Profile of Speakers – Workshop “The European Parliament: Past, Present and Future”

Dieter SCHLENKER

Dieter Schlenker is the Director of the Historical Archives of the European Union and Co-Director of the Alcide De Gasperi Research Centre at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Prior to taking this post in 2013, he worked for UNESCO, first as an archivist at the Paris Headquarters, then as Head of the Information and Knowledge Management Unit in Bangkok, Thailand. Previously, he worked as Records Manager at Ford Company European Headquarters in Cologne and at FAO Headquarters in Rome. He is co-author of the FMA publication “Overcoming the Pandemic”, realised in collaboration with Women 20 and the support of the Historical Archives of the European Union.

Monica BALDI

Monica Baldi, architect and urban planner, is Grand Officer of Merit of the Italian Republic. Deputy and Secretary of the Commission for Foreign and Community Affairs at the Chamber of Deputies from 2001 to 2006. MEP and Deputy President of the Committee for Culture, Youth, Education, Media and Sport from 1994 to 1999. She is Vice President of the European Parliament Former Members Association (FMA) and of ARS PACE.

Baldi was Vice President of the Red Cross of Pistoia and President of the associations: Pinocchio di Carlo Lorenzini, Pinocchioworld, Laurus and Professional Cycling Groups League. She is speaker and promoter of conferences on: international politics, cooperation and development, culture, urban planning, environment. She has always been committed to the defence of Human Rights and in particular for the Rights of Women.

Lisbeth KIRK

Klaus WELLE 

Klaus Welle is the former Secretary-General of the European Parliament, a role in which he served from 2009 to 2022. He Chairs the Martens Centre’s Academic Council. He is also a Guest Professor in practice at the London School of Economics, a Visiting Professor at KU Leuven and a Leader in Residence at the Moynihan Center of the Colin Powell School for global leadership in New York. After obtaining a Degree in economics from the University of Witten/Herdecke in Germany, Klaus Welle worked at the CDU Central Office in Bonn, before coming to Brussels where he served as Secretary-General of the European People’s Party (EPP) from 1994 to 1999, Secretary-General of the EPP-ED Group in the European Parliament from 1999 to 2003, Director-General for Internal Policies at the European Parliament from 2004 to 2007, Head of the Cabinet of the President of the European Parliament from 2007 to 2009, and Secretary-General of the European Parliament from 2009 to 2022.

Domènec RUIZ DEVESA

Domènec Miguel Ruiz Devesa (Alicante, 3 March 1978) is a Spanish consultant, economist and politician for the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party. He was a Member of the European Parliament from 2019 to 2024 within the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats. In his parliamentary role he was the S&D coordinator of the Constitutional Affairs Committee and a member of the Culture Committee and Vice-Chairman of the Iraq Delegation.

Fabio Massimo CASTALDO

Fabio Massimo Castaldo (born 18 September 1985) is an Italian politician who served in the European Parliament since 2014 until 2021. On 15 November 2017, he was elected Vice-President of the European Parliament. In doing so, he replaced Alexander Graf Lambsdorff and became the youngest vice-president in the history of the institution. As a member of the European Parliament (MEP), he sat on the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy parliamentary group from 1 July 2014 to 15 October 2014, and again from 20 October 2014 and 1 July 2019, and was a non-attached member (Non-Inscrits) from 16 October 2014 to 19 October 2014. On 3 July 2019, he was re-elected vice-president of the European Parliament, running as an independent with the support of over forty MEPs belonging to various political groups, as the European delegation of the Five Star Movement (M5S) belonged to the technical grouping of the Non-Inscrits.

Eva LICHTENBERGER

Eva Lichtenberger (born 1 July 1954 in Zams) is an Austrian politician who served as a Member of the European Parliament from 2004 until 2014. She is a member of the Austrian Green Party, part of the European Greens. Since the mid-1980s, she has been a consulting member of the environmental committee of the city of Hall. In 1989, she became a member of the Tyrolian Landtag and was fraction leader until 1994. From 1994 to 1999 she was the first member of the Austrian Green Party to become a minister in the Landesrat (state council), with the portfolio for environmental affairs. From 1999 to 2004 she was Member of the National Council of Austria (Nationalrat). From 2004 until 2014 she was a Member of the European Parliament.

