The war in Ukraine is not happening only in the battlefields. It has dramatically changed our cities.

We will hear the story of Uzhorod, a special place previously on the periphery, which suddenly became a centre of transit, migration, and international assistance. From spring 2022, its population has doubled. How can towns and villages withstand such a pressure? How is the local government dealing with tensions among the newcomers and locals?

Bratislava is the city that has never before experienced receiving refugees. In recent war, it became an important crossroad for migrants, and a centre of national support for Ukraine. Although geographically far away from borders, the city feels the impact of the war in political life as well. What other challenges is Bratislava facing as a capital of a small country providing the massive help to Ukraine?

In Poland, there is a significant Ukrainian minority and diaspora, visible politically and culturally. During the war, Polish cities received huge numbers of refugees. Some of them were struggling with insufficient infrastructure and lack of capacities. What was the role of native Ukrainians in Poland? How the cooperation of civic actors with the central and local governments look like? What has changed in Polish cities with the recent war?

The war may not be so visible in our region, but it has changed our cities a lot. Was it for good or for bad?

 Social networks, search engines, online platforms and their algorithms shape our way of living and how we interact with one another. In the online era, we have to understand that the new generation is growing up with their identities intertwined with the online world. Online is where a lot happens, therefore has to be taken seriously. In this panel we will look into the world of online radicalisation and de-radicalisation, trends , threats and solutions and explore the current developments of online mobilisation and radicalisation related to the war in Ukraine.

“Humour” has become a central weapon of extremist movements to spread hate and to lower the threshold towards violence. Especially within the context of a recent wave of far-right terrorist attacks, but also within other ideologies such as jihadism, we witness “playful” ways in communicating hateful ideologies through Internet memes.

This workshop will take you through the world of memes and the use of (secret) symbolism in extremist propaganda and will be presented by the authors of fresh new book: Handbook of Memes, that will be available at the conference.

During this session we will speak to researchers and civil society experts who are actively using the European Observatory of Online Hate (EOOH) research tool/dashboard to support their work on hate speech and disinformation. All too often, cutting edge technology is not available to the Hate Speech and Disinformation community due to the concentration of technology development in the private sector. This research tool/dashboard created for EOOH with the support of the European Commission, is available to Experts from Civil Society, Academia, Law Enforcement and Policy Makers in the 24 working languages of the EU as well as Russian, Arabic and Turkish. The goal of the project is to give immediate and unfettered access to a tool to (re)search social media, mainstream and fringe platforms, in order to better understand trends in Hate Speech and Disinformation.  This workshop will look at the practical application of the tool created as part of the EOOH. This tool gives an opportunity to snapshot trends on over 15 social media platforms including Twitter, TikTok, YouTube but also fringe platforms where moderation is considerably less stringent or non-existent, like Gab, 4Plebs and Telegram. We will provide attendees will an opportunity to see this technology applied to our fields in order to understand and react to toxic trends with a view to responding or taking action. Understanding the difference in narratives, trends and threats on these two ends of the social media spectrum is important in understanding the direction our European Community is going. Specifically, our community   is severely challenged by the climate crisis, the War on Ukraine, the flood of Kremlin propaganda and disinformation, destabilising, disruptive conspiracy theories as well as the rise of populism. Case studies related to these topics will be presented by the EOOH Experts using data and evidence gleaned from the EOOH tool. The aim is also to make AI accessible to those who don’t have a background in tech so please join if you would like explore tech related to hate speech without having to understand the tech behind it. Specifically, our case studies will include online trends related to Kremlin Nazi narratives, Ukrainian refugees narratives and the concept “francocide”.

Cities, towns and other local authorities feel the day-to-day impact of polarisation, hate and extremism in their communities, perhaps more acutely now than ever before. They have a unique but under-recognised role to play in building community resilience and bottom-up prevention. They are closer to their communities, arguably better understand the local issues, and are often better placed than national governments to turn policy into action. In spite of this, national governments around the world still dominate the policy agenda, often with a greater emphasis on securitised rather than preventative whole-of society approaches. But how do cities take on a greater role and what are some of the mechanisms led by cities that allow them to play a connective role between government strategies on the one hand and grassroots outreach on the other? In this session, the Strong Cities Network (SCN) will bring together three cities from Norway, North Macedonia and Slovakia to share their insights and lessons for cities across Europe facing common challenges but with distinct local needs and different municipal infrastructure.

