AUSTRIA

Katharine Sarikakis (Phd) is a Professor of Media Governance at the Institute of Communication Science, University of Vienna. Prior to this, she was the founder and director of the Centre for International Communication Research at the University of Leeds, UK. She is also the chairperson of the Communication Law and Policy Section of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) and an elected member of the International Council of IAMCR. Her publications include: Media Policy and Globalisation (2006, with P. Chakravarrty), Powers in Media Policy (2004) and British Media in a Global Era (2004). She is the editor of Media and Cultural Policy in the European Union (2007) and coeditor of the International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics.

BELGIUM

David Stevens (PhD) is a research manager and researcher at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Law & ICT of the Faculty of Law of the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. His academic expertise relates to the evolving role of governments and national regulatory authorities in the telecommunications and media sectors. He publishes regularly on communications and media law in Belgian, European and international journals and is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences. Since 2010, he has been a member of the editorial board of Computerrecht, a Dutch-Belgian journal on law and informatics.

CZECH REPUBLIC

Milan Šmíd (PhD) is an assistant professor of Journalism and Mass Communications at Charles University in Prague. He has authored numerous studies on the transformation of the electronic media in the Czech Republic and on European media policy. Prior to 1990, he worked for the former Czechoslovak Television, Department of Foreign Programs. In 1990 to 1991 he was a member of an expert group involved in drafting the country’s Broadcasting Law. He has written a number of studies on broadcasting legislation commissioned by the Czech Parliament, and has participated as a country expert in several international research projects on European media developments and policy, including “Media Ownership and Its Impact on Media Independence an Pluralism” (Ljubljana 2004), a European Commission study on “Co-Regulation Measures in the Media Sector” (Hans Bredow Institut 2005), and European Media Governance, (Intellect Book 2008). Milan Šmíd regularly comments on media and on media policy at the webpage: www.louc.cz.

DENMARK

Erik Nordahl Svendsen served as the first director of the Mediasecretariat for the Radio and Television Board (RTB) when it was created in 2001. Prior to that, he served as head of the media research division for Denmark’s public broadcaster, DR. He has researched and written extensively on regulation of public service broadcasting in Europe and is a frequent lecturer and an external examiner at Danish universities. His most recent publication, “From Sovereignty to Liberalisation: Media Policy in Small European Countries,” appears in Small Among Giants: Television Broadcasting in Smaller Countries (eds. G.F. Lowe and C.S.Nissen, Nordicom 2011).

ESTONIA

Inka Salovaara (PhD) is an associate professor in the Department of Information and Media Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark. From 2004 to 2009 she served as an associate professor in Communication Studies at Tallinn University, Estonia. Her research focuses on new technology in relation to media and democracy in Europe, as well as comparative media system analysis, digital journalism, press freedom and pluralism. She has contributed chapters and articles to a number of collections and journals including the European Journal of Communication, Qualitative Inquiry, The Communication Review, Journalism, and International Journal of Cultural Studies and Journal of Elections. Her most recent books include: Media Geographies. Newspapers and Economic Crisis (2009) and Manufacturing Europe: Spaces of Democracy, Diversity and Communication (2009).

Andra Siibak (PhD) is a research fellow in media studies at the Institute of Journalism and Communication at the University of Tartu, Estonia, and a post-doctoral researcher at the School of Communication, Media and IT, at Södertörn University, Sweden. Her present research interests focus on generations and inter-generational relations in the information society. Her articles have appeared in several peer-reviewed journals, including Young, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Cyberpsychology, Journal of Children and Media, and Journal of Virtual Worlds Research.

FRANCE

Guy Druout (PhD) is a professor at the Institute of Political Studies in Aix-en-Provence (France). He teaches media law both at this Institute and at the Faculty of Law and Poltical Science of Aix-Marseille. His research field concerns media law and communications regulations. He is a member of the CHERPA Research Team at the Institute of Political Studies and of the IREDIC research team of the Faculty of Law. He has been a member of the Comité Territorial Audiovisuel of Marseille since 1990, and serves as vice president of the Standardization Committee of the Media & Society Foundation (Geneva).

