Dr Karine Lisbonne de Vergeron
Dr Karine de Vergeron is Associate Director and Head of Europe Programme at the Global Policy Institute. She is a member of the scientific committee and longstanding contributing author to the leading Robert Schuman Foundation in Paris and a senior fellow of the Federal Trust. She was previously associate to Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs) and further provided strategic expertise to the European External Action Service, particularly on the development of culture in European external relations and EU-China cultural exchanges, as well as to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Assembly. She is a Professor of European Cultural Policies (MBA) at Icart Paris. She is a Young Leader of the French-China Foundation and guest speaker and contributor to many conferences and media across Europe. She received a Special Prize from the French Minister of Culture for her contribution to art foundations across Europe (2005). Her publications include notably: Team leader of the India Country Report in Update to the 2015 Perceptions Study funded by the European Union (PD-PCF and PPMI, 2022); Expert Voices in The Future of the Multilateralism Post-Covid (Irish Institute for European Affairs, 2019); The New Silk Roads: European Perceptions and Perspectives (International Studies, 2018), China-EU relations and the future of European soft power: A strategy for a European Cultural Diplomacy (LSE Ideas, 2015), Chinese and Indian views of Europe since the crisis: New perspectives from the emerging Asian giants (Global Policy Institute, Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung and the Robert Schuman Foundation, 2012), France, European Defence and NATO (Forum Press, 2008), Contemporary Chinese views of Europe (Chatham House, 2007), Contemporary Indian Views of Europe (Chatham House & Robert Schuman Foundation, 2006).
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Prof Christopher Pokarier
Christopher Pokarier is Professor in the School of International Liberal Studies, Waseda University, teaching creative industries, communication design, and comparative enterprise. He has undergraduate and masters degrees, in journalism and government, from the University of Queensland, and completed his Ph.D, on foreign investment policy, at the Australian National University. Before joining Waseda in 2004 he was senior lecturer in international business at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. His current research interests encompass the creative industries in place branding, higher education marketisation, and the future of the university campus.
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Assoc Prof Alistair Swale
Dr Alistair Swale is an Associate Professor in Japanese at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. He has written on the career and thought of Mori Arinori, one of Japan’s first diplomatic representatives to the United States following the Meiji Restoration of 1868. His work has also covered the Restoration more broadly in The Meiji Restoration: Monarchism, Mass Communication and Conservative Revolution (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). More recently he has been engaged in collaborative research at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto where he is completing a project examining responses in popular culture to the government’s drive toward "Civilization and Enlightenment" in the early Meiji period.
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Dr Valerie A. Cooper
Valerie A. Cooper is a lecturer in media and communications at Victoria University of Wellington | Te Herenga Waka in New Zealand. Her research focuses on global power dynamics and international relations through communication, especially in the areas of public diplomacy, communication for development and transnational education of communication and media. She holds a PhD in Communication from Hong Kong Baptist University, where her thesis analysed public diplomacy media outlets broadcasting in the Global South. She has previously been a lecturer in Moçambique, Hong Kong and China. She is a member of the editorial board for the recently re-launched Media Peripheries, a journal centered on media and communication at the margins.
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Dr Magdalena Góra
Magdalena Góra is Associate Professor of political science and European studies at the Institute of European Studies of the Jagiellonian University. Her research deals with the legitimacy and contestation in external relations of the European Union, EU actorness in international relations especially in EU’s close neighborhood as well as on democracy challenges in the European Union. She has published several journal articles (Cambridge Review of International Relations, East European Politics & Societies, European Security, Religion, State & Society), book chapters and co-edited volumes.
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Dr Preeti Das
Dr Preeti D Das has her masters from Simferopol State University, Crimea, Russia and pursued her Doctorate from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She was awarded the fellowship by ISCUS (Indo-Soviet Cultural Centre) to study in the erstwhile USSR. Her primary training is in Russian Culture, Literature, and folklore. She has many articles related to religious studies and culture to her credit and books on Russian language, Society, culture and politics. Her expertise includes Russian language, literature, culture, religious, and Eurasian studies. She has worked on the University Grant Commission project e-pathshala and IGNOU projects under the Ministry of Education, India. She has been awarded EU Erasmus+ Project under 2020 on Strengthening and Promoting EU Studies Across India as Principal Investigator from Jawaharlal Nehru University and is co-partner in many other international projects funded by National and International Agencies. Presently she is working in the Centre for Russian and Central Asian Studies, School of International Studies, JNU, New Delhi.
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