Is it possible to have a constructive and open online discussion in the “post-truth age”? Can we find consensus even on the most controversial topics? Sure! With the right tools it wasn’t any easier.

This workshop will lead you through the methods and possibilities of finding consensus in the digital world.

How should we frame our discussions to enable meaningful engagement and common understanding? Which discursive rules should we apply to balance between the values of openness and constructiveness? And how to approach effective consensus finding?

These questions will be the core theme of our workshop. So don’t hesitate to participate in creating a world of fair and open discussion!

Behind the AI technology: What people do to build a robust AI

Artificial intelligence has become a guiding force behind everything we do online. It has never been easier to connect with like minded people and find content that pleases us. But these massive number crunching algorithms - that serve to increase profits for their creators - have caused a disruptive side effect: the construction of deafening echo chambers, in which toxicity and hate can flow unabated.

This workshop will give participants a basic understanding of how Artificial Intelligence works. We will first explain how social media are using AI to guide us into their funnels. Next,  we will show how the same technologies can be used for good instead. Using hands-on examples from some of Textgain’s projects, we will show how machines can be taught to recognize online hate speech and provide data-driven insights that can help tackle the problem.

If you want to attend this workshop please bring your laptop with you. 

In this workshop Johanne and Kim will take you through a holistic view on how to counter radicalization via the city of Kristiansand model in Norway. They will touch on topics such as how to mainstream the work on preventing extremism, where it becomes something that takes place every day and is part of general crime prevention efforts (who should be involved, who should take lead, what are the costs and benefits?). We will also learn about the importance of the political support and how to build trust in times of crisis, such as refugee influx during adjacent war conflicts.

Our session will look at football’s response in the past decade’s conflict situations and at the manifestation of extremism and radicalization in football, and existing monitoring and response methodologies.

Participants will work together in groups to i) discuss new approaches in preventing, identifying and tackling extremism and radicalization; and ii) share their own experiences and suggestions on the role of sport in de-escalation, inclusion, integration during crisis situations.

We invite you for launch of the photo exhibition "Conflict through the lens",  

TOP 10 artists from international photo competition for students and non-professional photographers: https://eooh.eu/photo-contest . 3 winning photographers will be (if possible) present for discussion about their perception of conflict and how they see it through the lense.

Conflict, in all its different forms, is an unavoidable part of our daily lives. Conflict affects our society and our personal experiences on a daily basis. It revolves around different issues such as climate change, vaccination, bike paths, birth control rights, barrier-free roads, to name just a few. It might affect everyone, or small groups of people. You might find it in huge rallies, as well as in small interpersonal encounters, or even in symbolic gestures. 

We will be honored to welcome Paul Giannasi, who is currently the Hate Crime Advisor to the National Police Chiefs’ Council in the United Kingdom Having accrued 30 years experience as a police officer, he advises on hate crime policy and coordinates national responses, managing ‘True Vision’ (www.report-it.org.uk)and the National Online Hate Crime Hub on behalf of the police. He is the co-author of the national Police Hate Crime Guidance which offers advice to all UK police officers and
partners.

Paul will introduce us the nature of Hate crime, which in many countries is not even properly defined and fully understood or recognized. What are the indicators of hate crime, when does it become dangerous? What are the strategies to deal with it? 

Paul Giannasi will be with us throughout the conference and will join us for the Open Space session "From Social Network to City Square" so there will be plenty of opportunities to interact with him.

OPEN SPACE FORMAT

In this session, that is absolutely crucial and important for the outcomes of the conference, the participants will be engaged in structured exchange of discussions on topics that are relevant to the participants themselves. This conference format offers an unique opportunity to exchange ideas and seek answers to emerging questions that are new to everyone. We face new challenges and new challenges require innovative solutions and partnerships. We invite you all to this highly interactive session, that will provide space for networking and interactions with experienced experts and also conclude the conference.

