Barbora Maronkova is a long-term public diplomacy professional with NATO. She held various functions including that of Communications advisor in the Policy Planning Unit, office of the Secretary General; Director of NATO Information office in Kyiv, Ukraine and currently leading NATO public diplomacy outreach to Global partners. Barbora has experience from working at NATO press service, advising civil society and governments in Western Balkans on their NATO accession public efforts and campaigns. She also contributes to academic papers and writing on NATO public diplomacy and strategic communications and was a non resident fellow with the Center on Public Diplomacy with University of Southern California 2015-2017

Stefania Benaglia is Head of Foreign Policy at CEPS. Specialised on EU-Asia relations and Global Gateway she contributes to the global debate around the EU. Based in Brussels since 2008, Stefania worked at the European Commission (EC) and at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. Previously, Stefania was based in India (working for Friedrich Ebert Stiftung), Israel (working at the International Institute of Counter-Terrorism), United States (working at the Italian Embassy, and studying at SAIS Johns Hopkins University and at San Francisco State University), France (studying at Science Po Grenoble) and Spain (working in a Leonardo da Vinci programme).

With a background in international relations, Stefania holds a MA from Johns Hopkins University a MA from University of Pavia and a BA from University of Bologna.

Kasper Melhus Danielsen is a researcher and former Airmen with the Royal Norwegian Airforce from Løreskog. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Agder, with a minor in Asian studies. In 2018-2019 he spent two semesters at Kansai Gaidai university in Hirakata, Japan, studying the Japanese language, public policy, security challenges in Southeast Asia and the Japanese constitution.

His knowledge of Japan was further applied in research and writings on Japanese constitutional change and on Asia’s approach to bilateralism vs multilateralism. In 2023 he obtained his master’s degree in political science from the University of Antwerp, Belgium. His focus has been on institutional design and Asian politics, as well as in depth security analysis of the region. At EIAS his research centres around Japanese public policy and EU-Japan Relations.

Shada Islam is a respected and well-known Brussels-based commentator on the European Union who runs her own Brussels-based global media, strategy and advisory company, New Horizons Project. Before that, Shada worked for nine years as Director of Europe and Geopolitics at Friends of Europe, an influential independent think tank based in Brussels.

Shada is currently Senior Advisor at the European Policy Centre as well as Non-Resident Fellow at the Centre for Global Development. Shada is also a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe (Natolin) and a Solvay Fellow at the Vrije University Brussel (VUB).

In 2017, Shada was selected as one of the 20 most influential women in Brussels by the magazine Politico.

Jessica Nguyen is the Policy and Advocacy Manager at the European Youth Forum, the democratic platform in Europe representing over 100 youth organisations and tens of millions of young people across the region. Jessica leads the portfolio on youth rights, advocating at the UN level for young people’s rights to be universally recognised, notably through better mainstreaming, meaningful participation, and the establishment of new human rights mechanisms such as a UN Convention. Jessica is a Vietnamese-Australian who has a background in international human rights law and has worked with civil society in the areas of gender equality, migration and social rights.

Growing up in Southeast Asia before migrating to Europe, Asher has his feet on both parts of the world. Having experienced the warning signs of climate change and social inequality first hand, he has been advocating for climate and social justice through his youth voluntary and political engagement. He was International Secretary of Jong Groen, the Dutch-speaking Belgian Young Greens, from 2020 to 2022, where he gained an abundant network on European and global levels. He is currently active in the Racial Justice Task Force of the Federation of Young European Greens (FYEG). Having also been actively supporting youth civic and political movements in the Philippines, he has been raising issues of human rights violations and the criminalisation of (young) dissent from his birthland to European awareness.

Muhammad Anugrah Utama (Tama), currently, is pursuing their master's degree in Euroculture at the University of Groningen and Jagiellonian University. Tama is an Associate Editor at Student Think Tank for Europe-Asia Relations (STEAR) and was a trainee at the EU Delegation to Indonesia and Brunei Darussalam where they discovered their interest in EU-Indonesia and EU-ASEAN relations, particularly in human rights and democracy. Besides academics, they are also interested in queer activism, K-pop & J-pop, language-learning, and Eurovision.

Srishagon Abraham is a racial justice activist and current LL.M. candidate at the Catolicá Global School of Law. He has a background in international human rights law with a speciality in Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) and an intersectional focus in global migration and development studies. His work covers a wide array of topics, often centring on a critical analysis of European and international law theory and praxis through a decolonial perspective. His activism finds its roots in Malaysia, through various efforts for the rights of marginalised communities, including his fellow Indian community. Since moving to the Netherlands, he has focused his activism on the rights and inclusion of racialised communities in the European (youth) green movement and in European politics. He is currently an executive member of the Federation of Young European Greens, and the founder and coordinator of its Racial Justice Task Force and Beyond Growth Platform.

Xaver earned a bachelor's degree in Social Sciences from the Free University of Brussels, followed by a master's degree in International Affairs from the London School of Economics and Peking University. He commenced his journey with the Bluebook Traineeship at the European Commission in March 2024. Later this year, he will embark on a PhD program in economics at the Guanghua School of Management. His research interests encompass Sino-European relations, international trade, and green technologies.

Jonas Nitschke is currently working as a Programme Manager for Democracy and Governance at the Multinational Development Policy Dialogue of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and as a co-organizer of the youth initiative to bring young leaders from Europe and Asia together at the Young Indo-Pacific Forum. Last year, he was also involved as a EU delegate at the Y20 Summit on Youth in Democracy and Governance in India.