Selma Porobić, PhD.
Institutional Aurora Coordinator (Palacky University Olomouc)
Dr.Selma Porobić is an internationally recognized scientist, who published on various issues of the cross-cutting themes of education in meeting global inequalities, human rights, justice and peacebuilding. She holds a PhD in migration studies from Lund University in Sweden, and several academic diplomas from American University in Cairo, Fordham University in New York and Oxford University, UK. She has wide-ranging academic management experience and has been consulting governmental education and research agencies in the UK, Scandinavia, Central Eastern Europe and Western Balkans. She joined the Rector’s Office of Palacky University Olomouc in 2018 and has ever since been advising the leadership on the EU’s higher education policy and managing the European Universities Initiative. She is currently the Aurora Alliance Institutional Coordinator and Head of the Aurora office at Palacky University in Olomouc. She heads the Aurora Capacity Development Programme for Central-Eastern Europe and Aurora Karazin University Peace Education Hub in Ukraine. She is also a chair of the ‘Non-EU Partnerships’ ForEU 2 working group that brings together 23 European university alliances.
doc. Mgr. Pavlína Flajšarová, Ph.D.
Vice-Dean for Foreign Affairs (Palacky University Olomouc)
Pavlína Flajšarová, Ph.D., associate professor at the Department of English, Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic, a Fulbright visiting researcher at The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. (2000) does research in Victorian literature, Anglophone poetry, diaspora studies, and Caribbean literature in English. She has published four scholarly monographs, The Bridge and the Eclipse: Metaphor in The Poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Palacký UP 2004), Poetry in Great Britain and Northern Ireland after 1945 (Uniprint 2007), Diaspora in the Fiction of Andrea Levy (2014), and Grace Nichols Universal and Diverse: Ethnicity in the Poetry and Fiction of Grace Nichols (Palacký UP 2016). She has presented on Anglophone literature at international conferences, has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals, and contributed several entries into The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poets and Poetry (Greenwood Press, 2005) and The Literary Encyclopedia (online). She co-authored monographs on Scottish contemporary fiction and Canadian literary history. Her current scholarly interest is British ethnic and diasporic literature.
Prof. dr. Sharda Nandram
Chief Diversity Officer (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Prof. Sharda Nandram is the Chief Diversity Officer at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She is also a full professor in Business and Spirituality at Nyenrode Business Universiteit.and a full professor at the Faculty of Religion and Theology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam working on Hindu Spirituality and Society. In addition to these roles, Sharda is co-founder and consultant at Praan Group and member of the steering committee of The European Spirituality in Economics and Society (SPES), an executive member of the Management, Spirituality and Religion Division of the Academy of Management in the role of Representative at Large in Research agenda and she serves as adjunct professor at Banasthali University in Jaipur, India.
With 35 years of experience in the field of Management especially in Work & Organizational Psychology, Entrepreneurship and Organizational Innovation, she has developed a keen interest in the intersection of Management, Spirituality, Entrepreneurship, Organizational Innovation and Inclusion.
Sharda holds bachelors and masters in the disciplines of psychology and economics. She received her PhD within the department of social psychology. She has studied different spiritual traditions and embodied several spiritual practices by learning them in authentic ways.
Prof. Puneet Bindlish
Professor (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Dr. Puneet Bindlish is a distinguished academic with a broad background spanning academia, industry, and social sectors. He currently serves as a faculty member at the Faculty of Religion and Theology at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. His research interests include Indigenous Research Paradigms, Self-Managed Organizations, Spirituality, and Sustainability. Puneet’s work is characterized by a deep commitment to exploring the intersections of organizational strategy and spiritual care, with a strong focus on diversity, inclusivity, and sustainable practices through spirituality.
Oleksandr Khyzhniak
Project manager at the Centre for International Cooperation (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Dr. Oleksandr Khyzhniak has broad experience in international collaboration, management project education, and research. He prefers to use interdisciplinary approaches and is open to international relations that grounds on his two MA degrees in Sociology and International Economics at Karazin University (Ukraine). During his academic research career, he did his internships in 2009 at Warszawa University (Poland) for the PhD devoted to tolerance issues and at Ariel University (Israel) in 2016-2017 for the post-doc project devoted to collective actions and its determination.
During his work experience, he combined educational, research, and management activities. In 2010 he started lecturing at Karazin university. Managers, leadership, and intercultural skills he could fully implement became the Head of the newly emerged and co-designed International Relations Office at Karazin University (2018-2022) that focused on providing international mobility, projects (grants) implementation, and establishing international relations.
Since 2022 he is working on global projects as a project manager at the Centre for International Cooperation at VU Amsterdam. He focuses on the implementation of international projects in Global South countries and developing new fields and opportunities in Central Asia and Eastern Neighbourhood countries. Also he is the Institutional coordinator of Academic Freedom Program at VU amsterdam. He is taking part in Aurora University Alliance as the co-coordinator of the Aurora Capacity Development Programme for Central-Eastern Europe and Aurora Karazin University Peace Education Hub in Ukraine.
doc. Ing. Silvia Ručinská, PhD., univerzitná profesorka
Vice-Rector for Internationalisation (UPJS)
Doc. Silvia Ručinská is Vice-Rector for Internationalisation and Head of the Department of Public Policy and Theory of Public Administration at the Faculty of Public Administration of the Jagiellonian University. She has published more than 40 original scientific papers and publications and has participated in 15 scientific or professional projects and research tasks at national and international level with emphasis on urban development, public policy, modernization and digitalization of public administration, output-oriented public management and CAF. She is the project leader of the Human Resources Strategy for Researchers (HRS4R) project at Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice (UPJŠ) and is responsible for the university’s activities and projects in the context of the Aurora Alliance of European Universities.
