International Exchange Alumna of the Month, and featured in  “Women Changing Greece,” video series by U.S Embassy Athens. She has been visiting lecturer at Copenhagen Business School, the University of Cyprus and visiting researcher at Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism, CUNY J- School.

 As Head of ADandPRLAB she has initiated cross-sector educational and innovation partnerships with leading communication and business organizations, digital media, startups and social innovators. In partnership with Inside Story, they have co-designed #YourStory 2 & 3, through co-creation workshops, engaging readers and journalists in collaborative storytelling.   

She has co-organized Startup Weekends and Startup Labs, to engage university students in startup entrepreneurship, including the Startup Weekend on “Entrepreneurial Journalism” with the support of U.S. Embassy Athens and in collaboration Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism and,  Athens Startup Weekend on Audio and Radio Innovation and Summit in partnership with Antenna Music. With the support of Stavros Niarchos Foundation, she participated with students from Panteion University at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Journalism Bootcamp, in Washington, D.C.

She served as the Director for Educational Radio-Television at the Ministry of Education focusing on its digital transition (2010-2012) and served at the editorial board of the monthly “Tribute of Ideas” at Lambrakis Press.

Mania Xenou

Founder and CEO of Reliant Communications

Mania is the founder and CEO of Reliant Communications, an independent full-service communications agency, specializing in corporate consulting, media relations, and crisis management and a member of IPREX, the world’s second largest independent agency network made up of leading, independent PR agencies in major markets worldwide.

With 35 years of field experience, she has served as Communications & Public affairs Manager for Coca-Cola Hellas, Kraft Foods Hellas, Jacobs Suchard/Pavlides, and others.

Mania is also a teaching partner at the Department of Communications and Media of Panteion University of Athens where she teaches Crisis Management.

Mania holds degrees in Business Administration & Organizational Behavior, and Italian Literature.