The list of speakers is extended on a daily basis.
Andrea Abellán
Andrea Abellán is the Data Coordinator of DataJournalism.com, a project by the European Journalism Centre. She works with a community of over 15,000 global members across multiple platforms. Andrea writes about, researches and maps out the latest and most relevant trends seen throughout the data journalism landscape. She has taken part in the production of The State of Data Journalism Survey, 2021, a project that analyses the state of the field in recent years. Andrea holds a Master in New Media and Digital Communication from Utrecht University. At the moment she is pursuing a PhD in data journalism at Miguel Hernández University. She focuses on the use of ethics and inclusion in data journalism, and examines the latest evolution of the field brought on by events such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the climate crisis and ongoing global conflicts. She has reported for different media outlets in Spain and Italy.
Andrew Aiton
Andrew is the Data Visualisation Manager at the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe). SPICe is Parliament’s impartial research and information service. The data visualisation team is responsible for producing visualisations for SPICe and the parliament’s Committees. Part of his role involves analysing responses to consultations received through the Parliament’s digital engagement tools. This can involve analysis of the text of thousands of responses, often turned around to tight timescales. He is also leading on the Parliament’s scrutiny-focused data science project, which is looking at how we can better collect, store, manage and use parliamentary data.
Attila Bátorfy
Attila Bátorfy is a master teacher of data journalism and visualization, and Phd-student at the Media Department of Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. He worked previously as a journalist at several Hungarian news outlets, most notably he was the head of data and visual journalism at investigative journalism center Átlátszó. Currently he is running the first Hungarian visual journalism project, Átló. He also serves as editor of Médiakutató (Journal of Media Research). He created many government-transparency and media literacy projects in collaboration with Central European University, Transparency International Hungary, Mérték Media Monitor, Center for Independent Journalism, and Association of Hungarian Content Providers. For his journalistic work he was awarded with the Transparency-Soma Prize, the Quality Journalism Prize and the Eörsi János Memorial Award. His research interests include comparative media system theories, political influence in the media and theoretical and historical aspects of data visualization.
Hajo Boomgaarden
Hajo Boomgaarden is the Project Coordinator of OPTED. He is Professor of Methods in the Social Sciences with a focus on Text Analysis at the Department of Communication, University of Vienna. He received his PhD in Communication Science from the University of Amsterdam in 2007. Much of his work revolves around the analysis of (news) media coverage and its effects on political cognitions, attitudes and behaviour. He has co-authored more than 100 articles in international journals and numerous book chapters. In his current position Hajo Boomgaarden deals with further advancements of computational methods, in addition to his ongoing work on political communication.
Dominik Brenner
Dominik Brenner is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Public Policy at Central European University. His research interests include legislative favoritism, regulatory predictability, political oversight mechanisms, and the international political economy of finance. He is currently involved the OSUN-funded Global Corruption Observatory which collects legislative data, develops regulatory predictability measures, creates corruption indicators and probes the effects of legislative favoritism on company performance in countries around the world.
David Cabo
David Cabo is the co-director and CTO of Fundación Civio, an independent, non-profit newsroom based in Spain that develops impactful journalism projects in the public interest, focusing on public policies and their impact on citizens. Civio’s work has been recognised internationally (e.g. Data Journalism Awards for Best Investigation and Best Individual Portfolio, García Marquez Innovation Award), and part of networks such as GIJN or the European Data Journalism Network. MSc in Software Engineering and BA in Psychology, David worked previously as a consultant, developer, and software architect for companies such as British Telecom, HM Revenues and Customs, Accenture, Ericsson and BBVA Global Markets. He is an expert in open data, public data analysis and budget data.
Ieva Dunčikaitė
Ieva Dunčikaitė is leading various Transparency International Lithuania initiatives on open data for transparency and anti-corruption including political integrity initiative www.manoseimas.lt that recently was selected as one of the global champions in World Summit Awards 2022. She also works with initiatives related to democratic participation, access to information and good governance in the public and private sectors. Ieva holds a Master’s of European Politics and a double Bachelor’s degree in International Relations and French from University of Exeter, UK. She also studied in Sciences Po Paris, France and Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium.
Addie Erwin
Addie Erwin is the Data Officer at Inter-Parliamentary Union responsible for ensuring the PARLINE database (data.ipu.org) is the reference point for authoritative and up-to-date data on national parliaments. She contributes to coordinating data collection, quality control and management of data in Parline, the IPU’s Parline Correspondents’ Network, monitoring and reporting on SDG indicators 5.5.1a and 16.7.1(a), and ongoing technical developments and promotion of the database. She joined IPU in 2017 after working as a Policy Analyst at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) where her work focused on public governance and women’s representation in public life.
