People

Guglielmo Apolloni  is a Designer and Social Entrepreneur. As Designer he’s part of Somos Más, international agency harnessing collective intelligence for the benefit of social Ecosystems, and of Social Seed, italian agency specialised in designing innovation processes. As Social Proto-Entrepreneur he co-founded School Raising, the first Italian crowdfunding platform for school projects, and Mitosis, a “family feeling” co-working space in Berlin. In his work, Guglielmo combines four words - #diffuse #creativity #design #thinking - to enable people to use own creativity in group to build solutions to their challenges, and be resilient for the next ones. Following a research made by Ashoka Italy in Feb 2015, Guglielmo is one of the first 12 more connected changemakers in Italy.

Lucia Balduzzi is Associate professor at the Department of Education Science, University of Bologna. Her recent studies and publications focus on the analysis of education policies at national and international level and on the professional profile of practitioners working with children in conventional and experimental pre-school services. In particular, the research guidelines concern the innovations that are currently occurring in the early childhood education and care sector at pedagogical, cultural, didactic and organisational level. The analysis, at a policy level, aims to investigate the relations between institutions, educational policy and models for the delivery of childcare services. A particular attention is drawn to the analysis of these mutual interactions as they affect the pedagogical identity of the services in terms of educational methods adopted by the different childcare centers. The methodologies used in empirical research refer to qualitative data collection and analysis methods, as well as action research methodologies for supporting ECEC staff professional development. In particular, her recent edited books focus on ECEC services and staff professionalism (Balduzzi & Manini,‘Professionalità e servizi per l’infanzia’, Carrocci, 2013) as well as on professionalization tools in early years educational contexts (Balduzzi & Pironi, ‘L’osservazione al nido’, Franco Angeli, 2017).

Mária Baracsi is Head of Unit of International Cooperation at IFKA Public Benefit Non Profit Ltd. for the Development of the Industry, focusing on (social) business development and international expansions, with responsibility for formulating and executing interregional and transnational co-operations. 
Ms Baracsi has more than 10 years of management experience in industry, government and research institutions. Prior to her current role, she has been working for the European Commission (DG Research) as well as in research projects with the Microsoft Corporation, the Johns Hopkins University and Imperial College London. At present, Ms. Baracsi is the Coordinator of the INTERREG EUROPE project "SOCIAL SEEDS” to exploit the potentials of social enterprises through standardized European evaluation and development system. Moreover, she is leading the INTERREG DANUBE Programme project "SENSES” to create a transnational network of the social enterprise ecosystems that will jointly promote an innovative social enterprise model as well as social innovation for the sustainable economic development of the Danube region. She has extensive experience of participation as partner in more than 15 EU funded projects, among them, the recently approved INTERREG EUROPE Programme project entitled to "RaiSE” to enhance social enterprises competitiveness through improved business support policies across Europe.

Graduating in economics, Ms Baracsi has completed doctoral studies at the ‘Enterprise Theory and Practice PhD School’ at the University of Miskolc (Hungary) and spent 9 months as visiting researcher at INSEAD Business School in France. Her dissertation is investigating the ‘Game Theory in cluster excellence: the innovation management and technology-transfer perspectives’.

Clemens Binder works with aspiring social entrepreneurs in the Social Impact Lab Duisburg, a social startup incubator in the region North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. His role is to ensure the necessary skills and qualifications of the founders and support them with training and expertise to realize their social enterprises. Previously he has worked in with the BMW Foundation and the Hans Sauer foundation. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science and a master’s degree in psychology. During his studies, he co-founded a student volunteering network and graduated at the Social Entrepreneurship Akademie München.

Elisa Bottazzi is a project manager and coordinator of EU/international projects, working at ERVET – European Union, International and Social Cohesion Unit. Main fields of activity: international and development cooperation, migrants’ integration, welfare policies, social economy and social innovation.

Radhika Bynon is a Programme Leader at The Young Foundation.  She is working on Social Innovation Community, a Horizon 2020 project, leading the work on Experimentation to support innovators in four cities to co-create solutions to pressing local issues.  Radhika specialises in working with and in communities to understand their perspectives local challenges. She leads on the Young Foundation’s engagement work on the Places Programme, working in Northern Ireland, Leeds and Essex to support communities to develop innovative solutions to tackling inequality. She is also working with Oxfam and the Global Fund for Women to support young feminist activism in Lebanon through social innovation. Prior to joining the Young Foundation, Radhika worked with the Prime Minister’s Council on Social Action, working with innovators from business, government and the voluntary sector scale social action across the country.

