Francesco Palermo is professor of comparative constitutional law at the University of Verona and Director of the Institute for Comparative Federalism at Eurac Research in Bolzano/Bozen. He worked for the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities and was member and president of the Council of Europe’s Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. From 2013 to 2018, he served as a non-party member of the Italian Senate. He has been a member of the Group of Independent Experts of the Council of Europe’s Congress of Local and Regional Authorities since 2011. He is a former president (2016–2022) of the International Association of Centres for Federal Studies (IACFS). He was member of the Scientific Committee of the Fundamental Rights Agency of the EU for the term 2018–2023 and has been a constitutional adviser to the Council of Europe’s Congress of Local and Regional Authorities since 2019.
Maurice Crul is a distinguished professor of sociology at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. He specialises in the school and labour market careers of children of immigrants and refugees in Europe and the United States. He coordinated the TIES project, the first European comparative study on the second generation in Europe. He has further coordinated two ERC Grant projects. The first looked at the upcoming elite among the second generation (ELITESproject.eu) and the second, an ERC Advanced Grant project, BAM, examines the new minority in superdiverse cities: the people without a migration background living in majority-minority neighbourhoods (BAMproject.eu). He has written over a hundred journal and chapter articles about diversity and inclusion. Some of his books include: The New Face of World Cities (Russell Sage Foundation Publishers), Coming to Terms with Superdiversity. The Case of Rotterdam (Springer Press), Superdiversity. A New Vision on Integration (Free University Press), New Social Mobility. Second Generation Pioneers in Europe (Springer Press) andThe New Minority People Without a Migration Background in the Superdiverse City.
Prof. Dr. Maurice Crul
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Prof. Dr. Sonja Novak Lukanović
Institute for Ethnic Studies & University of Ljubljana
Sonja Novak Lukanović has been the Director of the Institute for Ethnic Studies in Ljubljana, Slovenia, since 2010 and is a full professor of Applied Linguistics at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. Her specialised research field are the ethnically mixed territories in Slovenia, including the bilingual border regions. Her research topics cover applied linguistics with special emphasis on sociolinguistic themes dealing with social and language processes in areas of language contact. Within basic and applied projects, she specifically works with language policies and language ideologies, the status of languages in multicultural areas of contact, relations between minority and majority languages, strategies of language adaptation, links between language and individual identity, significance of speakers’ attitudes towards language/languages, bilingual education, and economic aspects of language. Within the basic research projects Language and Economy (2008-2011) and Institutional Bilingualism in the Ethnically Mixed Areas in Slovenia: Evaluation of Bilingualism Bonus Programme (2018-2022), which she headed, she performed pioneer research in Slovenia defining the links between language and economic variables in different ethnically mixed and homogenous settings.