FINLAND

Kari Karppinen (PhD) is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Social Research of the University of Helsinki. He defended his doctoral thesis on the concept of media pluralism in 2010 and he currently works in the areas of media and democracy and media policy. Hannu Nieminen (PhD) is a professor of Media and Communication Policy in the Department of Social Research, University of Helsinki.

GERMANY

Stephan Dreyer has been a staff member at the Hans Bredow Institute for Media Research since February 2002. His research interests include the legal aspects of new media services as well as new online and distribution platforms. He is member of the research and transfer centre “Digital Games and Online Worlds” at the Hans Bredow Institute. For his PhD thesis, he is investigating the difficulties and determinants of legal decisions regarding youth media protection.

ITALY

Marco Bellezza (PhD) is an expert in European media law, internet law and intellectual property law. He graduated cum laude at the Faculty of Law of University of Bari ‘Aldo Moro’ in 2005, and holds a PhD in private law from the University of Bari. In addition to his academic work, he has been a practicing attorney in media and communications law at a national law firm in Italy since 2009. He is a member of the editorial board of the journal medialaws.eu and president of the Apulian Centre for Intellectual Property, a research center associated with the University of Bari. He recently completed a study on the implementation of the EU Audiovisual Media Services Directive at the Institute of European and Comparative Law at the University of Oxford. Oreste Pollicino (PhD) is an associate professor of comparative public law in the Department of Law at Bocconi University in Milan. His research areas include European and comparative constitutional law, media law, and Internet law. He is the editor of International Journal of Communications Law and Policy, and a member of the editorial board of Diritto Pubblico comparato ed europeo, Panoctica, Revista Eletrônica Acadêmica de Direito, and medialaws.eu.

IRELAND

TJ McIntyre is a lecturer in the School of Law, University College Dublin. He is also a practising solicitor and consultant with Merrion Legal Solicitors, and is chairman of civil rights group Digital Rights Ireland. His blog, IT Law in Ireland, focuses on information technology law issues with a focus on freedom of expression, privacy and other fundamental rights: www.tjmcintyre.com

LATVIA

Linda Austere is a policy researcher working at the Centre for Public Policy in Riga, Latvia. She has a law degree from the University of Latvia and an MA in Public Policy (Media, Communications and Telecommunications) from Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. She is actively involved in research, advocacy and consulting in Latvia and abroad regarding management, use and re-use of public sector information, as well as with wider issues of quality of policy-making process. She served as advisor to the Minister of Defense (2009-2010) and is currently a member of the board of the Policy Association for Open Society (PASOS), an organisation that unites research centres and think tanks in Central Eastern Europe, South Caucasus and Central Asia.

LITHUANIA

Živilė Stubrytė is currently a PhD candidate at the Legal Studies Department of Central European University in Budapest. She holds a Master of Law degree from Mykolas Romeris University in Lithuania (2007) and LL.M in Comparative Constitutional Law (with distinction)from Central European University (2008). Her LLM thesis focused on legal aspects of the independence of regulatory authorities in the broadcasting sector, for which she was awarded a research grant from the Columbia University Law School. She previously worked as a legal intern at the Lithuanian Communications Regulatory Authority, the agency responsible for regulation of telecommunications sector. She also served as a country correspondent for the INDIREG project (“Indicators for Independence and Efficient Functioning of Audiovisual Media Services Regulatory Bodies for the Purpose of Enforcing the Rules in the AVMS Directive”), led by the Hans Bredow Institute for Media Research and financed by the European Commission.

THE NETHERLANDS

Joost van Beek has been a research fellow at the Center for Media and Communication Studies (CMCS) at Central European University in Budapest since 2009. Before joining CMCS, he worked at the EU Monitoring and Advocacy Program (EUMAP) at the Open Society Institute in Budapest, where he collaborated on a number of projects, including the Television across Europe monitoring reports, Regulation, policy and independence (2005) and More Channels, Less Independence (2008). From 2000 to 2005, he worked at Mira Media, a Dutch NGO that promotes the representation of minorities in the media. He is a co-author of a book chapter, “Community Radio in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Opportunities and Challenges,” in Communication and Community: Citizens, Media and Local Governance in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Mediacentar Sarajevo, 2010). He holds a master’s degree in Russian and Eastern European Studies from Utrecht University (2000).

