Wim Van Petegem holds an MSc degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Ghent (Belgium), an MSc degree in Biomedical Engineering from the KU Leuven (Belgium) and a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from KU Leuven (1993). He worked at the University of Alberta, Edmonton (Canada), at the Open University of the Netherlands and at the Leuven University College (Belgium).

He is a regular panel member of review committees to assess quality of education in Flanders and the Netherlands. He is heavily engaged in development cooperation projects with the South and gives regularly trainings in e.g. South-Africa, Ecuador, Ethiopia, China, Philippines, etc. on innovation in education and digital competences for teachers and professional support staff. He is actively involved in different international networks of universities like SEFI, MEDEA, and EDEN. He has been attending meetings and conferences of EDEN since the late 1990’s. He served on the Board of directors from 2009 till 2018, and as Vice-President Research from 2016 till 2018. He is Fellow of the organization since 2007 and Senior Fellow since 2017, and he is member of the Fellow Council Board. Currently he is also editor-in-chief of EURODL.

Albert Sangrà is Director for the UNESCO Chair in Education and Technology for Social Change. Professor and researcher at the Open University of Catalonia, Department of Psychology and Education. Member of the founder team of this university (1994-95), where I served as Director, Methodology and Educational Innovation until 2004, being in charge of the educational model of the university; Director of the M.Sc. program in Education and ICT (e-learning) (2006-2012), and Director of the eLearn Center (2012-2014). I have worked as a consultant and trainer in several online and blended learning projects in Europe, America, Asia, and Australia, focusing on implementation strategies for the use of technology in teaching and learning and its quality. Former Vice-president, European Foundation of Quality on E-Learning (EFQUEL), and member of the Executive Committee of EDEN (2003-2009). Recipient of the 2015 Award for Excellence in eLearning awarded by the World Education Congress.

Researcher at the Edul@b research group, and Research Associate at Contact North, Canada.

Current Director of the Industrial Doctorates Programme, Government of Catalonia.

Diana Andone is the Director of the eLearning Center at the Politehnica University of Timisoara in Romania. Diana  runs the team who developed the university’s award wining Virtual Campus CVUPT and is also lecturer at the “Politehnica” University of Timisoara, Romania, in the area of multimedia and web technologies.  She is passionate about the ubiquitous access to technologies and how they can be used to improve people’s life. Diana holds a PhD in Designing eLearning Spaces for Digital Students with University of Brighton, UK, an MA in European Studies, an “Learning about Open Learning”, postgraduate distance education course at the Herriott-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK; an MSc in Artificial Intelligence at the “Politehnica” University of Timisoara, Romania. Her publication list comprises 9 books and 82 papers presented at international conferences, she is reviewer for 12 International Conferences, 4 journals, 6 best paper awards at different conferences and since 2010 Co-chair at the IADIS WWW/Internet International Conference. In 2012 she received the EDEN Fellow Title.

Deborah Arnold has over three decades of experience in the field of education and training in Europe, in teaching, management and governance roles, Deborah obtained an international PhD from Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) in 2022 and was awarded the UOC special prize for the Education and ICT doctoral programme. Her research focuses on Digital Education Leadership in Higher Education.

Deborah is currently Public Sector Solutions Project Leader at NTT DATA, leading a contract for the European Commission (EACEA). She was national and international projects coordinator at AUNEGe, the French digital university for economics and management (2018- 2023), digital strategy advisor and head of the audiovisual production, learning technology and distance education unit (2012-2018) at Université de Bourgogne, and e-learning project manager at Université Nancy 2 (2000-2011).

A former Vice-President of EDEN, Deborah is an EDEN Senior Fellow and currently serves as Chair on the EDEN Fellows Council Board. She is a member of the Editorial Board of IJELT, the International Journal of Educational and Life Transitions and was Secretary of the Board of the Media and Learning Association from 2021 to 2023. She has published and presented widely on both the European projects in which she has been involved and on her research.

Gila Kurtz is the Dean of the Faculty of Instructional Technologies at the Holon Institute of Technology (HIT) in Israel. She has a wealth of experience, having served as the Academic Vice President at a company specializing in e-learning solutions for the corporate sector for several years. Other positions: a member of the Steering Committee of the European Distance and E-Learning Network (EDEN) and the Editor-in-Chief of The Interdisciplinary Journal of E-Skills and Lifelong Learning (IJELL). Gila has been a visiting scholar at the University of Maryland University College, University of California Berkeley, Syracuse University and University Roma, TRE.

Paul Prinsloo is a Research Professor in Open and Distance eLearning (ODeL) at the University of South Africa (Unisa). He is a visiting professor at the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), a Research Associate for Contact North/Contact Nord (Canada), a member of the Center for Open Education Research at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg (Germany), a Senior Fellow of the European Distance and E-Learning Network (EDEN), and serves on several editorial boards. Paul has published numerous articles in the fields of teaching and learning, student success in distributed learning contexts, the ethical collection, analysis, and use of student data in learning analytics, and digital identities.  

Christian Schumann is Professor of Business Informatics at the West Saxon University of Zwickau. He received his doctorate and habilitation from Chemnitz University of Technology. Currently, he is university representative for international relations, head of the Center for New Forms of Study, director of the Institute for Management and Information, and dean of studies for master’s and distance learning programs. He holds leading positions in the Association of German Engineers and is involved in international organizations, for example, the German University Consortium for International Cooperation, the Chinese-German University of Applied Sciences, the Mexican-German University Cooperation, ICDE and SAE International. Additionally, he is chair of the Continental Network of the British, Academy of Management (BAM) and visiting member of the BAM council, a member of the Board of Directors of the Fellows Council of EDEN, a member of the Board of Directors of the Accreditation Agency for Study Programs in Engineering, Informatics, Natural Sciences and Mathematics ASIIN as well as a member of the Delegate Assembly of the Society for Project Management in Germany.

António M. Teixeira (Lisbon, 1965) is an Associate Professor with tenure at Universidade Aberta (UAb), the Portuguese open university, since 1991. A member of the Department of Education and Distance Learning which he headed from 2016 to 2020, he’s also a researcher at the University of Lisbon’s Center of Philosophy and collaborates with the University of Rome 3 as well as the Distance and eLearning Lab (LEaD) at UAb. He was a visiting scholar at the Korean National Open University (2010).

Having graduated from the University of Lisbon where he received his PhD (2003) and MPhil (1994) in Philosophy, Dr. Teixeira conducted his training in online education at the University of Turku (2004).

From 2006 to 2009, he was Pro-rector for innovation in Distance Learning at Universidade Aberta. In that capacity, he conceived the strategy and managed the university’s successful and speedy transition process from a print-based distance learning institution to a fully online one. He was also responsible for the design and initial implementation of the university’s research lab on distance education (LEaD) and the university’s open access scientific repository (Repositório Aberto).