• Dejan Dvoršek, Deputy Head of Unit, DG Research and Innovation, European Commission

Dejan Dvoršek is a Deputy Head of the Open Science and Research Infrastructures unit at the European Commission. Previously, he served as the head of the European Commission’s unit responsible for delivering IT Solutions for grant management, including the services of the Funding and Tenders Portal. With over a decade of experience in the field, he brings a wealth of knowledge from his work in the IT software development and delivery including from industry prior to joining the Commission in 2008.

• Tomaž Boh, Director General, Science and Innovation Directorate, Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Innovation of the Republic of Slovenia

Tomaž Boh has been employed at Ministry of Education,  Science and Sport since 2009. In the period 2009-2015 he was a head of Science policy unit. Between 2015–2018 he was state secretary at the same ministry, responsible for science, higher education and information society. Before that he was employed at the Slovenian Research Agency, where he worked in the field of international cooperation and analyses of domestic and EU science policy. At the moment he is Director-General at Science and Innovation Directorate at Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Innovation.

• Sergej Možina, advisor for research, Permanent Representation to the European Union Brussels

Sergej Možina has extensive experience in national and EU research and innovation policy-making. As Slovenian science attaché at the Permanent Representation to the EU in Brussels, he negotiated the last two EU framework programmes, Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe, and other legislative frameworks, such as the ERIC Regulation, EIT, European Partnerships and others. He chaired the Research Working Party in the Council of the EU during the Slovenian Presidency to the EU last semester, when a new European Research Area (ERA) governance framework was set up, ERA values, principles and priorities defined in the Pact for R&I and an ERA Policy Agenda for the next 3 years adopted. He has been elected in 2022 as the first Member States co-chair of the ERA Forum, sharing with the European Commission the responsibility for leading this body that brings together Member States, Associated countries and all R&I stakeholders in their coordination of research and innovation policies and actions.

• Stephen Wyber, Director of Policy and Advocacy, IFLA, KR21 Management Committee

Stephen Wyber leads policy and advocacy work at IFLA and is a member of the Knowledge Rights 21 Management Committee. In his work he focuses on copyright, access to information, freedom of expression, and digital issues. He has strong experience and understanding of working with governments and international institutions, thrives in the fast-paced environment of an international NGO, and has a passion for finding key insights and solutions to complex problems.

• Maja Bogataj Jančič, host of the ERA KR21 Conference Slovenia, Open Data and Intellectual Property Institute ODIPI, National and Regional Coordinator KR21, holder of the ERA Policy Agenda Action 2

Maja Bogataj Jančič is the founder and head of the Open Data and Intellectual Property Institute, ODIPI. She has also been the head of the Institute for Intellectual Property since its establishment in 2004. Maja is a copyright expert; her recent work focuses on open science, open data, data governance and artificial intelligence, as well as open science issues and the legal framework of copyright and data for research and science. Maja is the National Coordinator for Slovenia and the Regional Coordinator for the 6 Western Balkan countries of the Knowledge Rights 21 project. Maja has been appointed by the Minister of Higher Education, Science and Innovation as the ERA (European Research Area) Action 2 promoter for Slovenia; ERA 2 actions focus on the impact of copyright and data regulation on research and innovation.

Maja graduated from the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana (1996), obtained her LL.M. from the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana (1999, Economics), Harvard Law School (2000, Law) and Facoltà di Giurisprudenza di Torino (2005, Intellectual Property), and her Ph.D. from the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana (2006, Copyright).

• Ana Fidler, CTK UL Ljubljana, holder of the ERA Policy Agenda Action 2

Ana Fidler has been working as a lawyer at the Central Technical Library at the University of Ljubljana since 2022. Her work includes, among others, assisting library users in resolving copyright issues of research work in the context of open science, coordinating transformative agreements with publishers of scientific literature and participating in the activities of the project Spoznaj, which aims to align the activities of public research organisations and the Central Technical Library at the University of Ljubljana with the principles of open science.

• Tihomir Katulić, Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb

Tihomir Katulić holds an LLM from the University of Zagreb Faculty of Law (2003), a Master’s in Trade and Corporate Law (2004), and a Ph.D. in Legal Sciences with a thesis on intellectual property in the digital era (2012). Tihomir began his professional career with the Croatian Academic Research Network (2003–2004) and later served as an attaché for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration, focusing on WTO and WIPO relations (2004–2006). He joined the University of Zagreb Faculty of Law ICT Law Department in 2006 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2020. Tihomir specializes in IT law, privacy and data protection, intellectual property, cybercrime, and e-commerce. He is a co-founder of the University of Zagreb’s postgraduate program in Intellectual Property and teaches a range of graduate and postgraduate courses in IT law, data protection, cybersecurity, and intellectual property across multiple faculties at the University of Zagreb.