Christian Heyer
Ministerialdirigent Christian Heyer is a Deputy Director General of the Directorate-General „Information and Documentation“ of the Administration of the German Bundestag. He is responsible for the Parliamentary Library, the Parliamentary Archive, the Parliamentary Documentation and the Press Archive. He is also in charge of the Lobbying Register for the representation of special interests vis-à vis the German Bundestag and the Federal Government, which provides all information also in machine-readable form. Furthermore Mr. Heyer is tasked with coordinating the general Open Data Strategy for the German Bundestag.
Monika Jantsch
Monika Jantsch is the Head of the Parliamentary Documentation Division within the Administration of the German Bundestag. She studied law and passed the second state examination, thus qualifying as a lawyer and for judicial office. However, her interest in constitutional law matters sent her on a career path towards the Administration of the German Bundestag. Prior to her role in the Parliamentary Documentation Division, she also worked in sections dealing with petitions, matters of the Rules of Procedure and the legal status of Members, and budgetary law. She was also Head of the Secretariats of the Commission for Children’s Concerns and the Committee on Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. Monika Jantsch is a co-author of the commentary on the Members of the Bundestag Act, published in 2002 by Walter de Gruyter.
Christoph Konrath
Christoph Konrath is a constitutional expert and political scientist in the Austrian Parliamentary Administration. He’s the head of the unit ‘Research and Support in Parliamentary Matters’ in the Legal, Legislative and Research Services. Further on, he’s the coordinator of the Area of Interest ‘Parliamentary Practice and Procedure’ of the European Centre of Parliamentary Research and Documentation (ECPRD) and one of the editors of the International Journal of Parliamentary Studies.
Jakob Kraus
Jakob Kraus is a Computer Science B.Sc. Student at the TU Berlin, working as a Full-Stack Engineer at Limebit and as the Lead Developer for the OpenDiscourse Project, an initiative that offers citizens interactive full-text access and analysis of debates in the German Bundestag, a crucial contribution to the transparency of the German State. In his free time, he uses his programming skills to create real time digital art on his oscilloscope and is also active in the open source community.
Michal Ovádek
Michal Ovádek is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg and incoming Lecturer in European Institutions and Politics at the University College London. His research addresses various facets of the interplay between law and politics in the European Union. His work has appeared in, among others, the Journal of European Public Policy, European Union Politics and the Journal of Common Market Studies. As part of his research, he has developed and maintains an R package for facilitating access to EU laws and policies using database APIs and he is interested in the promotion of open data policies. Michal Ovádek obtained his PhD at KU Leuven in 2020 with a dissertation on the institutional contestation of EU competences. Between 2019 and 2021, he worked as a political adviser in the European Parliament.
Rolandas Pyragis
Rolandas Pyragis works as administrator in the Unit for Reception and Referral of Official Documents in the Directorate for the Plenary, Directorate-General for the Presidency (DG PRES), at the European Parliament. He is responsible, among other things, for managing the Legislative Observatory, the European Parliament’s tool for monitoring the EU decision-making process, with a particular focus on Parliament’s activities. Prior to joining DG PRES, he worked as a press officer and web editor at the Directorate-General for Communication. He studied international relations and political science at the University of Vilnius. Although more comfortable with the subjects of social sciences, he also likes to keep on learning about tech things, such as data management.
Florian Richter
Florian Richter is Founder, Managing Director, and Data Scientist at Limebit GmbH – a Berlin based data science consultancy. He has an academic background in political science and sociology. Together with his team, he started the Open Discourse project – the first fully comprehensive and machine-readable corpus of the parliamentary minutes of the German Bundestag. In December 2020, the Open Discourse project was published as an open source database along with a website that provides interactive tools to research and explore all plenary speeches held in the Bundestag since 1949.
Martina Schories
Martina Schories is an expert in programmed research and data visualization. She is an award-winning data journalist (Nannen Preis and Reporterpreis, among others) and was covering political issues at Süddeutsche Zeitung. Currently she is working at University of Siegen bringing data (methodology) and design skills to the Digital Media and Methods team and the CRC “Transformations of the Popular”. She considers herself as a translator between (a small fraction of) the real world and code and vice versa. Her main means of communication are data visualizations. Always more questions than answers.
