- November 9, 2009
Discussants
Mr. Remzi Lani is Director of the Albanian Media Institute. He is considered to be one of the prominent Balkan personalities of the media community. He has worked as chief editor of “Zeri i Rinise” (1983-1992) and as correspondent of the Spanish newspaper “El Mundo”. He has participated in the writing of “My Albania Ground Zero” and “Masters of Humanist Philosophy”.
Mr. Ivan Vejvoda is Executive Director of the Balkan Trust for Democracy, a project of the German Marshall Fund for the reinforcement of the democratic institutions in Southeastern Europe. He has served in the Serbian government as Senior Advisor in matters of Foreign Affairs and European Integration under the Prime Ministers Zoran Djindjic and Zoran Zivkovic. Before that, he was Executive Director of the Open Society Fund in Belgrade (2998-2002), while during the ’90s he possessed academic positions in the U.S. and United Kingdom. He was executive member of the opposition party in Yugoslavia during the ’90s and he has published papers on democratic transition, totalitarianism and reconstruction after the war in the Balkans. He is member of the administrative council of American scientific magazines ‘Constellations’ and ‘Philosophy and Social Criticism’.
Mr. Alexandros Rondos studied History at Oxford, worked as correspondent in African countries, was Head of the humanitarian organisation Orthodox Christian Core with important activity in Africa, as well as a close collaborator of the Prime Minister Mr. G. Papandreou as Head of the Directorate General of International Development Cooperation (YDAS), when the latter was Minister of Foreign Affairs between 1999-2004.
Dr. Matoula Scaltsa is Professor of History of Art and Museology at the Department of Architecture of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. During the last 20 years she has curated more than 50 art exhibitions. Since 1985 she is member of the Board of the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art and member of its Visual Arts Committee. Since 1990 she writes articles on culture issues for the newspapers ‘Nea’ and ‘Vima’. She is President of the Association of Greek Museologists, founding member of the Association of Greek Art Historians, member of the International Committee of Museums (ICOM), member of the UK Museums Association, member of the International Association of Art Critics and of the Association of Greek Art Critics.
Moderator
Dr. Dimitris Keridis is Associate Professor of International Politics at the Department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies, University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki. He is a senior research associate at the Karamanlis Foundation in Athens. In the past, he has served as the director of the Kokkalis Foundation in Athens and of the Kokkalis Program on Southeastern and East-Central Europe at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University in Boston. He has published articles and studies and has curated collective volumes in Greek and English on issues related to Greek foreign policy, Turkey, the Balkans, and the Middle East. He holds a Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
The discussion was followed by the screening of Deutsche Welle’s excellent documentary, «Walled In: the inner German border», which refers to the importance of the wall for Germany and the world.
