Instructors
Gabriela Pleschová works at Comenius University in Bratislava where she coordinates the projects IMPACT and HOSUED. Her background is in Political Science, and in 2012 she earned a MSc. in Education (Higher Education) from Oxford University. Since 2004, she has been leading workshops and other development activities for university teachers. She founded the ECPR standing group Teaching and Learning Politics and is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Political Science Education. She is the co-editor of Teacher Development in Higher Education. Existing Programs, Program Impact and Future Trends which was published by Routledge in 2012 (with Eszter Simon). In 2019 she became a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (United Kingdom).
Mátyás Szabó is Senior Manager at Central European University’s Yehuda Elkana Center for Higher Education and former director of the university’s Curriculum Resource Center. Since 2001 he has regularly offered capacity building workshops for university professors and staff in more than 20 countries, and is involved in several international projects targeting curriculum reform, course design and faculty development in higher education. Matyas conducted higher education workshops for a number of organizations and projects, such as the Open Society Foundations’ Higher Education Support Program, the Civic Education Project, the Palestinian Faculty Development Program, as well as in a number of Tempus and Erasmus+ European projects. He received his MA from CEU’s Sociology department in 1994. In the area of teaching and learning, Matyas’ interests are student-centered learning, curriculum development and course design, and students’ assessment.
Eszter Simon works at Nottingham Trent University. She is interested in the role of trust in international relations, US foreign policy, Soviet-US relations, Hungarian politics and issues relating to the teaching and learning of politics. Her primary research focus is on the Moscow-Washington Hotline. Her articles appeared in Foreign Policy Analysis, The Journal of Global Security Studies, and The Journal of Transatlantic Studies. She is a co-editor of the Handbook on Teaching and Learning in Political Science and International Relations (2014), a member of the Steering Committee of ECPR’s Teaching and Learning Politics standing group and the Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Sylvia Walsarie Wolff had initially been trained as a mathematics teacher and worked as a trainer in the IT industry for several years. In 2001 she obtained her Master’s degree in Educational Science and Technology at the University of Twente. From 2001 until 2016 she worked at the Technical University Delft as educational designer, coordinator, project- and programme manager in several faculties and at Education and Student Affairs. In 2017 she started to build up the LDE Centre for Education and Learning (CEL) as Executive Manager. In CEL she is responsible for financial- and programme management, professional development portfolio and she’s involved in educational design.
Gina Wisker is a supervisor for doctoral students in the International Centre for HE Management, University of Bath. Previously, she worked as Professor of Higher Education and Contemporary Literature at Anglia Ruskin University and the University of Brighton and Head of the Centre for Learning and Teaching in both universities. She also taught online for the Open University, University of Liverpool (laureate) and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Her work is in HE learning, curriculum, teaching, postgraduate study supervision and academic writing, and in the discipline of Gothic, postcolonial and contemporary women’s writing. So far, Gina has published 26 books (some edited) and over 140 articles including The Postgraduate Research Handbook (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001, 2007); The Good Supervisor (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, 2012); Getting Published (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); The Undergraduate Research Handbook (2 nd ed, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Her commitment to supervision and teaching led in 2005 to winning a National Teaching Fellowship, followed by a Principal Fellowship of the HEA/Advance HE in 2013. Gina has chaired the Heads of Education Development Group, SEDA Scholarship and Research committee and she is Senior Fellow of SEDA and chief editor of SEDA journal Innovations in Education and Teaching International.
Agnes Simon is a political scientist who currently works as an Evaluation Research Team Leader in the Pedagogical Competence Development Centre (CERPEK) at Masaryk University. She specialises in US foreign policy, summit diplomacy, Central European politics, and teaching and learning political science. In the past four years, she has worked as an academic developer working including curriculum development and mentoring. She is particularly interested in blended and online education as well as using games, role playing and simulations for education purposes. She has taught academic writing in both the United States and Europe. Her articles appeared in the Journal of Global Security Studies, The Journal of Transatlantic Studies, and European Political Science. Her most recent publications include “Trusting through the Moscow-Washington Hotline: A Role Theoretical Explanation of the Hotline’s Contribution to Signal Interpretation and Crisis Stability” with Eszter Simon (2020) and “Teaching and learning about foreign policy decision-making via board-gaming and reflections” (2020). She has co-edited the book Early Career Academics’ Reflections on Learning to Teach in Central Europe (2018) with Gabriela Pleschová.
Jaroslav Varchola is a university teacher and researcher working at the Faculty of Medicine at Comenius University in Bratislava. He holds a PhD. from Biophysics. For one year he studied Philosophy of Science at Oxford University. His research focus was originally light-induced therapy for treating cancer, nowadays, he is partially working on human brain research and philosophy of artificial intelligence. He founded a programme for improving critical thinking skills of high school students, which still runs at five Slovak high schools. He also co-hosts a podcast on philosophy and science called Kvantum ideí, which is prepared in collaboration with SME daily.
Silviu Piros is a researcher in the field of Educational Development working at the Institute for European Studies in Brussels. He also teaches social and political sciences subject at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Silviu is a Steering Committee member of the Teaching and Learning Politics group of the ECPR.
Petr Sucháček is a university teacher with an M.A. in Education working at the Faculty of Arts and at the Faculty of Science at Masaryk University. The focus of his professional interests lays in teacher training. The main topics of his research are educational communication, classroom discourse and group dynamics. Petr contributed to the development and foundation of the Pedagogical Competence Development Centre at Masaryk University. In his free time, Petr enjoys doing occasional moderating gigs and works on promoting the Art of Nonviolent Communication to wider public.
Jitka Vidláková is a lecturer of education for adults and both lecturer and administrator at the Pedagogical Competence Development Centre at Masaryk University. She holds a Ph.D. in Education and has over five years of experience teaching in this area at universities with differing specializations. From the area of education, she is most interested in teaching preparation and questioning how to effectively engage students in teaching so that their active participation has a positive influence on their learning. Except this she likes working with texts and its structures, therefore the rest of her working time she works as a project manager and a copywriter of a new webpage for an important institution in the field of further education of pedagogical staff in the South Moravian Region.