18th Karlsruhe Dialogues – Speakers

Prof. Dr. Léonce Bekemans holds the Jean Monnet Chair ad personam ‘Globalisation, Europeanisation, Human Development’ at the University of Padua, Italy. He is academic coordinator of the University of Padua’s Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence ‘Intercultural Dialogue and Multi-Level Governance’ and collaborates closely with its Human Rights Centre. From 2007 to 2012, Bekemans held the Jean Monnet Chair ‘Globalisation, Intercultural Dialogue and Inclusiveness in the EU’. He studied philosophy and international studies in Leuven, Bologna, and Washington DC, and holds a PhD in international relations from the European University Institute in Florence and the University of Leuven.

He has been a research fellow at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Budapest and a visiting professor at the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya in Barcelona, as well as at the Opole University of Technology in Poland. Bekemans has been a Jean Monnet visiting professor at the Polonia University in Czestochowa from 2002 to 2007, and at the Sapienza University of Rome from 2007 to 2010. From 1991 to 2001 he was a professor at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium. He is currently president of the Ryckevelde Foundation in Belgium, president of the European Community Studies Association (ECSA) Belgium, and secretary general of ECSA World.

He has been an expert to the Council of Europe, and still collaborates with the European Commission in relation to European education and intercultural dialogue, as well as with the Committee of the Regions in relation to multi-level governance. He participated in the EU High-Level Advisory Group on ‘Dialogue between Peoples and Cultures in the Euro-Mediterranean Area’ and now collaborates with the Anna Lindh Foundation on Intercultural Citizenship Education in the Euro-Mediterranean area. His most recent publication is Globalisation vs Europeanisation: A Human-Centric Interaction (2013).