Jeroen Backs, he is a history graduate from the University of Ghent. In 2012 he became head of the Strategy and Knowledge division of the Education and Training Department of Flanders. This division formulates policy recommendations to the minister to support an integrated and forward-looking policy.
The division is responsible for the European and multilateral education policy, educational research and policy evaluation, data and monitoring, strategic planning, legal advice on educational policy, and the Flemish central tests.
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Jeroen is currently vice chair of the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI), board member of the national Erasmus+ agency EPOS, Management Board member of Cedefop on behalf of the Flemish Community and the Flemish representative in the EU High-Level Group on Education and Training. Jeroen is also vice chair of the board of one of the school groups of the Flemish Community Schools Network.
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Jürgen Siebel is the Executive Director of the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop) and joined the Agency from the private sector in September 2019.
He is responsible for managing the Agency’s operations in accordance with the strategic direction of its tripartite Management Board.
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With his management team and all staff, Jürgen has led Cedefop to strengthen its position as a go-to ally for the EU institutions, social partners, researchers and practitioners when it comes to analysing the impacts of megatrends on the labour market, on skills, and on training ecosystems – and on how vocational education and training enables a fair digital and green transition.
Jürgen has a background in human-resources management with particular emphasis on learning and education, earned his MSc in economics at the University of Hamburg, and his PhD in business administration from the University of Vienna.
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Nicolas Bécuwe is a Senior Director at Verian, the leading international agency. He is an expert in multi-country evidence-based policy research. He has over 17 years of experience in the industry and has worked with Cedefop on vocational and skills research programmes since 2015. He has been leading the implementation and the delivery of the 2nd European Skills and Jobs survey (2nd ESJS Cedefop) and the European Training and Learning Survey (ETLS). He is currently responsible for the management of the European Vocational and Training Survey (EVTS) conducted among IVET teachers in the EU.
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Carlo Frising is Vice CEO at the Chambre des Salariés Luxembourg, CSL (professional chamber representing the interests of the employees).
He is in charge of the Luxembourg Lifelong Learning Centre, the CVET centre of the CSL.
He is a member of the Advisory Committee on Vocational Training (ACVT) of the European Commission and a member of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) Education and Training Committee.
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He is Member of Cedefop’s Management Board – Spokesperson to the Executive Board for the Employees' group. Also Carlo Frising is Member of the Luxembourgish Economic and Social Committee and member of the expert training group of the Economic and Social Committee of the Grande Region
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Katrien Alen is a pedagogical scientist, graduated from the University of Leuven.
After supporting professors at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Leuven in their didactics, she started in 2022 at the Knowledge Center of Digital Education at the Flemish Ministry of Education and Training.
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At the Knowledge Center, she is the theme manager for Artificial Intelligence in education. Additionally, she serves as a project coordinator for a metadata standard on learning materials, works on ICT policy in schools, and provides support in the areas of blended learning, distance education, and early childhood education.
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Michael Horgan is a policy officer and team leader for Skills for the twin transition in DG Employment. Within the unit for Vocational Education and Training, he mainly works on Digital Skills, both in the context of the Skills Agenda and other key European Commission initiatives and tools, such as the Digital Education Action plan, Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition, the Digital Europe Programme and the Digital Competence Framework. This includes work on supporting qualitative and effective digitalisation of VET provision and provision of digital skills in VET.
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Carl Lamote works as a policy coordinator in the Flemish Department of Education and Training. He focuses on the basic skills of pupils in compulsory education, with a special interest in vocational education.
He has been active for years in various European networks with a focus on vocational education, has extended the focus on innovation in vocational education to Flemish education and has helped to support the introduction of skills competitions in Flemish education.
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Carl has a background as an educational researcher, has a PhD in educational sciences and an additional Masters degree in public management.
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Anoush Margaryan is a Chaired Professor of Learning Sciences in the Department of Digitalization at Copenhagen Business School. She studies how people learn in digitally mediated workplaces.
She has researched workplace learning for 20+ years in a range of organisational domains, including in the energy, finance and higher education sectors and the platform economy.
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Current research interests include self-regulation of learning in the workplace (strategies, antecedents, factors) and skill requirements in AI-mediated work. Professor Margaryan has over 130 scientific publications, including 2 books.
She has led over 20 collaborative, interdisciplinary, intersectoral, international research projects as PI or Co-I, funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, the World Bank, Shell, BP, ConocoPhilips, Centrica, Energy Institute, UK Higher Education Academy, European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop) and the Volkswagen Foundation.