Wim De Kinderen is currently (since 2009) employed within the Brainport Eindhoven EU Office in Brussels, representing the City of Eindhoven, Brainport Development and other economic stakeholders towards fellow regions and the European Institutions. In this role, he is responsible for policy lobbying, networking/communication and project development. Within the City of Eindhoven, he is part of the Strategy Department (which includes the CIO office). In his previous career, he has mainly been involved in regional development issues in Belgium. First as the Province of Antwerp RDA’s European Social Fund expert for the Objective 2 region ‘Kempen’, later as the director of the Regional Socio-Economic Committee for the same ‘Kempen’ region. In between, he has been an advisor (‘chef de cabinet adjoint’) to the Belgian federal government on socio-economic and budget policy topics. He is holding master diplomas in International Politics, European Politics and Public Management.

Dmitri Domanski is senior researcher and lecturer at Sozialforschungsstelle – TU Dortmund University. Co-founder of the European School of Social Innovation (ESSI). Lecturer and coordinator at summer schools and courses on social innovation in Europe and Latin America. Keynote speaker at several social innovation conferences. Co-author i.a. “Rethinking Social Entrepreneurship” and “Social innovation: towards a new innovation paradigm”. Co-editor “Theoretical Approaches to Social Innovation – A Critical Literature Review”, “Innovación Social en Latinoamérica” (“Social Innovation in Latin America”) and “Exploring the Research Landscape of Social Innovation”. Currently working on the global research project “SI-DRIVE: Social Innovation – Driving Force of Social Change” (lead partner) and the international project “Social Innovation Community (SIC)”.

Giulio Ecchia is Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, University of Bologna and Professorial Lecturer of Economics, SAIS Europe, Bologna. His research interests include the economics of cooperative firms and social enterprises, corporate governance and stakeholder theory and the economics of regulation. He is a member of the board of the Social Economy and Civil Society Integrated Research Team of the University of Bologna, a multidisciplinary research group of scholars working on themes such as social economy, social innovation, third sector and civil society. He is a member of the scientific committee of the journal Impresa Sociale, EURICSE, Trento, of the executive board and of the scientific committee of ECONOMETICA (Italian University network on Business Ethics and CSR) and of the scientific committee of AICCON (Italian Association for the Promotion of Cooperative and Non-profit Culture). He is currently coordinating the University of Bologna team in the H2020 project InnoSI (Innovative social investment: strengthening communities in Europe).

Franco Farinelli is Professor of Geography at the Department of Philosophy and Communication Studies at the University of Bologna and serves as Head of Department of Philosophy and Communication Studies. He has been visiting professor at many Universities, among which the University of Geneva, the University of Paris Pantheon Sorbonne, the University of California (Berkeley), the Nordic Institute for Urban and Regional Planning, Stockholm and the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). He is currently President of the Italian Geographical Association. His wide research interests include, among others, the analysis of the nature of territorial networks in the modern times and the study of models of interpretation of  globalisation. He has published extensively in international journals and he is the author of numerous books.

Christoph Kaletka (Dr.) is a senior researcher and member of the management board at Sozialforschungsstelle, a central scientific unit of TU Dortmund University (TUDO). He is teaching social innovation and digital inclusion at TUDO’s faculty of rehabilitation sciences. He is Editorial Board member of the European Public & Social Innovation Review (EPSIR) journal and advisory board member of “Telecentre Europe“, the umbrella organisation of European digital learning centres. Currently, Christoph is coordinating the international research project “SI-DRIVE: Social Innovation – Driving Force of Social Change”, funded within the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union.

Arianna Lazzari is research fellow at the Department of Education of Bologna University. Starting her professional career as a pre-school teacher, she awarded the title of European PhD in Pedagogy in 2011, with a thesis on early years practitioners’ professionalism. She has been involved in several research projects funded by the European Commission (Competence requirements for staff in ECEC, 2011; The role of ECEC in promoting educational attainment and fostering social inclusion, 2012; INNOSI – Case Study on the integrated system of ECEC in E-R, 2016) and by Eurofound (ECEC: working conditions, training and quality of services – A systematic review). Between 2013 and 2016 she took part to the Transatlantic Forum on Inclusive Early Years (an international network of academics, policy makers and foundations) as external research consultant drafting background papers for the meetings focusing on the themes of ECEC services’ accessibility and workforce professionalization in contexts of socio-cultural diversity. Her most recent work include the collaboration with the DG Education and Culture for the review of research evidence in support of the document ‘Proposal for principles of a Quality Framework for ECEC’(2014), a report of the working group on ECEC under the auspices of the European Commission (Italian translation edited by the author in 2016).