POLAND

Beata Klimkiewicz (PhD) is an assistant professor at the Institute of Journalism and Social Communication, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland. Her research interests include media pluralism and diversity, media policy in Europe, media reform in Central Europe, media system structures and regulatory models, media representations of minorities and minority media. She has studied or held fellowships at the University of Oxford, Columbia University, the Robert Schuman Centre of the European University Institute, Florence, and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences. She has also acted as an expert to the European Commission, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, the European Parliament and the Council of Europe. She has published extensively on media policy issues in Central and Eastern Europe. Her recent publications include Media Freedom and Pluralism: Media Policy Challenges in the Enlarged Europe (CEU Press, Budapest: 2010).

PORTUGAL

Joaquim Fidalgo (PhD) is an assistant professor of journalism and head of the Communication Sciences Department at the University of Minho (Braga – Portugal). He is also a senior researcher at the Communications and Society Research Center (CECS) at the Institute of Social Sciences of University of Minho. He worked as a professional journalist between 1980 and 1999 and as a press ombudsman for the daily newspaper Público from 1999 to 2001. He has published several books, book chapters and journal articles on issues of press and journalism ethics, media accountability systems, media and journalists’ regulation mechanisms, and new media. He has participated in a number of international research projects on issues of media monitoring, media pluralism and media regulation. He is a member of the European Communication Research and Education Association and of the International Association for Media and Communication Research. In January 2007, he completed his PhD dissertation on journalists’ professional identity, ethics and self-regulation.

SLOVAKIA

Andrej Školkay (PhD) is the director of the School of Communication and Media in Bratislava. He has lectured at journalism and media schools across Slovakia and abroad. He has published widely on various aspects of the media, focusing in particular on media and politics relations. He is the author of Media and Globalisation (School of Communication and Media, Bratislava 2009) and Media Law in Slovakia (Kluwer Law International, The Netherlands, 2010).

SLOVENIA

Brankica Petković is a researcher and project manager at the Peace Institute Ljubljana, Institute for Contemporary Social and Political Studies. Her work focuses on communication rights of citizens and minority groups, and media pluralism. She has led and contributed to a number of international and regional research and advocacy projects on European media policy issues. She also served as a member of an expert body in media policy for the Ministry of Culture in Slovenia in 2003–2005 and in 2009–2010. Petković currently serves as editor of the Media Watch book series and the Media Watch journal.

SWEDEN

Henrik örnebring (PhD) is a senior research fellow on the ERC Project on Media and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe at the European Studies Centre, St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford. His main research interests are journalism and democracy, journalism as professional practice, journalism and new media, and media history. He has published several journal articles and book chapters on these topics, and in 2009 served as guest editor of an issue of Journalism Studies on European Journalism. His book, Newsworkers: Comparative European Perspectives, is forthcoming in 2012.

SWITZERLAND

Manuel Puppis (PhD) is a senior researcher and teaching associate, and the managing-director of the Media & Politics division at the Institute of Mass Communication and Media Research (IPMZ) at the University of Zurich. Matthias Künzler (PhD) is a senior researcher and teaches at the University of Zurich’s Institute of Mass Communication and Media Research (IPMZ).

UNITED KINGDOM

Lina Dencik (PhD) is currently a research fellow at the Center for Media and Communication Studies (CMCS) and visiting faculty in the department of Political Science at the Central European University, Budapest. She holds a PhD in Media and Communications from Goldsmiths, University of London and has taught media and communications at several different universities in the UK. Previously a television producer in the UK, she has written about media development and globalization with a particular interest in politics and international relations. Her current book, Media and Global Civil Society, is published by Palgrave Macmillan (2011).