Speakers

José Manuel Fernández Arroyo

José Manuel Fernández Arroyo is Deputy Head of Unit of the Creative Europe Unit at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture (DG EAC). This unit manages the flagship EU programme for culture and creativity sectors including key initiatives such as the European Capitals of Culture, the European Heritage Label and the EU Prize for Literature. He was previously Deputy Head of Unit at the Stakeholder Engagement and Programme Impact Unit. Other roles include Head of Sector for Erasmus+ Programme Design and Seconded Delegate for Research, Innovation and Space during the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU. A former researcher and award-winning PhD graduate in Environmental Chemistry, he combines scientific rigour and policy experience with a strong commitment to cultural cooperation across Europe. In his free time, he is also passionate about amateur theatre, performing as an actor and having founded his own theatre company in Brussels.

Gabrielle Bernoville

Gabrielle Bernoville is Policy Officer at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture (DG EAC), where she contributes to shaping EU policies and initiatives under Creative Europe in the fields of heritage remembrance and performing arts. Before joining the Commission, she has coordinated cross-borders European projects working in Peru, Slovakia, Georgia and Poland. Her work is guided by a commitment to building bridges between policy, creativity and citizens. Beyond her professional role, Gabrielle is actively involved in the Brussels cultural scene as an amateur actor, regularly performing with local theatre groups. This personal engagement fuels her passion for culture and her belief in the transformative power of artistic expression and participation.

Serge Rangoni

Serge Rangoni studied at the Conservatoire of Brussels. After working in various theatre institutions and at the Ministry of Culture, he was designated in 2004 as General Manager of Théâtre de Liège. Under his leadership, the theatre received the titles of “European center of theatrical creation and choreography” and “Centres for Drama” in the French-speaking area of Belgium, affirming its role in theatrical and dance productions and their dissemination to local and international audiences. Since his arrival at its head, the institution has developed considerably, with now an audience of 65,000 and more than 180 performances a season. Théâtre de Liège is today the leading stage in Wallonia.

Heidi Wiley

Heidi Wiley has been Executive Director of the European Theatre Convention (ETC) since 2009. Under her leadership, ETC has become an established European cultural network with an international programme of artistic collaboration, professional development and advocacy for Europe’s public theatres, spanning over 30 countries. She led ETC to become a strategic partner of the European Commission and the recipient of several prestigious prizes, including the 2022 Art Explora – Académie des Beaux-Arts European Award for innovation in access to culture; and European prizes for outstanding achievement in the fields of audience development and cultural heritage. Heidi is a sought after moderator and speaker at European events and conferences. In 2022, Speaker at the 8th Culture & RTBF Meeting; 2021, Consultant for European cultural policy agencies KEA (Brussels) and PPMI (Vilnius); 2020, Co-initiator of the 1st European Theatre Forum of the European Commission and the German EU Council Presidency; 2019, Author for the European Expert Network on Culture and Audiovisual (EENCA). Heidi started her career as international producer and touring manager for artists Victoria Chaplin and the Tiger Lillies, touring around Europe and Asia at major festivals and theatre venues. A studied cultural manager with degrees from La Sorbonne and Leuphana University, she lived and worked over the last 25 years in the UK, US, France and Germany.

Santa Remere

Santa is the Artistic Director of the New Theatre Institute of Latvia (NTIL) and curator of the International Contemporary Theatre Festival Homo Novus. She has an education in visual communication (Waseda University, Tama Art University in Tokyo) and has worked extensively as a publicist, art and literature critic. In her tenure at NTIL, Santa is focusing on innovative contemporary performing arts, promoting the visibility, agency and inclusivity for marginalised social groups, and improving and strengthening access to culture for diverse audiences.

Kitija Balcare

Natasja Börjeson

Natasja Börjeson is a scientist in the field of regulatory toxicology at Stockholm University, with a PhD in Environmental Science. Her research aims to understand the management of environmental risks and focuses on how regulation and policy can enable a non-toxic circular society and how societal actors (can) work together for a sustainable transition. She is also the Sustainability coordinator for Stages at Dramaten in Stockholm Sweden.