Gautam Rana is the Ambassador of the United States of America to the Slovak Republic. He arrived in Slovakia on September 14, 2022. A career member of the Senior Foreign Service, Ambassador Rana previously served as the Deputy Chief of Mission and long-term Chargé d’Affaires ad interim at the Embassies of the United States in Algeria and Slovenia. He also served as a Director for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the National Security Council (NSC) from 2014-2015. Prior to the NSC, he was the Deputy Minister Counselor for Political Affairs at the American Embassy in New Delhi, India. From 2009-2010, Ambassador Rana worked for Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg as Special Assistant for South and Central Asia, the Middle East, and counterterrorism. Prior to joining the Deputy Secretary’s staff, he was the Special Assistant to Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Daniel Fried. His overseas diplomatic postings also include Khost, Afghanistan; Peshawar, Pakistan; and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

Prior to joining the Foreign Service in 2002, Ambassador Rana was a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society in New York City, and a civil rights fellow with the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium. He speaks Hindi, Gujarati, and Spanish, and has studied French, Slovenian, Arabic, and Pashto. He is currently learning Slovak. Ambassador Rana has degrees in Economics and International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania, a law degree from Vanderbilt University, and a Master of Arts in Strategic Security Studies from the National Defense University. He is married, with two children.

Gabriella Sancisi is a career diplomat and currently Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to Slovakia. Prior to assuming this post, she served as Private Secretary to Her Majesty Queen Maxima of the Netherlands for more than 7 years. She also worked as secretary to Foreign Minister Rosenthal and State Secretary Timmermans. During her many years in the Foreign Ministry, Gabriella was posted in Zagreb as Deputy Head of Mission and in New York as Consul for Culture and Communications.

Daniel Hooton is the Strong Cities Network’s Director of Global Engagement, with responsibility for
strategy and delivery of international cities programmes. This includes current projects to develop
institutional approaches to long-term governance, human security and social policy challenges in
cities across Africa, Asia, the Balkans and the Middle East. He has advised and worked with
numerous international governments, UN agencies and mayors on international counterterrorism
and counter-extremism strategy, briefing senior ministers and leaders and shaping multilateral
cooperation on grassroots practice in cities around the world.

Deputy head of the Transcarpathian regional military (state) administration

2002 - 2006 - military service in leadership positions in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, cadet and sergeant units, Kamianets-Podilskyi, Khmelnytskyi region, Military Engineering Institute of the State Technical University of Ukraine

2006 – 2010 - military service in senior officer positions in the Armed Forces of Ukraine (commander of engineering and sapper units, instructor, brigade management, participation in international military exercises, participation in multinational missions within the framework of international NATO programs).

2014 – 2015 - participation in combat operations as part of the anti-terrorist operation in Donetsk and Luhansk regions as part of counter-intelligence and counter-terrorist units (ATO participant, war veteran participant in combat operations).

2019 - 2022 - Deputy Head of the Transcarpathian Regional State Administration.

Nina Spišiak joined the Bratislava municipality as the coordinator of the integration of foreigners in July 2022. She led one of the Slovak human rights organisations - Milan Šimečka Foundation before, where she focused on the support and development of inclusive societies on local level. She worked, volunteered and lectured for several CSOs and was part of various networks and councils focused on human rights, minorities, education and civic actors' cooperation for the past 14 years. In the first half of 2022 she acted as the main coordinator of Human Rights League in the Assistance Center for helping people fleeing Ukraine in Bratislava and was involved in management of legal counseling, volunteers and community interpreters. She holds a doctorate from the University of Economics in Bratislava in international economic relations. She was researching attitudes towards migrants as part of her doctoral studies and has been active in the field of local migrant inclusion for a couple of years now.