Adrienne HERITIER

Adrienne Héritier held a joint chair with the Social and Political Sciences Department since 2003. She was a Director of the Max Planck Project Group for ‘Common Goods: Law, Politics, and Economics’ in Bonn from 1999 to 2003. Before that, from 1995 to 1999, she held a chair in public policy at the EUI. She is a member of the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and a member of the Academia Europea. In 1994, she was awarded (jointly with Helmut Willke) the Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz Prize for research, by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Her research focuses on European policy-making. She has been awarded the doctor honoris causa at the Université Catholique de Louvain-La-Neuve.

Michael SHACKLETON 

Michael Shackleton is Special Professor in European Institutions at the University of Maastricht and Former Head of the European Parliament Information Office in the UK. Professor Shackleton received his first degree in Politics and Philosophy in 1972 at Worcester College, Oxford. He joined the Secretariat of the European Parliament in 1981 and was then part of several committees in both EU and British political institutions. During 1990 and 1991 he was a Visiting European Community Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley and from 1994 to 1999 he was a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges. Since 1999 he has been a Visiting Practitioner Fellow at Sussex University.

Alfredo DE FEO

Alfredo De Feo is professor at European Colleges of Parma, where he teaches courses on European Parliament and on European Finances. He is currently Research Fellow at the Alcide de Gasperi Centre of the Historical Archives of the European Union, in Florence. He has been Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS) at the European University Institute, Florence. He has also been Distinguished Fellow at the Jean Monnet Centre of the New York University, in 2017, and Visiting professor at LUISS University, Rome and at Complutenses University, Madrid (2018), as part of the Master EUPADRA. Alfredo worked for the European Parliament from 1981 until end of 2015. He was Director for Budgetary affairs until 2008 and Director of the EP Library and Archives until 2015. He is speaker at European events, he has largely published on European Affairs.

Martin WEBER

Martin Weber joined the European Court of Auditors in 1999. He served as Head of Private Office for two Members of the Court: Henri Grethen (from 2007 to 2010) and François Colling (from 2002 to 2007). From 2010 to 2014, he held the position of Head of unit responsible for the Court’s financial and compliance audits in the aforementioned areas, contributing to the Court’s annual ‘Statement of Assurance’. In 2014 he has been appointed Director of the Audit Chamber II, responsible for auditing EU policies and spending in the area of Cohesion (including regional and social policy), employment, transport and energy. In 2017, he assumed the role of Director of the Presidency, overseeing strategy development, programming, reporting, internal and external communication, and coordination with other EU institutions, national Supreme Audit Institutions, and international audit organizations (such as INTOSAI/EUROSAI). On 1 April 2021, he was appointed Director of the Audit Chamber II, responsible for Investment for cohesion, growth, and inclusion.

Simon HIX

Simon Hix joined the EUI on 1 September 2021 as Stein Rokkan Chair in Comparative Politics. Simon holds a Ph.D. in Political and Social Science from the European University Institute (1995), and was for many years a Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research interests include comparative political behaviour and institutions as well as the study of political behaviour and institutions in the European Union. Simon mainly uses quantitative and experimental methods in his research. His work has been published in, among other places, American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, European Journal of Political Research, and Comparative Political Studies. He has won prizes for his research from the American Political Science Association, the US-UK Fulbright Commission, and the UK Economic and Social Research Council. Simon is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Richard CORBETT

Richard Graham Corbett (born 6 January 1955) is a former British politician who served as the final Leader of the European Parliamentary Labour Party (EPLP), from 2017 to 2020.

He was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Merseyside West from 1996 to 1999 and then for Yorkshire and the Humber from 1999 to 2009, when he lost his seat, and again from 2014 to 2020. As Labour Leader in the European Parliament, he attended Shadow Cabinet meetings and was a member of the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee, where he played a key role in Labour’s decision to back a second referendum on Brexit once the actual terms of the Brexit deal were known. Between January 2010 and February 2014, Corbett was an advisor to the first full-time and long-term President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy.

Francis JACOBS

Francis Brendan Jacobs is an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at University College Dublin, and a Visiting Professor at the Collegio Europeo in Parma. Francis worked for the European Parliament from just before the first direct elections in 1979 until May 2016, as a staff member on various European Parliament committees, and also as the head of the European Parliament’s Liaison Office in Ireland from 2006-16. Since his retirement, he continues to give lectures and to write. He is the author several books and has taken part in the Collecting Memories Project, interviewing former Members of the European Parliament for an oral archive housed at the European Union Historical Archives in Florence.