Andrea De Toni

Özgül Demiralp

Özgül Demiralp studied International Relations at the University of Geneva and Journalism and Communication at the Freie Universität Berlin. She started her career as a news reporter at a Swiss television channel, and has since then worked as a journalist and editor for various print, online and broadcast media, including an international video news agency. She has an established track record of covering local and international current affairs, as well as topics related to culture and sustainability. She is the co-founder of Reclaim - Ecofeminist Alliance. She joined ETC in February 2023.

Pascal Gielen

Pascal Gielen (b. 1970) is a writer and cultural sociologist whose work explores the delicate ties between culture, politics, and everyday life. He is a full professor of Sociology of Culture and Politics at the Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts (ARIA) at the University of Antwerp, where he also leads the Culture Commons Quest Office (CCQO). As editor-in-chief of the international book series Antennae – Arts in Society (Valiz), he curates critical reflections on how culture shapes - and is shaped by - society. In 2016, Gielen was awarded the prestigious Odysseus Grant by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) for his outstanding international research achievements. His books have been translated into English, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish. Through his writings, he traces the intersections of creative labour, the commons, and cultural politics, often venturing into the field to study how culture takes root and resists in conflict zones such as the Amazon and Ukraine.
A regular contributor to the Belgian newspapers De Morgen and De Standaard, Gielen writes with both the precision of a scholar and the sensitivity of an essayist, seeking out the fragile spaces where culture and society meet.

Komi Mizrajim Togbonou

As an actor, Komi has worked in feature films and TV, at the Schauspiel Bremen, Heidelberg, Freiburg, Graz,Potsdam, Bonn, Frankfurt and Berlin, and has been a permanent ensemble member at the Münchner Kammerspiele in Munich for three years. For more than 25 years Komi has been committed to respectful social coexistence, for more diversity and renewal of stereotypical narratives and images in film, television and theatre. Dividing his time between Munich, Berlin & Lomé in Togo. From September 2023 and onwards, Komi M. Togbonou is back in Berlin and works as an Actor, Musician and Ensemble Member of the Deutsches Theater Berlin.

Lukasz Twarkowski

Lukasz Twarkowski is a creator of multimedia performances combining theatre and visual arts. He places his projects in the context of extending reality through multimedia. A crucial element of Twarkowski's creative work is investigating the ability and limitations of theatre as a medium and tool of communication. By permanent deconstruction of narratives, questioning the fixed habits of the audience and by meaningful usage of new media, Twarkowski creates a new, original language of stage performance based on multimedia and, more widely, digital technologies. In using these, Twarkowski analyses and observes increasingly complex relations between the Real, the Symbolic and the Imagined.
His projects are being programmed at the most important festivals and stages around the world, among others: Odéon - Théâtre de l’Europe, Ruhrtriennale, New York Skirball Center , Piccolo Teatro de Milano, Festival de Otoño de Madrid, Wiener Festwochen, Southbank Center London, Onassis Stegi, Taipei Performing Arts Center, Holland Festival, Münchner Kammerspiele, Théâtre de Vidy, Thalia Theatre.

Jacob Hirdwall

Jacob Hirdwall (born 1967) is a dramaturge, playwright, director, and novelist. Since 2001, he has been employed at the Royal Dramatic Theatre (Dramaten) in Stockholm, Sweden’s national theatre, where he has contributed to a broad range of productions and artistic initiatives. From 2003 to 2006, he served as head of Dramaten’s Playwrights’ Group at Elverket, and from 2017 to 2020 he directed the Bergman Studio, a platform for artistic research and international exchange. Between 2020 and 2024, he led the project We Hear You – A Climate Archive, an international storytelling project created in collaboration between Dramaten and partners in Washington. Alongside his theatre work, he is active as a novelist and has written plays staged both in Sweden and abroad. With nearly three decades of experience, his work explores the intersections of literature and performance in a global context.

Paddy Dillon

Paddy Dillon is a leading theatre architect, responsible for heading the renovation of the National Theatre, and currently working with numerous theatres on modernisation plans that respect their historic value while equipping them for contemporary theatre use. He has been a trustee of the Theatres Trust for over five years, chairs the International Theatre Engineering and Architecture Conference, and sits on the casework committee of the Twentieth Century Society. In 2020, Paddy initiated the Theatre Green Book, a project that unites the industry in establishing shared standards for sustainable practice in theatre productions, buildings and operations, and provides guidance to achieve them. Paddy is an author and broadcaster, having published nine books, including a monograph on the National Theatre.