Álvaro Luna holds a PhD in Sociology and a Masters Degree in Management of Innovation and Knowledge by the University of the Basque Country. He is interested in the urban and sociocultural challenges and dynamics that operate and influence social changing processes, and social innovations inside city regions. He is also focused on the study of creative and cultural industries and their impact and development inside the economy of cities, the development of research methodologies and skills in the management of innovative processes, and the economic underpinnings and impact of social innovations. He is an experienced lecturer in the National Distance Education University (UNED) where he teaches Sociology and Methodologies of Social Research since 2013. He currently works at Sinnergiak Social Innovation as Researcher and Project Manager, and teaches Organizational Sociology in the University of Villanueva, Madrid. He is also editor of the European Public and Social Innovation Review.

Kristian Mancinone works for Aster, the Emilia-Romagna agency for research and innovation, implementing the Regional Smart Specialization Strategy, focusing on social and civic innovation. Expert in social innovation incubation and strategies, he worked for two years in Make a Cube, the first Italian social impact incubator, as a business developer and project manager. Previously he was a researcher fellow at the University of Bologna, on topics related to Social Economy and cooperative movement.

Luigi Martignetti is Secretary General of REVES (European Network of Cities and Regions for the Social Economy), and vice president of Social Economy Europe, the umbrella organization of European and national organizations belonging to the social economy. He is a member of the EC experts’ group on cohesion policy. He is also active in different Italian organisations of the social economy, among which the Foundation of the Peripheries of the World, based in Messina. Throughout his career, Mr. Martignetti has been and still is involved in various initiatives related to democracy, local development and cohesion policy, cooperative and social enterprise development, employment and social policies, social dialogue, industrial relationships. He is one of the co-developer, and tester, of the TSR – territorial social responsibility – approach for local people-based policymaking. He has contributed to publications on social economy, enhanced democracy and communication and gave lectures on EU and Social Economy on Master Courses, among others, at University of Rome, University of Messina, and VUB.

Mónica Nagore is a European project manager at the Young Foundation. She is currently directly involved in two challenging and inspiring Horizon 2020 projects: Social Innovation Community (SIC) - contributing as Experimentation leaders and leaders of intermediaries and community-led innovation networks- and Dolfins – contributing to create awareness on the role of finance in society and on the influence exerted over the policy process by European citizens. Before joining the Young Foundation Mónica worked for the City of York Council as Innovation manager. These two years were an enriching experience for her. They led URBACT “Genius Open” a transnational project to transfer our open innovation model to involve citizens in the design of the solutions for their city challenges to the cities of Siracusa, San Sebastián and Tallinn. In 2007, Mónica joined the Island Council of Minorca in Spain as Director of the areas of Housing, Employment and Innovation at where she managed exciting challenges: the implementation of the electronic administration, the creation of a one stop shop housing office and running the training and employment office during the worst years of the financial crisis.

Francesca Rizzo, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in Design at the University of Bologna, Department of Architecture and Territorial Development where she teaches Design Studio and Service Design. Assistant professor at Politecnico di Milano (2009-13) she is expert in Service Design and Participatory. She has been visiting professor at Aalto University, School of DESIGN, and Shangai Tongij University Center for Design and Innovation. Currently, she coordinates the University of Bologna team group of the EU Social Innovation Community project. She has been responsible and member of research teams in many EU projects on the fields of Service Design, Smart City and Social Innovation. She is author of many articles published in international journal and conferences. She is author of the book published by Springer (2016) on Human Smart Cities.

Pier Luigi Sacco is Professor of Economics at IULM University, Milan and Visiting professor at Harvard University. He is currently Special Advisor to the EU Education and Culture Commissioner on cultural heritage and European Year of Culture 2018. He writes regularly for Il Sole 24 Ore, Artribune and Flash Art and has published many papers in international journals and in books with major publishers on cultural economics, cultural policy design, game theory, and economic theory. He is often invited as keynote speaker at international conferences and consults for national and regional governments, organizations, and cultural institutions. He is member of the Warwick Commission, of the European Expert Network on Culture, of the board of Ujazdowski Castle Museum Warsaw, and of the European House for Culture.

Ibon Zugasti is Partner/Director at PROSPEPKTIKER, International Projects Manager at LKS, Industry & Territorial Development Manager at MONDRAGON Engeneering and Business Solutions, Chairman of the Millennium Project Node in Spain, Vice-President of Foresight Europe Network-FEN, Deputy Director of the Iberoamerican Foresight Network – RIBER.