Experts’ Database
Dr Daniela Crăciun is an assistant professor at the University of Twente, Center for Higher Education Policy Studies (The Netherlands). She earned a PhD in Political Science from Central European University (Hungary). Daniela’s research interests lie in the area higher education policy, specifically internationalization and fundamental values in higher education. She conducts research on the link between quality assurance and fundamental values in higher education and how to measure and monitor fundamental values in the EHEA. Before joining the University of Twente, Daniela was a lecturer at Bard College Berlin and a tutor and academic advisor in the OLIve Refugee Education Initiatives (Germany). Previously, she has been a visiting scholar doing research or teaching at the University of Yangon (Myanmar), the Federal University of Sao Carlos (Brazil), and the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College (USA).
Nora Devlin is a PhD Candidate in Higher Education at Rutgers Graduate School of Education under the advisement of Dr. Barbara A. Lee (J.D., Ph.D.). Nora’s dissertation examines faculty free speech cases brought against (public) college and university employers in the United States. Nora’s research seeks to map and theorize how this legal landscape shapes understandings of academic freedom within the professoriate, university administrations, and the courts, while offering practical recommendations for faculty, judges, labor organizers, and university leaders. Nora was unanimously voted to receive the 2020 American Educational Studies Association (AESA) Outstanding Graduate Student Research Award. Nora has presented her research on free speech in higher education at multiple national conferences including the AAUP’s national conference on higher education in 2018 and shared governance in 2021, the National Collective Bargaining in Higher Education Conference in October 2020, the AESA national conference in 2021, and the Education Law Association 2020 and 2021 conferences. She has also published in the Journal of College and University Law and the Mid-Atlantic Education Review. Nora has experience as an academic and executive coach, an intergroup dialogue co-facilitator, an editorial assistant, and a teacher; she has served on the executive council of the AESA and as a founding secretary and curriculum designer of a local nonprofit. Nora earned a master’s in social and philosophical foundations of education at Rutgers Graduate School of Education, a graduate certificate in comprehensive evidence-based coaching from Fielding Graduate University, and a bachelor’s degree in Sociology & Spanish from the Templeton Honors College at Eastern University.
Research interests: Academic Freedom; Legal Perspectives on Academic Freedom; Higher Education Law; Faculty Lawsuits; Faculty Labor and the Professoriate; Higher Education Employment Discrimination; Higher Education organization and structure; History of Higher Education; Gender and Higher Education; Higher Education Policy and Regulation; Higher education administration and governance; Whistleblowers in Higher Education.
Contact details: Nora.Devlin@Rutgers.edu, website: https://noradevlin.com/
Meem Arafat Manab (pronouns: they/them) is a young academic and writer based in Dhaka dwelling at the intersection of computer science, social sciences, and humanities. They are a full-time lecturer at the School of Data and Sciences of BRAC University, Bangladesh. With a passion for teaching and a background in qualitative research and mathematics education, Meem has taught mathematics and CS courses at the university since late 2020. They strongly believe in the political nature of academia, bearing the legacy of Paulo Freire, Karl Popper and Jaspers among others. A fellow of the Center for Liberal Arts and Sciences Pedagogy (CLASP) at Bard College, New York, they have frequently translated between Bengali, English, and Spanish in addition to writing bilingually.
Research interests: ethics and philosophy of artificial intelligence; computational social sciences; financial technologies; machine translation; and the incorporation of technology in education.
Dr Maria Kronfeldner is professor at Central European University’s Philosophy Department and a member of the Social Mind Center and the Science Studies Research Group. Before coming to CEU, she taught at Bielefeld University. She specializes in philosophy of science and social philosophy, with a focus on how sciences and values intersect. She has written two monographs and numerous articles, on topics such as creativity, culture, evolution, genetics, causal reasoning, interdisciplinarity, human nature, essentialism, dehumanization, and also academic freedom. She has been awarded The Karl Popper Essay Prize of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science and The Philosophical Quarterly International Essay Prize. She is currently steering committee member of the European Philosophy of Science Association (EPSA) and member of the scientific advisory board of the Karl Popper Foundation.