JUDr. Ľudmila Elbert, PhD., univerzitná docentka
Vice-rector for undergraduate and lifelong learning (UPJS)
Ľudmila Elbert is the vice-rector for undergraduate and lifelong learning at the Pavol Jozef Šafárik Univeristy in Košice, and the member of the Institute of the International law and European law of the Faculty of Law. She teaches courses of the international public law, human rights and asylum law, as well as interaction of the law and artificial intelligence, where she is focusing on the autonomous weapon systems. Ľudmila also supervise students for the international moot courts, mainly in the area of asylum law. She has participated on number of research projects, inter alia as member of the research group „Migration Challenges – Legal Responses” in Central European Professors’ Network 2023, or the “Green ambitions for the sustainable development (European green deal in the context of the International and Municipal law)“. She completed visiting stay in the library of the European University Institute (2013), Summer University of the Continental Law organised by the Fondation pour le droit continental, Sorbonne, Paris, France (2012), and teaching mobility at the Università degli Studi Mediterranea, Reggio Calabria (2019), L’Université Paris – Saclay, France (2023), and Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Italy (2024).
prof. MUDr. Želmíra Macejová PhD., MPH
Vice-dean for studies in the general medicine study program in the English language (UPJS)
prof. MUDr. Želmíra Macejová, PhD is a doctor – internist, specializing in rheumatology who works at the 1st internal clinic of UPJŠ LF and UNLP. She is a member of several Slovak and foreign professional societies, a member of the Committee of the Slovak Rheumatology Society and, since 2018, the president of the Slovak Rheumatology Society. She has been working as a teacher at the Faculty of Medicine for more than 25 years, teaching internal medicine at undergraduate and postgraduate levels as well as specializing in rheumatology. Since 2014, she has been the vice-dean at the UPJŠ Faculty of Medicine, until 2018 she worked as the vice-dean for studies in the general medicine study program in the English language and international relations, then she became the vice-dean of studies for students studying in the Slovak language. From 2023, she is again the vice-dean for studies in the general medicine study program in the English language. She has extensive experience in working with students from different countries, considering that students from more than 50 countries study at the Faculty of Medicine UPJŠ. She is the author of several publications in domestic and foreign magazines
Mgr. Jozef Benka, PhD. et PhD.
Vice-Dean for International Relations, Faculty of Arts (UPJS)
Jozef Benka is an assistant professor of Psychology at the Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice. He has completed his doctoral study at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, in the field of Health Science and was also awarded a doctorate at UPJŠ in Social Psychology. He is a member of many professional bodies in this field and regularly serves as a reviewer in prestigious international journals. His research interests are mainly focused on human motivation in relation to quality of life, wellbeing and health related behavior. He currently holds the position of the Vice-Dean for International Relations at the Faculty of Arts a UPJŠ.
PhDr. Eliška Zásadová, PhD.
Chairwoman of the Academic Senate of the Faculty of Public Administration (UPJS)
Eliška Zásadová, PhD. is an assistant professor at the Department of Social Studies, Faculty of Public Administration UPJŠ. The area of her scientific interest is focused on the social aspects of public administration. She provides education in sociology, presentation skills, communication in organization, organizational behavior and competencies of capacities in public institutions. She is a project manager of EEA and Norway Grants “Future of Public Administration”, which is focused on strengthening the international cooperation between Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, Faculty of Public Administration, V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University and the Slovak Corps of Ukrainian Students. Joint activities in the project are aimed at supporting the integrity and responsibility of experts in public administration within youth. So far, she has published more than 40+ original scientific publications. She is also the Chairwoman of the Academic Senate of the Faculty of Public Administration.
Mgr. Ing. Ingrid Madárová, PhD.
Slovak Language Lecturer at the Language Training Centre, Faculty of Arts (UPJS)
Ingrid Madárová, PhD. graduated in the Slovak Language and Slovak Literature and English Language and English Literature at the Faculty of Arts, UPJŠ in Košice and in Finance, Banking and Investments at the Faculty of Economics, TUKE in Košice. She received her doctorate in Foreign Languages and Cultures. In addition to teaching English and Slovak as a foreign language, she worked for more than 15 years in several positions in international and multinational manufacturing and trading companies in a multicultural environment. Since 2014 she has been working with foreign students as a foreign language lecturer at the Language Training Centre of the Faculty of Arts, UPJŠ. She specializes in conducting intercultural workshops for foreign students and employees of UPJŠ – effective intercultural communication in practice.
Mathilde Chaumont
Aurora Student Council member (Université Pari-Est Créteil)
Mathilde Chaumont is currently pursuing a master’s degree in research at the Université Paris-Est Créteil, following the completion of her bachelor’s degree in Administration and International Exchanges. She has been actively involved in the Aurora Student Council (ASC) since last year, initially serving as vice president and now holding the position of president. Last year, she took part in a joint study conducted by the ASC and focused on identifying different ways to enhance diversity and inclusivity within the university. These efforts resulted in a report outlining best practices to be collectively implemented.
Simona Gibalová
Aurora Student Council member (UPJS)
Simona Gibalová is a 3rd year student of General Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice. Within the Association of Medics of the City of Košice, she has participated in organizing several events within the Children’s Hope Club, Public Health Club, and International Activities Club. Since 2023, she has been a representative of UPJŠ in the Aurora Student Council and has been involved in the development of international student relations between universities.
