Year: 2025

Andi leads and oversees all philanthropic ventures, regional advocacy, and operations of the OSF Western Balkans, working closely with the OSF Chairman and high level executives. He also represents interests of the OSF in the region as well as suggests, leads, and implements other cross-regional efforts of OSF.

Having worked for the European Roma Rights Centre in Budapest representing cases before European Court of Human Rights and various UN Committees, Andi brings knowledge and experience in national and international law. He has also served as an expert for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Council of Europe, European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, Norwegian Center for Human Rights, and OSCE.

Being a highly respected profile among political, diplomatic, and civil society circles in Albania and the region, Andi is able to nurture close relationships with national and international institutions and stakeholders at the regional and European level.

He graduated from Central European University with an L.L.M in European Business Law, after studying law at the University of Tirana. More recently, he followed the Leading Green Growth module at the Harvard Kennedy School Executive Education.

Art O’Leary is Chief Executive of An Coimisiún Toghcháin, the Irish Electoral Commission, an independent State management and oversight organization for electoral and wider democracy matters.

From 2014 – 2021, Art was Secretary General to the President of Ireland, acting as Chief of Staff and Chief Adviser to President Michael D. Higgins.

In 2012 Art designed and managed Ireland’s first initiative in deliberative democracy – the Constitutional Convention – which resulted in a number of changes to the Constitution. Since then he has either managed or been a senior adviser on the 5 Citizens’ Assemblies which followed in the last 10 years.

Art also worked in the Irish Parliament, the Houses of the Oireachtas, for over 20 years, primarily as a member of the senior management team as Director of Parliamentary Committees, Information & Communications, Human Resources.

He is an Adjunct Professor at the School of Politics and Government at University College Cork.

Attila Varga, Ph.D. in educational research, is a psychologist and biology teacher. He is recently an associate professor at the Institute of People-Environment Transaction of the Faculty of Educaton and Psychology at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary. Between 2000 and 2020, he worked for the Hungarian Institute for Educational Research and Development. His main interests are education for sustainability, environmental psychology, and school development. He has coordinated the development of the network of eco-schools in Hungary for a decade. Hs is currently involved in research on the psychological foundation for awareness raising about climate change and the effectiveness of education for sustainability.

Diana Kupper is a green finance and sustainability professional with extensive experience in climate action, energy transition, investment planning, and policy advisory. As Green Finance Expert at the Global Green Growth Institute, she leads work on climate finance, supports European initiatives that help cities advance climate action, and engages diverse stakeholders to drive inclusive, low-carbon development. Her background includes advisory roles in the public and private sectors, corporate strategy, and economic analysis.

Ece Özbey is Co-Managing Editor of the Review of Democracy, the online journal of the CEU Democracy Institute (DI), where she previously served as Regional Editor during her Global Forum for Democracy and Development Fellowship at the DI. She is a doctoral researcher and lecturer at the University of Cologne, pursuing a PhD in Comparative Politics. Her research explores populism, Euroskepticism, political competition, and radicalization in European democracies. An affiliate of the METU Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, she has also conducted research and published on European integration and EU-Turkey relations.

Ece holds an MSc in European Studies and a BSc in International Relations. She has held visiting research positions at leading institutions in the US, UK, and Chile, and is actively engaged in various international research communities. She is a founding member of the OPUS Young Researchers Initiative on Populism and an active member of a variety of research networks, including Team Populism and the FEPS Young Academics Network.

Eszter Kováts studied German and French Studies, sociology and political science in Pécs, Szeged and Budapest. From 2009 to 2019 she was responsible for the East-Central European gender program of the political foundation Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Budapest. From 2016 to 2022 she did her PhD in Political Science at ELTE University, Budapest. From January to June 2020 she had a research grant at the Humboldt University in Berlin. In February 2022 she defended her dissertation with the title “Enemy image, hegemony and reflection – meaning and function of the concept of gender in the politics of the Orbán regime and the German radical right”. Her dissertation was published as a book in Hungarian in September 2022 and was awarded the Kolnai prize, the prize for the best political science book of the year, by the Hungarian Political Science Association. From February 2023 until April 2024 she has been assistant professor in the research area Politics and Gender at the Institute of Political Science, afterwards a lecturer at the department. Since September 2024 she has been Marie Skodłowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow in the research area Political Theory with her research project ‚Social justice or cancel culture? Gender-just language and academic freedom in Germany‘.