Rethinking and building democracy in a changing international order

- Position: General Manager of Strategy (2025-present). Studies: Graduate in Civil Engineering (UPV/EHU); Master's Degree in Civil Engineering (University of Cantabria); Expert Course in Urban Innovation (MU). - Professional and political career: Director General of Innovation in Administration, Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa (2023-2025); Councillor responsible for Urban Planning, Works and Services, Elgoibar (2015-2023). President of the Community of Municipalities of Debabarrena (2019-2023). Vice-President of Gipuzkoako Hondakinen Kontsortzioa (2019-2023).

Adviser to the General Deputy of Gipuzkoa and one of the main promoters of the development of Etorkizuna Eraikiz. He is a Doctor in Sociology and Full Professor at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of the University of Deusto.

Michael W. Bauer holds the Chair in Public Administration at the Florence Transnational Governance School of the European University Institute. Michael studied German philology, history, and social sciences before obtaining a Diploma in Social Sciences from Humboldt-University in Berlin He later earned a Master of Arts in European Political and Administrative Science from the College of Europe in Bruges (Tocqueville Promotion). He completed his Ph.D. in Social and Political Sciences at the EUI. His academic career includes positions as a Senior Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn, and professorships at the University of Konstanz and Humboldt University in Berlin. He has held numerous visiting and part-time academic positions at institutions across Europe, including ISCTE – University Institute of Lison, La Coruña University, and the Turkish-German University in Istanbul. His research focuses on European and international public administration, multilevel governance, and democratic bureaucracy. He has recently explored the impact of populist government on public administration systems and the ethical responsibilities of civil servants under illiberal rule.

Professor of Political Communication and Public Sector (Complutense University of Madrid), visiting scholar at George Washington University and Jyvaskyla University. Specialised in the development of intangible resources (trust, commitment, legitimacy and sustainability). She has been a facilitator of active learning initiatives in Etorkizuna Eraikiz and has advised on its internal and external listening processes.

Carme Colomina is a Senior Research Fellow specialising in the European Union, disinformation and global politics at CIDOB (Barcelona Centre for International Affairs), as well as being an editor and member of the Editorial Board. She is also a visiting professor at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium, where she teaches a course on Communications Management in the European Union, and at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. After graduating in Information Science from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and completing a postgraduate course in European Union Studies from the UOC, she was the Brussels correspondent and Head of International Affairs for Catalunya Ràdio and for the ARA newspaper. She is a regular contributor to different media outlets. As a special envoy, she covered international summits and political conflicts in a score of countries, as well as working as a consultant on various communication projects in the European and Euro-Mediterranean sphere. Before joining CIDOB, she was also Head of Interregional Cooperation in the Foreign Affairs Department of the Catalan government.

Míriam Juan-Torres is a multidisciplinary researcher, writer, and public speaker and expert on authoritarian populism, polarization, and human rights. She currently works as the Head of Research at the Democracy & Belonging Forum of the Othering & Belonging at University of California, Berkeley. Senior Advisor at the More in Common international organisation. She has also worked as an associate professor in human rights at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Miriam was also an UN consultant in Ghana and Colombia, where she worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, respectively. Miriam holds a Master’s Degree in Global Affairs from Yale University and a law degree from the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

Dr. Vilma Luoma-aho is professor of Corporate Communication and Vice Dean in charge of Education at School of Business & Economics, University of Jyvaskyla, Finland. Luoma-aho has published several books and articles in leading communication journals on digital stakeholders and new forms of influence, and serves on the board of trustees of Arthur W. Page Society (New York), an elite community of world's leading communicators. Known for her engaging content, she teaches university and executive education programmes in Finland, Norway and Germany, and consults organizations across sectors on meeting the new expectations of digital stakeholders. In Finland, she chairs the social science division of MATINE under the Ministry of Defense, and studies the hijacking of authority communication. She leads several research projects: AIDEMOC funded by Finnish Research Council’s Strategic Research Funding focuses on misinformation and the malicious use of AI to harm democracy, and HIJACK focuses on hijacking authority communication online.