EDGERYDERS CORE CREW
Alberto Cottica
Co-Founder and Research Director, Edgeryders
Data/Network Scientist and Economist. An expert on collaborative governance and participation, with proven track record of managing processes of ICT-enabled design and delivery of public policy – and even public services – in collaboration with citizens.
Alberto has first-hand experience in establishing, nurturing and running communities of citizens that work towards common goals, sometimes in alliance with government). Also has a proven track record of driving adoption of innovative practices – and, more importantly, of a practice of openness and transparency in policy delivery – in fairly conservative large organisations, including government agencies.
Amelia Hassoun
Lead Ethnographer, Edgeryders
An anthropologist with a research focus on the social impacts of digital technologies. Has extensive ethnographic research experience both online and offline, in both public and private sector, focusing on the power of participatory communities to facilitate transparent, efficient solutions to public problems. Has technical experience designing and developing a bespoke patient information website, as well as interviewing community members, gathering and analysing qualitative and quantitative data, and generating ethnographic reports. Currently a doctoral researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute analysing community-based civic technology initiatives, ethnographically examining how community members creatively interact with and rework “smart” urban technologies.
Filip Simonovski
Social Media Manager, Edgeryders
Filip is not your average marketing geek. Just like the other “not-your-average” geeks at Edgeryders. Although excelling in web-development, web project management, digital strategy creation, community management, digital analytics & content creation, Filip loves driving change with the work he does most. Having worked with larger corporations, hard-hitting NGOs, and small business owners, he knows what works best for who. At Edgeryders, he’s passionately growing the community and the visibility of the people and conversations in it.
Inge Snip
Content Curator, Edgeryders
Multimedia journalist and communications expert Inge believes that telling stories that inspire change are the only stories worth telling. She has worked with a variety of organizations - including Forbes, National Geographic and UNICEF - producing and curating both video and written content to tell extraordinary stories, build communities and engage large audiences. At Edgeryders, Inge has previously helped built and manage communities of innovative activists in Georgia for their Futurespotters and Futuremakers projects. She currently splits her time between producing and managing content at the award-winning journalism initiative Coda Story and curating and editing content at Edgeryders.
John Coate
Co-Director and Community Manager, Edgeryders
John was employee number two at The WELL, where he was instrumental in creating the online community that Wired Magazine called the “world’s most influential”. There he was the first to work as what is now known as an “online community manager” and he wrote the first treatise on building online community. He co-founded the first major news website, sfgate.com, which today has more than thirty million monthly visitors and more than 340K Twitter followers. He was the online manager of a teen social network and game site that had thousands of members. He managed a regional media organisation that combined terrestrial radio and the internet in innovative ways. Through it all the core of his community knowledge comes from direct personal experience living and working with others who are consciously building lasting relationships as the building blocks of community.
Hugi Ásgeirsson
Co-Director, Edgeryders
Positioned between technology and participatory culture and politics, Hugi is interested in how people can collaborate better together today and in the future, online and offline. He currently works from Stockholm, where he co-founded the participatory culture center and social enterprise Blivande. As a co-director of Edgeryders, he runs the development lab Participio developing software for participatory culture and is involved in a number of projects exploring how technology can enable participation, social cohesion and resilience. Hugi has a background in informatics and analytics and has a degree from KTH Royal Institute of Technology where he studied biotechnology engineering.
Maria Euler
Community Manager, Edgeryders
Interdisciplinary artist and design researcher as well as a community manager for edgeryder with a background in physics, fine art and a Master in Information Experience Design from the Royal Collge of Art. She searches for points of connection and entry, between disciplines, complex scientific concepts, discussion, emotional and tangible experiences and people. She worked with the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Inclusive Design and the Financial Education startup Gimi as a researcher and UX Designer. She also was part of multiple successful art-science collaborations as for example with the Bristol Laboratory for Quantum Computing and exhibited interactive installations at venues and festivals across Europe such as Sonar+D, I-Gem and VrSci. Her goal is to enable different approaches and connections to increase the diversity and creativity of the discourse on art, science and technology.
Marina Batinic
Project Manager, Edgeryders
Marina is a project manager, specialised in cultural education, art, creativity and cultural heritage. Trained in knowledge management (European Commission, DG DEVCO), experienced in European project management (project coordinator at the Historical Research Center on Mediterranean Societies, University of Perpignan) and international cooperation (Ecole de Chaillot, Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, Paris). Founder of the Culture Hub Croatia which aims to strengthen the local cultural and creative sector and foster cross-sectorial innovation.