Lisa Burger

Lisa Burger is one of the UK's most respected strategic leaders in the arts. Until spring 2022 she was Joint Chief Executive and Executive Director of the UK's National Theatre. During the Covid pandemic, she was instrumental in helping develop the UK government's support package for the arts. Lisa co-founded Renew Culture and the Green Book initiative in 2020. She is a Trustee of Historic Royal Palaces and of the Royal Opera House. Lisa's work for the arts has been recognised with a special Olivier award, a CBE and an Honorary Doctorate.

Agnese Lāce

Agnese Lāce (born 23 August 1987) is a Latvian politician of The Progressives serving as minister of culture since 2024. She was previously parliamentary secretary to the minister of culture from 2023 to 2024, and worked at Providus from 2016 to 2023. Her previous experience also includes consultancy for the UN Refugee Agency and researcher at the University of Latvia.

Viesturs Kairišs

Viesturs Kairišs was born in Riga in 1971. Graduated from the Latvian Academy of Culture as a theatre and film director. He started working as a director at the New Riga Theatre. Soon after starting his career as a director, he was invited to stage Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin at the Latvian National Opera. Several of his plays have participated in international theatre festivals, among them Wiener Festwochen (Hotel Europe), Hebbel-Theatre in Berlin (Snake), Festival d'Avignon (Hotel Europe), Bonn Biennale (Dark Deers, Hotel Europe), Deutsche Oper Berlin (Valentina). Kairišs has staged three parts of Richard Wagner's grandiose tetralogy Ring of the Nibelungs at the Latvian National Opera. He has staged operas in Germany and worked at the Berlin Comic Opera, Cologne Opera and Darmstadt. At the same time, Kairišs has made feature films and documentaries as a film director; more than 75 thousand viewers watched his feature film The Chronicles of Melanie (2016) in Latvia. Kairišs’ latest film January (2022) was awarded as the best film at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York and was recognized as the best film at the Rome International Festival, where Kairišs was also recognized as the best director, and at Warsaw International Film Festival. For his work, Kairišs has received countless professional awards, including the Spidolas Award for special achievements in art, as well as received several awards of the Latvian National Theatre Award Performers' Night (Spelmanu nakts) as the director of the year, the Latvian National Film Award Lielais Kristaps for the best film, the Great Music Award for opera directing and newspaper Diena Culture Awards, as well as the Eduards Smiļģis and Kroders’ Awards in 2018.
Since 2020, Viesturs Kairišs has been the artistic director of Dailes Theatre. His directorial debut performance was about Eduards Smilgis, the 20th century’s theatre visionary and founder of Daile Theatre. This performance received the Grand Prix of the Performers' Night as the best performance of the year. In 2022, Kairišs received the Excellence Award in Culture.

Cláudia Belchior

Cláudia Belchior was the President of the Executive Board of the D. Maria II National Theatre in Lisbon, Portugal, a position she has held from July 2015 - June 2022. Cláudia has been involved with the performing arts for all of her career, at the foremost cultural institutions in Portugal, having served as Director, Coordinator for the Performing Arts, and Deputy Director for Planning and Budget at the Belém Cultural Centre and as Director of Production at the Gulbenkian Foundation. She is currently the executive general coordinator of Centro Cultural de Belém. She has taught courses in Production Management, Stage Management, and Technical Direction in several institutions.

Richard Sennett

Richard Sennett currently serves as Senior Advisor to the United Nations on its Program on Climate Change and Cities. He is Senior Fellow at the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University and Visiting Professor of Urban Studies at MIT. Previously, he founded the New York Institute for the Humanities, taught at New York University and at the London School of Economics, and served as President of the American Council on Work.
Over the course of the last five decades, he has written about social life in cities, changes in labour, and social theory. His books include The Hidden Injuries of Class, The Fall of Public Man, The Corrosion of Character, The Culture of the New Capitalism, The Craftsman, and Building and Dwelling.
Among other awards, he has received the Hegel Prize, the Spinoza Prize, an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University, and the Centennial Medal from Harvard University. Richard Sennett grew up in the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago. He attended the Julliard School in New York, where he worked with Claus Adam, cellist of the Julliard Quartet. He then studied social relations at Harvard, working with David Riesman, and independently with Hannah Arendt.