Member of the management board of the Association of the Ukrainian Minority in Poland, Przemyśl branch. A volunteer at the Ukrainian House in Przemyśl. After February 24th, together with other Ukrainian House volunteers created a crisis centre for refugees. The Ukrainian House employees and volunteers help hundreds of refugees by running a refugee shelter, providing interpreters and volunteers at the railway station, organizing Polish language lessons, workshops for children and adults, providing legal advices, safe accomodation and job search.

Before the full-scale war, Tatiana dealt mainly with organizing cultural events and various activities aimed at promoting Ukrainian culture in Poland. She is particularly interested in the traditions of the Ukrainian minority in the Przemyśl region. In her spare time, Tatiana runs a traditional singing group and vocal classes for children. She has two teenage children.

Zuza Fialová, trainer, researcher and consultant in topics related to democratic transformation, conflict management, human rights, and sustainable development. She earned her MA from sociology at the Commenius University in Bratislava (1995). PhD. studies were accomplished in Warsaw – Institute of Political studies (1999). She has been working for variety of international organizations (OSCE, NATO), national human rights and advocacy organizations, universities and government bodies. Her list of professional publications contains more than 40 positions. She has been working in over 25 countries of Europe and Asia, including Afghanistan, Poland, or Ukraine.

Zuza will moderate the opening panel Civic actors in war and peace.

Julia Ebner is Senior Research Fellow at Institute for Strategic Dialogue, specialising in far-right extremism, reciprocal radicalisation, viral disinformation, conspiracy myths and terrorism prevention. 

Julia advises parliamentary working groups, security agencies and tech firms, and delivers lectures in schools and universities. She acted as a consultant on counter-terrorism for the United Nations. 

She is the author of The Rage: The Vicious Circle of Islamist and Far-Right Extremism, which won the Bruno Kreisky Award for the Political Book of the Year 2018. Her second book Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists was an international bestseller and has been translated into seven languages. 

Learn more about her work here: https://www.isdglobal.org/isd_team/julia-ebner/.

Marie Heřmanová is social anthropologist with a focus on digital anthropology, the internet and research on online identities and communities. She is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Sociology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, where she focuses on social media influencers, online political communication and gender inequalities on social media. 

She is also a member of Anthropictures, an applied anthropological research studio, and has conducted a number of studies on the spread of misinformation in the online space, particularly focusing on the topic of migration and refugees. She regularly publishes journalistic texts in various Czech media.

She is interested in why conspiracy theories and disinformation thrive so well on social media, how they proliferate in online spaces, who meets them there, how this affects online communities, and what role the algorithms of digital communication platforms play in the spread of conspiracy theories. She is also interested in what connection can be found between conspiracy theories and the socio-economic conditions of those who spread them, and what role digital inequalities play in this.

Marie will moderate the panel about online radicalisation.

Olivier Cauberghs is a former CT detective with 15 years experience at the Belgian Federal Police. As a member of the steering group Coppra (Community Policing Preventing Radicalisation) he trained over 1000 first line practitioners in the detection of signs of radicalisation for the Belgian National Police Academy.

Olivier is also a member of the Expert Pool of the RAN (Radicalisation Awareness Network) and CEPOL (The European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Training). He is currently completing the masters Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St-Andrews (UK).

Tom De Smedt is CTO of Textgain and has 20 years of experience in developing software frameworks for computer graphics and natural language processing AI. For his work on monitoring online extremism he was awarded the International Research Prize of the Auschwitz Foundation in 2019, and the Belgian Smart Care award for his work on e-health in 2017.

Language engineer, developing Artificial Intelligence technology for the automated processing of user-generated content. He is the CEO of the University of Antwerp spin-off Textgain®, an award-winning company that leverages AI technology for societal good. With a background in linguistics and machine learning, he is continuously exploring how self-learning technology can find meaningful patterns in massive content streams and how these patterns can be transformed into actionable insights.

Kim Henrik Gronert has a Master of law and Master of management. He has worked in public sector, both at State level and since 2004 in Kristiansand Municipality.

At present day he holds the position as Advisor for Intercultural Dialogue, Director’s staff for the Director of Culture and Inter-citizen Dialogue at Kristiansand Municipality.

