ENoLL community is actively working in the challenges that the COVID-19 crisis has brought to us. Our aim now, as it is for many others, is to react in an agile way and prepare our cities and communities now for the new societal changes that will take place in Europe and the World. The Webinar Series on “COVID-19: Current actions preparing our digital societies for a post-COVID future” is gathering our Community of Living Labs and stakeholders around actual proposed solutions.

REGISTER FOR THE WEBINAR 

This webinar gives the floor to the representatives of the higher education community and its stakeholders to reflect how the COVID-19 pandemic has shaped the daily life of universities and what changes might/should stay onboard even after the tackling of the virus. 

Presenters:

Narend Baijnath – Council on Higher Education, South Africa 

Maria-Theresa Norn – Think Tank DEA, Denmark    

Esteban Romero Frías –  Medialab, University of Granada, Spain 

Marko Teräs – Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK), Finland  

If you would be interested in contributing to this of any other webinar, or if you want ENoLL to be aware of your initiative, please feel free to address to info@enoll.org

The webinar will last 60 minutes and will consist of two parts:

1. During the first part we will present to the audience a set of real-life responses from our members, stakeholders and individuals to the health crisis.
2. During the second part we will debate, with questions from the audience on “what’s next”. This will be done from the perspective of the construction of an actual digital society based on a multi-stakeholder and citizen-centric approach for Europe and the World, advancing in the democratisation of the access to innovation for all, not leaving anyone behind.

PRESENTERS:

Narend Baijnath – Council on Higher Education, South Africa 

CEO

Narend is CEO at CHE since 2015. Before that, he was Pro Vice Chancellor of the University of South Africa, and prior to that he successively occupied the positions of VP: Strategy, Planning and Partnerships, and VP: Research and Planning at the same institution.

Narend holds a Master’s degree from Durham University (UK), and a Doctorate from the University of the Western Cape (SA). He taught at the universities of Cape Town and Western Cape (UWC) and was Director Academic Planning at UWC when he left to join Technikon SA in 1998 as Dean: Community Sciences. Shortly thereafter, he was promoted to Deputy Vice Chancellor: Planning and Development. In July 2012 he was nominated the South African representative on the Commonwealth of Learning (CoL) Board by the Minister of Higher Education and Training. He has served on the CoL EXCO and is currently Audit Committee Chairperson and Deputy Chairperson of the Board.He is a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. In 2008 he was appointed a Fellow at St Edmunds College, Cambridge University and simultaneously a research professor at OUUK. He recently participated in the  rewriting of the Magna Charta Universitatum declaration, which is signed by over 900 universities world-wide. He is an avid cyclist and nature lover.

Maria-Theresa Norn – Think Tank DEA, Denmark    

Head of Analysis

Senior Researcher

Maria Theresa Norn is Head of Analysis in DEA, a Danish non-profit think tank on science and education policy. She is also a part-time Senior Researcher at the Danish Centre for Studies in Research and Research Policy, Aarhus University. She has a Ph.D. in science and innovation policy from Copenhagen Business School. Her work focuses on issues related to science, technology and innovation policy, as well as in secondary and higher education policy.
Follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Esteban Romero Frías –  Medialab, University of Granada, Spain 

Tenured Associated Professor at the Department of Accounting and Finance.

Director for Participation and Social Innovation & UGR-MediaLab

Esteban Romero Frías (male) is a Bachelor of Business Administration and Management, Doctor in Accounting and Professor at the Department of Financial Economics and Accounting at the University of Granada (UGR) where he teaches business creation, accounting and finance. His research works are framed in the area of e-research, addressing research in social sciences from data and Internet-based tools. He has worked mainly in three areas: 1) the use of webmetric techniques for the analysis of companies and political parties; 2) the use of digital technologies in learning; 3) the configuration of a new paradigm of Social Sciences and Digital Humanities through public engagement.

He has published research works in top journals in Information Science (i.e. Scientometrics, JASIST, JIS), Communication (i.e. Comunicar) and multidisciplinary (Plos ONE).

In 2015 he founded Medialab UGR – Laboratory of Research in Culture and Digital Society (https://medialab.ugr.es/), within the Vice-Rectorate for Research and Transfer of the University of Granada. He is also Director for Participation and Social Innovation of the University of Granada.

He is the principal investigator in several public and private funded research projects and networks, such as:

• LabIN Granada – a Citizen Lab for Granada (http://labingranada.org/)
• Laboratorio 717 – Laboratory of Participation and Democratic Innovation of Andalucía (https://laboratorio717.org/).
• Cooperanda – a visualization project of the international development cooperation in Andalucia (Spain).
• Red Knowmetrics (https://red.knowmetrics.org/) – a social network for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences.
• Red UnInPública (https://uninpublica.net/), a network for public innovation from universities.

Follow him on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

Marko Teräs – Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK), Finland  

Project Specialist, Research Group Lead

Dr Marko Teräs (PhD) works in the School of Professional Teacher Education at Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK). He is the research group lead of CARDE, Critical Applied Research of Digitalization in Education, team leader of Ubiquitous Learning Environments and lead of Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education project, “BUKA”: Advancing Equity and Access to Higher Education through Online and Distance Learning. He has a broad international experience in online learning and human-computer interaction as a developer, researcher and educator. Currently his main research focus is the critical research of digitalization in education.

Follow him on Twitter, LinkedIn, ResearchGate