Contact details: KronfeldnerM@ceu.edu, website: https://people.ceu.edu/maria_kronfeldner
Dr Michael Lanford is an Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the University of North Georgia. His research explores the social dimensions of education, with specific attention to equity, globalization, institutional innovation, and organizational culture. In 2022, his first book, Creating a Culture of Mindful Innovation in Higher Education, was published by SUNY Press. Dr. Lanford has published approximately 30 articles and book chapters for publications such as the American Educational Research Journal, Educational Philosophy and Theory, Higher Education, Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, the Journal of Research on Technology in Education, and Qualitative Inquiry.
Research interests: educational equity; globalization; institutional innovation; organizational culture; qualitative methods; social and cultural theory.
Contact details: Michael.lanford@ung.edu, website: https://ung.edu/social-foundations-leadership-education/faculty-staff-bio/michael-lanford.php
Dr Andrea Pető is a historian and a Professor at the Department of Gender Studies at Central European University, Vienna, Austria, a Research Affiliate of the CEU Democracy Institute, Budapest, and a Doctor of Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Her works on gender, politics, Holocaust, and war have been translated into 23 languages. In 2018 she was awarded the 2018 All European Academies (ALLEA) Madame de Staël Prize for Cultural Values. She is Doctor Honoris Causa of Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden. Recent publications include: The Women of the Arrow Cross Party. Invisible Hungarian Perpetrators in the Second World War. Palgrave, Macmillan, 2020. And Forgotten Massacre: Budapest 1944. DeGruyter, 2021. She writes op-ed pieces for many international and national media about academic freedom and illiberal higher education.
Contact details: petoa@ceu.edu, website: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7525-2582
Dr Zoltán Rónay was born in 1976 in Budapest, Hungary. He graduated in 1999 as a lawyer at Eötvös Loránd University Faculty of Law. He is a Ph.D. on law and political sciences (University of Szeged Doctoral School of Law and Political Sciences, 2017). Previously he was in practice as a solicitor. Between 2006 and 2015, he served as secretary-general of Eötvös Loránd University. Today he is an associate professor at the same university’s Faculty of Education and Psychology in the Institution of Education, where he serves as a vice dean for education and the head of the faculty quality management. As a university lecturer, he regularly has many general and education law thematic courses in Pedagogy, Educational Science, Management, and Human Resources. He is a supervisor in the Education Doctoral Programme. Apart from these regular courses, he has founded several elective courses. His research interests cover the entire field of education law, especially higher education and public education. He is the founder and head of the Research Group for Education-Law-Pedagogy. He has more than a hundred published publications in Hungarian, English, and German, including book chapters and two own monographs.
Research interests: Education law and its legal history; Education-related labour and administrative law; Liability in higher education (i.e., individual responsibility, the responsibility of bodies and their members); Law (KOL) and education (teachers’ and students’ knowledge and opinion about law, their legal awareness, and attitudes towards law); Law in teacher education; Fundamental and human rights in education; Institutional autonomy and academic freedom (in HE).
Contact details: ronay.zoltan@ppk.elte.hu, website: https://ronayzoltan.ppk.elte.hu/en/
Dr Liliana Tymchenko has many years of experience in teaching international law, the author of numerous publications on the problems of combating terrorism, recognition of states, human rights protection, existential issues of state development and the academic freedom. She was an expert of the Legal Reform Commission under the President of Ukraine (2019 – 2021), an expert of the Scientific Advisory Council of the Higher Administrative Court of Ukraine (2014 – 2017), a graduate of the programs of the American Bar Association, IREX, Coimbra Group Hospitality Scheme, Civic Education Project, etc. She defended her dissertation on "Political and Legal Aspects of International Terrorism” at the International Independent University of the Republic of Moldova and the Institute of State and Law of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. She has a wealth of experience in higher education administration and is passionate about teaching methodology and management in higher education. Currently, Liliana Tymchenko is an associate professor at the Academic Department of Social Sciences, the head of the Council of the Centre for Constitutionalism and Human Rights and the head of the Committee on Law, Political and Economic Studies of the European Humanities University (Lithuania).
Research interests: essence of academic freedom, methodology of teaching, research techniques, philosophy of international law.
Contact details: tymchenko.liliana@ehu.lt