Gronert is also a cofounder of MEET (Muslim Europea Empowerment programme) https://meetprogramme.eu/.

Martin Kralovic (SK) is night mayor of Bratislava and also safety and security advisor to the Mayor of Bratislava. He is responsible for nightlife management in the capital city and he is also supervising Municipal police of Bratislava. He has been in public safety and event safety industry for more than 10 years and his specialisation is crowd safety management. 

Martin has been responsible for safety of the largest events and demonstrations in past 5 years in Slovakia (demonstration For Decent Slovakia, Pope Francis visit, Slovak National Uprising 75th Anniversary, Pohoda festival, ... ).

He has obtained Foundation degree (FdA.) in Crowd safety management at Buckinghamshire New University in UK and currently he is finishing his MSc. in Crowded places and public safety management at Coventry University.

Aleksandar Krstevski is the Head of the Department for Culture, Sports, Social Protection, Child Protection and Health Care within the Municipality of Kumanovo. Aleksandar is engaged in drafting a Local Action Plan for the Prevention of Violent Extremism and is a member of the Community Action Team (CAT) in the Municipality of Kumanovo. The CAT cooperates with the Strong Cities Network in the Western Balkans in implementing and exchanging good practices regarding the prevention of violent extremism, local risk assessment, as well as planning future activities in this domain. As part of his portfolio, Aleksandar also works on strengthening the capacities of the municipal officials and other relevant stakeholders, promoting the role of young people in the community, and building resilience towards radicalization and violent extremism.

Previously, he was the Head of the Department for International Cooperation and EU-Integration, Strategic Planning, Policy, Monitoring and Local Economic Development. 

Over the course of his career, Aleksandar has participated in the preparation of several national and local strategies in the municipality of Kumanovo. 

Before his work in the municipality, Aleksandar also worked in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kuwait as a Logistics Coordinator and in Operations and Maintenance. Aleksandar Krstevski graduated from the Faculty of Pedagogy in Skopje, Faculty of Psychology and Faculty of Economics and he later obtained a master degree in Counselling Psychology and Economic Management with Human Resources. 

He is currently enrolled in doctoral studies at the University of Veliko Tarnovo "St. Cyril and Methodius" in Bulgaria on Political Economy.

Simeon Dukic is a Senior Manager for the Western Balkans and Central Asia, leading SCN engagement with local governments in the two regions to ensure they have adequate tools, capacities and platforms to effectively counter extremism that leads to violence. His key tasks include facilitating city-to-city learning and national-local coordination, supporting the operationalisation of multi-stakeholder prevention frameworks, empowering youth, mapping resilience to extremism and analysing extremist online content. 

Prior to his role with the SCN, Simeon was a Project Associate at the National Committee for Countering Violent Extremism and Counter-Terrorism of the Republic of North Macedonia. He supported the coordination of 22 government ministries, CSOs, multilaterals and regional counterparts. Moreover, he was involved in the drafting of the first National CVE Strategy. 

Simeon holds an MA (Distinction) in Intelligence and International Security from King’s College London and a BA (Magna Cum Laude) in Global Challenges from Leiden University College.

Michal Horský is the CEO of civic association DEMDIS which strives to create a technology enabled world of fair and open discussion. The goal of DEMDIS is to create new ways of a meaningful public engagement in solving problems of our societies.

Apart from that he’s a student of law at Trnava university and part time journalist and political analyst at newspaper Pravda.

Michal specializes in the field of discursive theories, social networks, democracy and civic engagement.

Maia works at the international service of the  International League Against Racism and Antisemitism (Licra), she is representing Licra and INACH in the European Observatory of Online Hate. Maia has been monitoring online racist and antisemitic hate speech during several monitoring exercises organised by the European Commission. 

She has been involved in the European project Re-ACT and researched how “old” antisemitic and anti-gypsy conspiracies re-enact nowadays online. She is also involved in the project Get the Trolls out! monitoring traditional and social media to combat discrimination and intolerance based on religious grounds in Europe.