Tomass Pildegovičs

Tomass Pildegovičs currently serves as an Advisor to the Latvian Foreign Minister on Security and Societal Resilience. From 2022-2024, he worked as a Senior Expert at the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence. Tomass recently completed his PhD in Politics and International Relations at the University of Cambridge. He is a “political influencer” and digital content creator, known in Latvia for his commentary on contemporary political and security issues. Tomass is also a reserve soldier in the Latvian Army. 

Milo Rau

Milo Rau, born 1977 in Bern, is the artistic director of the Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen) | Free Republic of Vienna. The director and author has published over 100 plays, films, books and actions. His theatre productions have been shown at all major international festivals, including the Berlin Theatertreffen, the Festival d'Avignon, the Venice Biennale, the Vienna Festival and the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, and have been touring in over 30 countries worldwide. From 2018 to 2024 Milo Rau was Artistic Director of NTGent (Belgium).

Irene Pavesi

Irene Pavesi is a senior researcher and policy analyst specializing in human rights, cultural governance, and freedom of artistic expression. She currently works at the Artistic Freedom Initiative, where she conducts advocacy research on illiberal trends in cultural governance. With over 15 years of experience in international NGOs and research institutions, she has led global work on violence prevention, the monitoring and measurement of lethal violence, and transparency in the arms trade.

Marjolein van Bommel

After studying social sciences and pursuing a career as a brand strategist at an advertising agency and her own consultancy firm, Marjolein made the switch to the cultural sector in 2009. From 2009 to 2019, she was managing director at Het Filiaal theatermakers in Utrecht, after which she worked three years at DutchCulture as head of the Creative Europe desk Netherlands. In 2022 Marjolein started as general manager of the Toneelmakerij in Amsterdam. She is also chair of the Amsterdam consultation group for dance and theater producers and a member of the working group on safe spaces in art and culture on behalf of the Art and Culture Department of the municipality of Amsterdam.

Lotta Lekvall

Lotta Lekvall is Director/CEO at Folkteatern, a theatre based in Göteborg, Sweden, since 2015. Folkteatern has had an incredible development artisticly, organizationally, with the internal working climate, audience development and ticket sales, strengthened economy and marketing strategies. Folkteatern has had several successes artisticly as well as in audience and critics response. IT’s a pricewinning theatre for the plays Hamlet, Ett drömspel, and Bobby Fischer bor I Pasadena. Folkteatern has also been nominated to the Theatre Critics Price for the development and changes at the theatre and in marketing and communication as well as mentioned in The Guardian (February 8, 2020) for being a high-quality theatre and contributing to the area being chosen as one of the ten coolest neighbourhoods in Europe. Lotta Lekvall has attended the one-year programme Executive Diploma in Organisational Leadership, Oxford University, in 2023, and published the book “Performing Arts Leadership. Challenges in the 21st Century” (2024). She was nominated the twenty-fifth (out of a hundred) most influential persons in the city of Göteborg by the daily Göteborgs-Posten in 2023 for saving the theatre from eviction from the localities in the centre of the city.

Olga Brzezińska 

A respected cultural manager, university lecturer, and expert with extensive experience in management, strategy-building, and international programming. Deputy Director of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, responsible for the global programme and strategy as well as key projects: the UK/Poland Season 2025 and the international cultural programme of Poland’s Presidency of the Council of the EU. She teaches cultural diplomacy at the Jagiellonian University and leadership on the MBA at Kozminski University. Programme Director of the Leadership Academy for Poland. She bridges vision and execution, developing talent and teams while combining strategic precision with contextual sensitivity.