Dietmar NICKEL

Dietmar Nickel studied law in Hamburg and Lausanne. In 1973 he worked as a research assistant at the Faculty of Law at the University of Hamburg. In 1976, he lectured at the Faculty of Law at the European University Institut in Florence. In 1978, he obtained his doctorate in law in Hamburg. From 1978 until his retirement in 2010, he was an administrator at the European Parliament. He held various positions: he was Deputy Secretary-General of the Sociaist Group in the European Parliament. From 1999 to 2003 he was Director-General for Committees and Delegations and from 2004 to 2010 Director-General for External Policies of the European Union. Since the end of February 2011, he has been a non-resident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Group of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). He is the author of numerous publications on institutional issues.

Luis ROMERO REQUENA

Luis Romero Requena is a Spanish lawyer and finance expert. He studied law and business management at ICADE in Madrid and holds a Master’s degree in law from the University of Deusto. After becoming a State Finance Inspector in 1979, he attended the prestigious École Nationale d’Administration (ENA) in Paris. Romero Requena held various key positions in the Spanish Ministry of Finance before transitioning to European affairs, serving as Financial Counsellor for Spain at the EU. He joined the European Commission in 1997, where he held leadership roles, including Director-General of the Legal Service since 2009.

Sorina SOARE

Sorina Soare is a lecturer of Comparative Politics at the University of Florence. She holds a PhD in political science from the Université libre de Bruxelles and has previously studied political science at the University of Bucharest. Her work has been published in Democratization, East European Politics, etc. She taught at the Central University of Budapest, Université libre de Bruxelles, University of Palermo and University of Bucharest. She works in the area of comparative politics. Her research interests lie primarily in the field of post-communist political parties and party systems, democratisation and institutional development. Currently, S. Soare works on an analysis focused on the evolution of the constellation of regulations acting within the area of the Member States citizenship.

Luciano BARDI

Luciano Bardi (Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University) is a part-time professor at the Alcide De Gasperi Research Centre of the European University Institute. He is also president of the Observatory on Political Parties and Representation at the University of Pisa. He was previously a professor of political science and international relations at the University of Pisa and has been a visiting professor at numerous universities in Europe and North America. He was a member (2006–12) and chair (2009–12) of the European Consortium for Political Research. He is also the author of various publications on the European Parliament and Commission, political parties and party systems, and democratic governance in the EU.

Jacopo CELLINI

Jacopo Cellini holds an MA in Contemporary History from the University of Florence (2009) and a PhD in Contemporary History from both the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa and K.U. Leuven in Belgium (2015). After completing his PhD, he worked at the Archives of the Scuola Normale and collaborated with the Fondazione Michele Pellegrino in Turin. Since June 2018, he has been part of the Alcide De Gasperi Research Centre at the European University Institute, first as a Research Associate and now, since March 2023, as a Research Fellow. He also teaches a module on Religion and Politics at Università di Tor Vergata in Rome. His research focuses on the history of European integration and the influence of religion on post-WWII European societies, particularly within European Christian Democracy. Currently, he is working on projects related to European banks, environmental protection, social partners in EU policymaking, and an intellectual biography of Alcide De Gasperi.

Lorenzo CICCHI

Lorenzo Cicchi (Ph.D. IMT Institute for Advanced Studies, 2013) is research associate at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies of the European University Institute, where he coordinates the activities of the European Governance and Politics Programme (EGGP). He has been the coordinator of EGPP since its foundation in 2018. In addition to supporting the directorship in the daily management of the programme, he has been involved in a number of projects for both grant application and implementation and production of research outputs. He is also adjunct professor at California State University in Florence and teaching assistant at the Department of Political Science of the University of Pisa. Previously he was coordinator of the Observatory on Political Parties and Representation (OPPR) and post-doctoral researcher at Fondazione Luigi Einaudi in Rome.

Andres REILJAN

Andres Reiljan defended his PhD at the EUI (Department of Political and Social Sciences) in 2021. From 2021 to 2023 he conducted his research at the University of Tartu as a postdoctoral fellow, managing a project that was funded by a personal grant from the Estonian Research Council. His main fields of expertise are comparative politics and political behaviour. Both his PhD and postdoctoral project focused on the concept of affective polarization, broadly defined as the mutual antipathy between different political camps in society. During his Max Weber Fellowship, Andres will continue his work on affective polarization in contemporary democracies. Andres has taught three different master’s level courses at the University of Tartu and the University of Lucerne.

Gérard LAPRAT 

Gérard Laprat is the Former Director for Citizens Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the European Parliament and a lecturer at IRIS Sup’.

Johan RYNGAERT

Johan Ryngaert is the former Director of the EPP Group Presidency Directorate.