She has received international awards for research excellence such as Alexander von Humboldt Senior Fellowship, Excellence in Research to Practice Award from the American Society of Training and Development, and Shell Research Fellowship. Further details at www.anoushmargaryan.com.
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Seamus McGuinness is a Research Professor and the Research Area Co-ordinator for labour market research at the Economic and Social Research Institute.
Prior to joining the Institute, he held posts at Queens University Belfast, the Northern Ireland Economic Research Centre and the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic & Social Research (University of Melbourne). He obtained his PhD in Economics from Queens University Belfast in 2003.
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His published research covers the areas of labour economics and the economics of education. He has also published research in the areas of industrial relations, small business economics, regional economics, and the economics of constitutional change in Ireland. He is a research fellow in the Institute of Labour Studies (IZA) in the University of Bonn and an Adjunct Professor in the department of economics at Trinity College Dublin.
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Robert Plummer, Senior Adviser for Social Affairs, BusinessEurope
Robert is a senior adviser responsible for issues concerning migration and mobility, education and skills, social dialogue and the European Labour Authority.
Prior to joining BusinessEurope, Robert worked as a political adviser for the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) party.
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He attended Keele University in the UK and holds a Ph.D in industrial relations and human resource management, focusing on a comparative study of the demand for EU migrant workers in Sweden and the UK. He also has an MA in European industrial relations and human resource management and a BA in human geography and human resource management.
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 Konstantinos Pouliakas is an Expert on Skills and Labour Markets at Cedefop.
He leads the Agency’s Skills and Work team and is principal research manager of its Digitalisation and Future of Work and Skill Mismatch projects. His proudest achievement is the development of two waves of the Cedefop European Skills and Jobs Survey.
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He has been scientific advisor and author on skills anticipation and skill mismatch for the European Commission, the World Economic Forum, ILO and the Greek Ministry of Labour and is regular instructor for the ILO-ITC.
He is currently a core member of the scientific committee of Greece’s National Skills Commission.
Before joining Cedefop he held posts at the University of Aberdeen and the University of Cyprus and worked for the Bank of Greece and HM Treasury. He has been invited Professor at the Universita Degli Studi Roma TRE and Visiting Research Scholar at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He is Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Aberdeen Business School and IZA Research Fellow. He holds an M.Phil from the University of Oxford (St. Antony’s College) and a D.Phil from the Scottish Graduate Program in Economics.
He has published widely in peer-reviewed economics journals (e.g. Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Oxford Review of Education, Economica, Journal of Economic Surveys, Research in Labor Economics, Education Economics, International Labour Review).
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Giulia Santangelo is an Expert in skills and workplaces at the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop), since 2022.
Before joining Cedefop, since 2013, she worked as researcher at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission, in the Competence Centre on Microeconomic Evaluation (CC-ME), where she has been the coordinator of the Centre for Research on Impact Evaluation (CRIE).
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She has been a visiting research fellow at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and a lecturer at the Doctoral School of Economics at Sapienza University of Rome.
She obtained a M.Sc. in Statistical Sciences and a Ph.D. in Economic Sciences at Sapienza University of Rome.
Her main research interests lie in the fields of labour economics, applied micro-econometrics, and policy evaluation.
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Jasper Van Loo is coordinator of Cedefop’s department for VET and Skills.
He currently coordinates the labour market and skills analysis work of the agency. He is also part of the team investigating EU skills trends using online job vacancies.
He has a master degree in quantitative and general economics and holds a Ph.d. in social sciences.
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Yves Magnan has been working in the bank sector for about 15 years, in particular in the credit and debit cards sector.
During this period, he held several managerial posts. He joined the Public Employment Service in Wallonia (Forem) in 2003, where he first served as manager of a vocational training centre.
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He then moved on to become Vocational Training Director of a geographical zone (province of Luxemburg), where he coordinated the vocational training activities of six centres. In 2011, he joined the Forem Headquarters in Charleroi to manage the training of trainers (FormaForm), e-learning activities and all challenges regarding certification and the EQF.
After serving 1 year as territorial manager (Provinces of Namur and Brabant Walloon), he became, and still is, General Manager for products and services, responsible for engineering the services offer of Forem regarding vocational training, jobseeker coaching and business support.
He is also a member of the DGVT group at EU level. He recently co-chaired the DGVT meeting in Mechelen under the Belgian Presidency.
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