Dārta Ceriņa

Dārta Ceriņa is a Latvian film and theatre curator, critic and researcher. In 2023 she joined the artistic management team of Dailes Theatre in Riga as an international programmer and since 2024 is the Head of the Artistic Department. In addition, she works at Riga International Film Festival (RIGA IFF) as a curator, as well as has organized several scientific conferences and workshops, and artistic events as a creative producer, including the International Festival of New Theatre – Homo Novus. Since the beginning of 2025, she is co-hosting a weekly review programme Where Critics Have No Place which airs on Latvian Radio LR1 every Thursday establishing audio review format in Latvia.
Since 2017 she is a research assistant and a lecturer at the Institute of Arts and Cultural Studies of the Latvian Academy of Culture and is studying semiotics at the master’s level at the University of Tartu. She works on research projects in the field of semiotics of cinema and performing arts, journalism, and criticism, developing interdisciplinary approaches, and putting them into practice. Meanwhile, she gives lectures at Latvian Academy of Culture and is one of the lecturers at the film literacy and education school Antoine Duanel for non-professionals. 
Ceriņa has expanded her knowledge by participating in scientific conferences, festivals and workshops dedicated to performing and audiovisual arts at both local and international level. She is a voter for Golden Globe Awards, a Member of the Board of the Latvian Delegation of FIPRESCI, and since 2024 a member of the European Film Academy. 

Rok Bozovičar

Rok Bozovičar graduated from the UL Faculty of Arts in philosophy and comparative literature and continued his doctoral studies at the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade. Since 2012, he has worked as a theatre critic, first for Radio Študent and then as a critic and a journalist for Radio Slovenia, Dnevnik newspaper and Kritika website. He worked as an editor, writer, moderator and dramaturg, he co-edited (with Pia Brezavšček) the performing arts journal Maska and Neodvisni.art website. He was the selector of the 55th Maribor Theatre Festival (2020), the 11th Biennial of Puppetry Artists of Slovenia (2021) and the 53rd Week of Slovenian Drama Festival (2023). As an assistant manager he joined Prešeren Theatre Kranj in 2023, where he began his term as a general manager in 2025.

Mihaela Michailov

Mihaela Michailov holds a PHD in Theatre Studies at the National University of Drama and Cinematography I.L.Caragiale, București, where she coordinates the Master of Playwriting. Mihaela Michailov is a playwright, a performing arts critic and a cultural educator. She is one of the co-founders of the independent space Replika Center for Educational Theatre, based in Bucharest, where she initiated, together with the other members, platforms of educational art, programs of cultural intervention, shows on themes related to education. She has written more than 20 plays focused on social and political themes: work force migration, relations of power in the educational system, marginalization of vulnerable categories in post socialist times, history of LGBTQ+ communities before and after 1989. Her plays and fragments of plays have been translated in Bulgarian, French, Hungarian, Italian, German, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese. She has taken part, in 2009, in the playwriting residency offered by Royal Court Theatre, London. Her play „Bad Kids” had a public reading in July 2014 at the Festival d’Avignon. The play was staged in Bulgaria, France, Luxemburg, Germany. In 2016 the play was published at Solitaires Intempestifs Publishing House. In 2022 and 2013 she is the main curator of the National Theatre Festival, together with Oana Cristea Grigorescu and Călin Ciobotari.

Katerina Součková

Kateřina Součková is involved in independent creative projects, playwriting and radio scripts, theater dramaturgy, and doctoral research focused on theater reception. In her scripts and dramaturgical work, she is interested in exploring the various possibilities of theatrical language. As a scriptwriter and dramaturge, she has participated in theater projects for Meetfactory, Divadlo na Zabradli, Alfréd ve dvoře, Divadlo v Dlouhé, Činoherní studio and many site-specific productions for the Pomezí association, of which she is a co-founder. In her own work as an author and director, she focuses on the genre of audio walks in public spaces. In 2016/2017, she was awarded (together with L. Brychta and Š. Tretiag) the Divadelní noviny Award in the Alternative Theater category and the Next Wave Festival Award for Project of the Year for the Pomezí production.

Jennifer Laourou

Jennifer Laourou serves as the Officer of Global Policy & Advocacy at Artistic Freedom Initiative (AFI), based in Geneva. In this role, she contributes to the work of AFI’s Global Policy & Advocacy Program, which conducts research, produces reports, and advocates for policy and legal reforms to protect and promote artistic freedom worldwide. Jennifer brings deep familiarity with multilateral institutions and channels this experience into AFI’s international advocacy campaigns. Her work supports AFI’s engagement in fora such as the United Nations Human Rights Council, UNESCO, and European Union institutions.
Before joining AFI, Jennifer earned an MA in Applied Human Rights from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, a program that merges human rights theory and artistic practice.