Brandon Oelofse is Co-Founder of Media Development Collective, a collaborative consultancy and training organisation focused on the media, civil society, and for-good sectors. MDC has a focus on media for influence and advocacy, media for behaviour change and media to counter radicalisation and disinformation. 

Brandon is the civil society key expert for the European Observatory for Online Hate (EOOH). He is the co-author “Making the Media Work for You” – a guide for civil society organisations on how to access the media and use it for change. He has worked extensively in the media as a filmmaker and director and in the last 10 years trained over 3000 journalists, activists and human rights defenders in working with the media to create positive change. 

Belgian data scientist and developer at Textgain. He has developed solutions and algorithms for the detection, collection and processing of data around the topics of online hate, online extremism and online polarisation. His interests lie at the convergence of technology and human emancipation.

Lydia El-Khouri (IE) is a programme manager at Textgain. Lydia is currently coordinating the EC funded project the European Observatory on Online Hate. Lydia has over 20 years’ experience in the field of Diversity, Advocacy and Freedom of Expression. Working previously at the Media Diversity Institute (MDI), The Freedom Forum, the Irish Mission to the OSCE and The International Press Institute. She has developed and implemented large scale diversity programmes in the Balkans, South Caucasus, the Middle East and Europe, including Get The Trolls Out! project which is designed to combat anti-religious hate in the media and online. 

Johanne Benitez Nilsen is the crime prevention coordinator the city of Kristiansand. This is a position that is organized in the municipal management with responsibility for coordinating all strategic work with crime prevention. Nilsen has a degree in political science and has worked as a social worker for large parts of her previous professional career.

Today Nilsen is responsible for leading the municipalities work on extremism prevention, and this includes the municipalities newest project on how to counter hate crime both online and offline. This work is closely connected to other areas of crime prevention in the municipality.

Loukas is Head of Partnership at Fare -an umbrella organisation that brings together individuals, informal groups and organisations driven to combat inequality in football and use the sport as a means for social change. 

He is from Thessaloniki, Greece, and his father started taking him to basketball matches of his local club Aris before he was 18 months old. A year later, he was also going to the club’s football matches. Loukas has been an active member of the Aris fanbase since the age of 14 and was involved in the organisation the fans setup to save the club from bankruptcy in 2006 (Aris Socios) of which he later became Membership and Community Manager. Loukas then moved to SD Europe, the European network of member run clubs and fan organisations interested in improving football’s governance where he stayed for almost a decade before joining Fare. 

After moving to Athens, he became interested with the oldest club in Greece, Panionios, which is a refugee club from the city of Smirni (Izmir) and has a dedicated and passionate fanbase that supports the local community and fights for social progress through sport in the area. Loukas has also served as a volunteer board member for the Greek Athletics Federation and runs his own sailing yacht chartering company.

board member and one of founding members of Alternative Sport Club „Zły“ from Warsaw, Poland. Club, where both female and male football teams are from the beginning treated equally, is known for the inclusivity of their fan base.

Krzysztof works also for Inclusive.buzz association, where together with a group of refugees of various origins they run a restaurant together.

Currently he is also in the intervention team at Fundacja w Stronę Dialogu, where he assists Ukrainian refugees of Roma origin and also occasionally volunteers for Grupa Granica in their work on the refugee crisis on Belarusian Border.

Paul is currently the Hate Crime Advisor to the National Police Chiefs’ Council in the United Kingdom. Having accrued 30 years experience as a police officer, he advises on hate crime policy and coordinates national responses, managing ‘True Vision’ (www.report-it.org.uk) and the National Online Hate Crime Hub on behalf of the police. He is the co-author of the national Police Hate Crime Guidance which offers advice to all UK police officers and partners.

From 2007, until it ended in 2017, Paul led the cross-government Hate Crime Programme, which brought all sectors of government together with civil society, to coordinate efforts to improve the response to hate crime across the criminal justice system.

For over a decade, Paul represented the UK Government to international governmental agencies on hate crime and has worked to share good practice in many developing and post-conflict states, training professionals and assisting in policy development.

Paul is the Chair of Trustees of a charity, Communities against Crimes of Hate which works to support victims and build cohesive communities and is also a trustee of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.