• Deborah De Angelis, National Coordinator KR21

Deborah De Angelis is an attorney-at-law based in Rome, Italy. Deborah is a legal expert in international copyright law, cultural heritage, entertainment law, and new technologies. She is currently the representative and legal lead of the Italian Chapter in the Creative Commons Global Network since its constitution in 2018. She also worked as a legal advisor on copyright law to the previous Italian Minister of Culture in 2020. Deborah carries out teaching and training activities, has organised numerous conferences and events in copyright and entertainment law, and authored several publications. Since 2004 she is a fellow of the NEXA Center for the Internet & Society. She is a member of the working group “Digital Cultural Heritage” ICOM ITALIA. Since 2008, she is president of the non-profit association A-DJ, which protects and promotes the professional category of DJs. Since July 2021, she has been the regional delegate for Italy for the project on the right to research in the field of the International copyright law of the PIJIP group of the American University, Washington College of Law. From December 1st, 2022, she is territorial delegate for Italy in the KR21 (Knowledge Rights 21) project on access to research, culture and knowledge. As of June 13, 2022, she was elected Councilor of ALAI, Italy for the term 2022-2025. From 12 January 2023, she became a member of the Europeana’s Copyright Steering Committee. She is member of the Executive Board of AFEM (Association for the Electronic Music). From July 2023, she is member of the Advisory Board in FAIR MUSE project.

• Iva Melinščak Zlodi, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, SPARC Europe

Iva Melinščak Zlodi is a scholarly communication and e-resources librarian at the University of Zagreb Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, responsible for institutional repository development, support in electronic publishing, providing electronic resources, information literacy education, and bibliometric monitoring of research output. She leads the development of the institutional OA book platform FF Open Press, has experience with initiating and developing the Croatian national journals platform Hrčak and repository network Dabar. She is a member of the Board of SPARC Europe. Her main interests are open access and open science, open repositories, authors’ rights and open licences, scholarly publishing and research evaluation (with a special focus on humanities and social sciences).

• Giannis Tsakonas, Director of the Library & Information Center, University of Patras, Vice President of LIBER, KR21 Management Committee

Giannis Tsakonas is the Director of the Library & Information Center, University of Patras, Greece, and Vice President of LIBER (Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche – Association of European Research Libraries). In the past (2016-2022) he has been elected to the Board of Directors of Hellenic Academic Libraries Link and he served as Vice President of the Hellenic General Council of Libraries, Ministry of Education, Research and Religious Affairs (2016-2019). He is also a member of the Knowledge Rights 21 Management Committee.

• Ana Lazarova, Faculty of Philosophy, European Studies – Media Policy and EU Law, Sofia University, National Coordinator KR21

Ana Lazarova, PhD, is an IP and IT lawyer, and an Assistant Professor at the Department of European Studies at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” in Bulgaria. She is actively involved in digital rights advocacy through the Bulgarian association Digital Republic. Ana is a member of the Creative Commons Global Network and of the Europeana Copyright Community Steering Group. She is the National Coordinator for Bulgaria within the Knowledge Rights 21 (KR21) programme.

• Konrad Gliściński, Faculty of Law and Administration, Jagiellonian University, researcher, Centrum Cyfrowe

Konrad Gliściński has PhD in Law. Researcher at the Department of Intellectual Property Law at the Jagiellonian University. Legal advisor to the Board of the Jagiellonian Center of Innovation. Intellectual property expert at Centrum Cyfrowe. Lecturer at the H. Grotius Center for Intellectual Property Rights. He collaborates with the Kalecki Foundation. He completed doctoral studies at the Faculty of Law and Administration of the Jagiellonian University in Cracow and post-graduate studies in company law at the Warsaw School of Economics. He holds an LL. M. of the University of Turin in the field of intellectual property law. A graduate of the Top500 Innovators program at Stanford University on management and commercialization of scientific research. Laureate of the 2010 Minister of Science and Higher Education award for best master’s thesis organized by the Patent Office of the Republic of Poland. Author of “All rights reserved. The history of disputes over copyright. 1469 – 1928”. Co-author of the commentary on the Industrial Property Law Act (2016) and the Copyright and Related Law Act (2019).

• Eric Luth, Project Manager, Wikimedia Sverige, National Coordinator KR21

Eric Luth is Project Manager for Involvement and Advocacy at Wikimedia Sverige, and Knowledge Rights 21 National Coordinator for Sweden. He holds an M.A. in Comparative Literature and has a background as cultural journalist. He has recently been an expert in a government committee to modernize exceptions and limitations in Swedish copyright law.

• Caterina Sganga, Full Professor of Comparative Private Law, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (Pisa, Italy)

Caterina Sganga is Full Professor of Comparative Private Law at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna since August 2024. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Private Law from Sant’Anna (2011) and an LL.M. from Yale Law School (2009). Caterina’s key research area is international and comparative intellectual property law, with a focus on European copyright law, IP and new technologies (especially artificial intelligence and data science), the balance between IP and fundamental/human rights, and the law and economics of cultural and creative industries (CCIs). Her recent research works cover also the regulation of data ownership and governance, with a focus on non-personal data, and Open Science law and policies. Among her significant contributions is the study “Improving Access to and Reuse of Research Results, Publications, and Data for Scientific Purposes”. She is the current President of the European Policy for Intellectual Property Association (EPIP) – the leading association of European IP scholars in the fields of law, economics and management. In May 2021 she was also elected as the Italian member of the European Copyright Society (ECS), one of the most prestigious independent academic associations in the field of copyright.

• Justus Dreyling, Policy Director, Communia

Justus Dreyling is the Policy Director of COMMUNIA. He holds a PhD in Political Science from Freie Universität Berlin. Before joining COMMUNIA, he worked as an advisor for international regulation at Wikimedia Deutschland. He is one of the initiators of the global Access to Knowledge Coalition and acted as its volunteer coordinator until 2024.