- Ambassador Kairat Abdrakhmanov took up the mandate of OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities on 4 December 2020. Before taking up the position of High Commissioner, Abdrakhmanov was Ambassador of Kazakhstan to Sweden and Denmark. His political career started at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan in 1993, where he held a number of key positions. He has served as the Deputy Foreign Minister (2013-2016), Foreign Minister (2016-2018), Permanent Representative to the UN (2013-2016), and as Permanent Representative to other International Organizations in Vienna (2007-2008 and 2011-2013). Ambassador Abdrakhmanov served as Kazakhstan’s Permanent Representative to the OSCE and in 2010 he Chaired the OSCE Permanent Council, making Kazakhstan the first post-Soviet country to hold the Chairmanship of the Organization. Ambassador Abdrakhmanov holds a degree in history from the Kazakh National University.
Ambassador Kairat Abdrakhmanov
OSCE
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Anne-Ly Reimaa is a historian by education and graduated from the University of Tartu in 1986. Anne-Ly has studied local government administration at the Estonian Business School and project managament in Ålsta Folkhögskolan in Sweden. She has a a long term work experience at the Jõhvi local municipality in Ida-Virumaa. In 2005-2007 she worked as a permanent representative of Estonian local government associations in Brussels. In 2007 -2016 Anne-Ly served as Undersecretary for Cultural Diversity at the Ministry of Culture and has been been responsible for formulating policy strategies of integration and for multicultural society, has been dealing with diaspora policy for 15 years as a member of the Council of the Compatriots Program and member of the global Estonian working group.
Anne-Ly Reimaa
Ministry of Culture, Estonia
- Kati Kadarik is a human geographer who currently works at the Estonian Centre for Applied Research Centar as a senior analyst. Her doctoral thesis (defended in 2019 at Uppsala University) analysed the complex relations between people’s (mostly immigrants) places of residence and socio-economic integration processes. Her areas of research have mostly been residential segregation, housing careers, and the influences of neighbourhoods on its residents. After doctoral studies, she worked at the Uppsala University as a researcher in the EU H2020 project UPLIFT, researching the main reasons for the socio-economic and spatial inequality of young people in European cities during the post-crisis period. In addition to the Uppsala University, Kati has also worked at the University of Tartu and been a visiting researcher at the University of Amsterdam.
Kati Kadarik
Estonian Centre for Applied Research Centar, Estonia
- Natalja Mjalitsina: For the past fifteen years, I have worked in various positions in the field of education: I am a teacher, I have managed a language immersion programme, and later the curriculum and methodology agency at Innove. Today I work as a development manager at Tallinna Pae Gymnasium, and since April I have taken up a new challenge – to help create a school for Ukrainian children near Tallinna Lilleküla Gymnasium, our Räägu community. I am interested in topics related to the language, values, their development and formation, creation of equal opportunities and conditions. My daily goal is to at least take one small step or do a small deed to improve the lives of the children.
Natalja Mjalitsina
Tallinna Lilleküla Gymnasium, Estonia
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Keit Spiegel works at the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a counsellor on diaspora policy. Her field of work includes everything that concerns Estonians abroad. She previously worked at the Estonian Ministry of the Interior as an adviser. She is also actively involved with the migration and integration oriented module at the Swedish Institute Academy for Young Professionals, in cooperation with Gothenburg University.
Keit Spiegel
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Estonia
- Ph.D. Venla Bernelius is an Assistant Professor in Urban Geography at the University of Helsinki. She specializes in research of urban segregation and development, as well as social and spatial educational dynamics. Her writing and research projects include themes such as the links between socio-economic segregation of urban neighbourhoods and the educational outcomes in comprehensive schools, immigration and housing choices of highly skilled migrants, as well as social cohesion in the context of the Nordic welfare state.
Venla Bernelius
University of Helsinki, Finland
- Karin Torpan is a doctoral student in human geography at the University of Tartu and the University of Turku and a lecturer on research methods at the Estonian Military Academy. In her doctoral studies, she studies the residential and neighbourhood mobility and integration processes of Estonian and other immigrants living in Finland. Her research focuses on migration, residential mobility, and socio-economic inequality in Finland and other Nordic countries.
Karin Torpan
University of Tartu, Estonia
- Andrii Rybas is a counselling lawyer at the Department of Prevention of the Estonian Labour Inspectorate. His area of activity includes counselling foreigners arriving in Estonia (including Ukrainian war refugees) and counselling employers and employees on employment matters. Rybas is a member of the Ukrainian Lawyers Association.
Andrii Rybas
Labour Inspectorate, Estonia
- Dr Gemma Catney is a Population and Social Geographer at Queen’s University Belfast, with research interests in ethnic and racial residential segregation and diversity, inequalities, and internal migration. She is fascinated by how neighbourhoods both shape, and are shaped by, the experiences of those who live in them. Gemma was the 2019 recipient of the prestigious Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers Gill Memorial Award.
Dr Gemma Catney
Queen’s University Belfast, Great Britain
- Dr James Laurence is a Senior Research Officer at the Economic and Social Research Institute, Associate Professor at Trinity College Dublin, and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester. His research explores the dynamics of social cohesion as societies become increasingly ethnically and culturally diverse, the role of civic norms and practices in intergroup relations, and processes of social integration among children and young people. He recently completed a large-scale, UK Research Council funded project on how residential segregation shapes socio-political attitudes and behaviours among young people and adults.
Dr James Laurence
Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
- Judit Kende is a social psychologist working at the Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. She received her PhD in 2018 from the University of Leuven and also worked at the University of Amsterdam and the University of Lausanne. Her research focuses on intergroup relations and equality. She is interested in how equality influences how people from different social groups relate to each other and in what ways people from different social groups can challenge inequalities together. Her work was awarded by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues for best paper in intercultural relations and by the International Academy for Intercultural Research for the best dissertation.
Judit Kende
Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
- Hanno Kruse is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on urban sociology, social networks, and the origins and consequences of segregation. Hanno Kruse is involved in different research projects investigating the role of neighbourhoods in immigrant incorporation, ethnic segregation in secondary schooling, and adolescent peer relations in local contexts. His work is driven by the question of how segregated social structures operate behind the backs of those involved.
Hanno Kruse
University of Bonn, Germany
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Laura Kirss is a doctoral student at the University of Tartu and is currently working as a Science Adviser at the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research. As part of her doctoral studies, she studies multilingual and multicultural schools focusing mainly on the models of a multilingual school. Laura has worked at the University of Tartu as a research fellow and a teacher in Education. She has also worked at Praxis Think Tank for a long period of time.
Laura Kirss
University of Tartu, Estonia
- Dr Patrick Kotzur is an assistant professor of social psychology at Durham University, UK, whose work focusses on topics related to intergroup relations. He’s interested in what factors and processes shape how we respond to people we feel do not belong to “us”. His current work focusses on social perception (i.e., how we perceive others, why we perceive them as such, and what consequences these perceptions have). He also studies how we can change these perceptions, with a focus on intergroup contact.
Patrick Kotzur
Durham University, UK