Paul has a number of publications, including as the co-editor of the 2014 ‘Routledge International Handbook on Hate Crime’ and ‘Tackling Disability Discrimination and Disability Hate Crime - A Multi-disciplinary Guide, published by Jessica Kingsley in 2015.

Paul was awarded an OBE in the 2014 New Years Honours list for services to policing, equality and human rights. 

Petra is a master’s student of advertising photography at Tomas Bata university in Zlin, Czech Republic. In her work she mainly focuses on documentary and conceptual photography and works with the question of the nature of man in society. Between 2019 and 2021 she twice participated in the exchange program at Bezalel Academy of arts and design in East Jerusalem at the studio of documentary photography where she started to work on her ongoing project Born of sand and Sun. Recently she won an award in the journalistic competition Slovak Press Photo 2022 and is also a holder of the Ian Parry scholarship. In 2021 she was nominated to take part in Fresh Eyes Photo and also exhibited at the photographic exhibition PHOTO:ISRAEL.

Born in Ukraine, at the age of seven Darina and her mom immigrated to the Netherlands. She studies Photography, Film and the Digital at the St. Joost Academy of Arts and is currently graduating. The series she chose for this contest are from her ongoing graduation project.

She is a multidisciplinaire artist and uses different sorts of media, which will suit the narrative and the story she wants to tell. The main topic of her projects and where she is interested in, is often people and their environment. Themes such as integration and assimilation always keeps her busy. Beside her studies she works part time as a hostess in a museum and sometimes she volunteers as a translator. 

Portfolio website: www.iyudina.eu 

Robo studied Philosophy at Comenius University in Bratislava and currently is a student at The Studio of Documentary Production at The Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava. His work consists of film direction, documentary photography, occasional journalism as well as community organising. Both in his professional and artistic work, he deals with questions of democracy, social problems, radicalism and nationalism. He currently lives and works in Bratislava.

Ľubica joined PDCS in June 2022. In her work, she focuses on communication of social phenomena and events that are affected by prejudices and other emotional charges. She advocates quality communication that contributes to change in society, relieves tension, and builds important connections between different social groups.

 She is the co-founder of the prestigious Journalist Award and the Investigative Journalism Fund (NOS-OSF). Her most significant achievements in the field of communication are the public service campaigns against online hate speech: Tell it to my face, But Won't Hide Your Hate, the international campaign I Don't Masturhate and the anti-prejudice campaign Blind Trips (NOS-OSF). She participated in the creation of the TV discussion program Silná zostava (RTVS) and subsequently worked as a content producer, expert, and screenwriter, for which she repeatedly won the Journalism Award.

 She completed her doctoral studies at the Department of Photography and New Media (VŠVÚ), and graduated in European Studies (CEU), and Journalism and Documentary in Audio-Visual Media (FFUK). She also completed professional training for working with dangerous and hate speech.

Dušan Ondrušek, president of PDCS, is well-known for his outstanding skills and experience in the field of training and consultancy (over 1200 training courses in 40 different countries in CEE region and elsewhere). As a trainer and consultant, he has been focusing primarily on organization development, alternative ways of conflict resolution, international development issues and non-violent communication.

Karolina Miková, director of PDCS, studied urban planning at the Faculty of Architecture of the Slovak Technical University in Bratislava and took a one-year study programme at the Institute for Public Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, USA. She completed PhD studies at the Department of Political Science at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Comenius University in Bratislava.

As an expert she deals mostly with public conflict resolution and prevention, citizen participation in public issues decision-making, the development of civil society, deliberative democracy, community development and cross-sector cooperation. She has trained and consulted internationally in over 30 countries.

Lukáš Zorád has been working in PDCS since 2016 as a programme coordinator of the European Network for Non-violence and Dialogue (ENND) and other projects. He is an ecologist, geographer, experienced lecturer and main co-organiser of this conference. He previously worked in People in Need organization as a head of mission for development cooperation programme in Kenya with focus on livelihood strategies, nature conservation and food security.

You will meet him throughout the conference as a moderator.