Matthias Ansorg
Co-founder and CTO, Edgeryders
Matthias is a computer scientist and technology generalist with a long experience in open source software and hardware development. A social innovator and digital entrepreneur who has studied alternative value measurement and non-monetary economic exchange mechanisms extensively for his award-winning commons funding platform PayCoupons (former Makerfox). Solid expertise in software development, integration and maintenance; has built the edgeryders.eu online platform.
Nadia E.N.
Co-Founder, Edgeryders
Engineer and designer born in Sweden to African parents, raised in Europe and Asia. A bridge person between activist networks of marginalised groups, artists, civil society, entrepreneurs, media and government. Nadia’s role in Edgeryders to serve our global community of brilliant misfits via the not-for-profit company that builds and managers the infrastructure sustaining it. In practice this translates into laying out the vision, building strategic partnerships, driving flagship projects and managing crews on different projects. Named Minister of Labour in a “dream government of New Thinkers” imagined for Sweden by the leading financial newspaper in Scandinavia.
Natalia Skoczylas
Community Organiser, Edgeryders
Natalia Skoczylas is a political scientist by training, deeply interested in politics, equality, solidarity, social justice, feminism, contemporary art, and libre technologies. She is a community mobilizer at Edgeryders, a storyteller (OpenCare, POPRebel and others) and event producer (LOTE, Open Village, Culture Culture). She works independently in various fields: artistic curator and organiser at Endlich festival in Berlin, artist at Biennale of Design Ljubljana 2019, music critic and freelance journalist, project manager, cultural worker (independent event producer for Tektura squat in Lublin, communication for CODES festival in Lublin and Biennale of Design Ljubljana), museum curator (Music Instruments Museum in Indonesia), advisor (Artist Run Alliance), speaker and trainer.
Noemi Salantiu
Co-Founder and Community Manager, Edgeryders
Community manager and a co-founder of Edgeryders since 2012. Romanian living in Brussels. Movie buff and yogi.
A social scientist by education, for the longest time I wanted to stay and possibly work in my own country. I was one of the last “Romanian patriots”. Too curious about the world and drawn by places with freedom and diversity, I decided to leave and keep two homes in two different countries. My work in Edgeryders, a network organisation of over 5000 members, allows me to build and grow relationships everywhere I go, keep an open mind, and still have the place where I can ‘always go back’. Read more about my bubble generation here.
Zmorda Djedidi
Project Manager, Edgeryders
Data scientist with previous experience in supply chain management. During the last 5 years, I have developed interest in social innovation and community building. I joined Edgeryders as a community builder in 2017. I have been working to grow the community in Tunisia by creating and sharing opportunities with and for young people in the Middle East and North Africa.
PROJECT TEAM: WELLBEING IN EUROPE
Dr Maria Asavei
Lecturer and Scientist-in-charge, Institute of International Studies, Charles University
(bio missing)
Prof. István Benczes
Professor and Scientist-in-Charge, Institute of World Economy, Corvinus University of Budapest
Dr Piret Ehin
Senior Researcher in Comparative Politics, University of Tartu
Dr Seán Hanley
Associate Professor in Comparative Central and East European Politics, UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies
Dr Natasza Styczyńska
Assistant Professor at the Institute of European Studies, Jagiellonian University
Dr Jiří Kocián
Researcher, Ethnographer and Community Manager, Charles University, Prague
Dr István Kollai
Assistant Professor, Institute of World Economy, Corvinus University of Budapest, Budapest
I intend to scrutinise the varieties of anomalies of capitalism, with a special focus on the presence of informal networks and hierarchies in capitalist structures, labelled many times as new feudalism, neo-feudalism or re-feudalisation. This direction is supplemented with the research question, how Central and Eastern European urban and rural regions effects each other’s socio-economic and cultural development.
Dr Krzysztof Kowalski
Senior Lecturer at the Institute of European Studies, Jagiellonian University
Prof. Jan Kubik
Professor of Slavonic and East European Studies, UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies
Professor of Political Science, Rutgers University
Prof. Zdzisław Mach
Professor, Institute of European Studies, Dean of the Faculty of International and Political Studies, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
Dr Richard Mole
Senior Lecturer in Political Sociology, UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, London
Dr Karel Svoboda
Assistant Professor, Institute of International Studies, Charles University, Prague
Krisztina Szabó
Assistant Lecturer,Institute of World Economy, Corvinus University, Budapest
Assistant Lecturer, Doctoral School of Political Science, Central European University
Dr András Tétényi
Assistant Professor, Institute of World Economy, Corvinus University of Budapest, Budapest
Dr Gábor Vigvári
Assistant Professor, Institute of World Economy, Corvinus University of Budapest, Budapest
Project : Internet of Humans