Organising Committee

The Conference Programme Committee is composed of distinguished academics who are experts in their fields. Conference Programme Committee members may also be members of IAFOR's International Academic Board. The Organising Committee is responsible for nominating and vetting Keynote and Featured Speakers; developing the conference programme, including special workshops, panels, targeted sessions, and so forth; event outreach and promotion; recommending and attracting future Conference Programme Committee members; working with IAFOR to select PhD students and early career academics for IAFOR-funded grants and scholarships; and overseeing the reviewing of abstracts submitted to the conference.



  • Anne Boddington
    Anne Boddington
    Kingston University, UK
  • Joseph Haldane
    Joseph Haldane
    The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan
  • Tom Houghton
    Tom Houghton
    Curtin University, Australia
  • Kwame Akyeampong
    Kwame Akyeampong
    University of Sussex, UK
  • Ljiljana Markovic
    Ljiljana Markovic
    University of Belgrade, Serbia
  • Eddie Bruce-Jones
    Eddie Bruce-Jones
    Birkbeck College School of Law, University of London, UK
  • James W. McNally
    James W. McNally
    University of Michigan, USA & NACDA Program on Aging
  • Evangelia Chrysikou
    Evangelia Chrysikou
    University College London, UK

Previous Organising Committees

View details of organising committees at past ECSS conferences via the links below.

Anne Boddington
Kingston University, UK

Biography

Anne Boddington is Professor of Design Innovation, Pro Vice Chancellor for Research, Business and Innovation at Kingston University in the UK and recently appointed as the Sub Panel Chair for Art & Design: History, Practice & Theory for the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021. Professor Boddington has extensive experience of the leadership, management and evaluation of art and design education and art and design research in higher education across the UK and internationally. She is an experienced chair and has held trustee and governance roles across the creative and cultural sector including as trustee of the Design Council, an independent Governor, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), an affiliate member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), a member of the executive of the Council for Higher Education in Art & Design (CHEAD) and a member of the advisory board of the Arts & Humanities Research Council. She has an international reputation in creative education and research and has been a partner, a collaborator, a reviewer and evaluator for a wide range of international projects and reviews across Dofferemt nations in Europe, the Middle East, Southern and east Asia and North America.

Plenary Panel Presentation (2017) | Sustaining the City
Joseph Haldane
The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan

Biography

Joseph Haldane is the Chairman and CEO of IAFOR. He is responsible for devising strategy, setting policies, forging institutional partnerships, implementing projects, and overseeing the organisation’s business and academic operations, including research, publications and events.

Dr Haldane holds a PhD from the University of London in 19th-century French Studies, and has had full-time faculty positions at the University of Paris XII Paris-Est Créteil (France), Sciences Po Paris (France), and Nagoya University of Commerce and Business (Japan), as well as visiting positions at the French Press Institute in the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas (France), The School of Journalism at Sciences Po Paris (France), and the School of Journalism at Moscow State University (Russia).

Dr Haldane’s current research concentrates on post-war and contemporary politics and international affairs, and since 2015 he has been a Guest Professor at The Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP) at Osaka University, where he teaches on the postgraduate Global Governance Course, and Co-Director of the OSIPP-IAFOR Research Centre, an interdisciplinary think tank situated within Osaka University.

He is also a Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Philology at the University of Belgrade, a Member of the International Advisory Council of the Department of Educational Foundations at the College of Education of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and a Member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network for Global Governance.

From 2012 to 2014, Dr Haldane served as Treasurer of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (Chubu Region) and he is currently a Trustee of the HOPE International Development Agency (Japan). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society in 2012, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2015.

A black belt in judo, he is married with two children, and lives in Japan.

Tom Houghton
Curtin University, Australia

Biography

Dr Tom Houghton is Director of the MBA (Oil & Gas) at Curtin Graduate School of Business, Australia, and was previously a Research Fellow at the University of Strathclyde, UK. His principal field of research is sustainable energy economics and he has a keen interest in energy for development, having established a training program in Renewable Energy for Developing Countries with UNITAR. Dr Houghton is a Visiting Professor at Nagoya University of Commerce and Business, Japan, where he provides courses in sustainable energy to MBA students. Before joining Strathclyde he spent more than five years in the power industry and a further eight in the banking sector, latterly as director at the Japanese bank Nomura. With colleagues in Asia and the United States, he established a consulting company in the renewable energy sector in 2011. Dr Houghton holds an MEng from Imperial College, an MBA from London Business School and a PhD from the University of Strathclyde.

Featured Presentation (2019) | Ensuring Equality from the “Low Carbon Dividend”

Previous Presentations

Keynote Presentation (2018) | Innovation for Low Carbon Energy: Are Power Utilities Ready?
Kwame Akyeampong
University of Sussex, UK

Biography

Kwame Akyeampong is Professor of International Education and Development at the Centre for International Education (CIE), University of Sussex, UK. He has international research experience in educational evaluation and research and has worked on education and development research projects in a range of countries including Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda and Malawi. His research interests include education policy analysis, teacher governance, educational access and equity, impact evaluation studies in education, and employing quantitative and qualitative research methods. He also has experience managing large research education projects. He has consulted for the World Bank, DFID, and JICA on education evaluation projects and programmes. He was senior policy analyst with UNESCO, Paris, from 2011 to 2013. He is currently the co-chair of the Teacher Alliance for the Global Education and Skills Forum.


Previous IAFOR Presentations

Plenary Panel II (ECE2017) | Education for Change: Addressing the Challenges of UN Sustainable Development Goal 4
Ljiljana Markovic
University of Belgrade, Serbia

Biography

Dr Ljiljana Markovic is Dean, Chairperson of the Doctoral Studies Program and Full Professor in Japanese Studies at the University of Belgrade, Serbia. She has previously served as Vice Dean for Financial Affairs, Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade (2008-2016). She holds the positions of Chairperson of the Association of Japanologists of Serbia, Member of the University of Belgrade Council, Chairperson of the University of Belgrade SYLFF Committee, Member of the Republic of Serbia, Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Bilingual Education Board, and Member of the Republic of Serbia, Ministry of Culture, Committee on Books Procurement for Public Libraries. In 2010 she received the Gaimu Daijin Sho Award from the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Japan, and in 2011 she received the Dositej Obradovic Award for Pedagogical Achievement. She is the author of a large number of publications in the fields of Japanese studies and economics.

Eddie Bruce-Jones
Birkbeck College School of Law, University of London, UK

Biography

Eddie Bruce-Jones (DPhil, Berlin; LLM, KCL; JD, Columbia; MA, Berlin; AB, Harvard) is Deputy Dean at Birkbeck College School of Law, University of London, where he teaches and researches in the areas of human rights, European law, legal theory, equality law and legal anthropology. He is author of Race in the Shadow of Law: State Violence in Contemporary Europe (Routledge, 2016), and co-author of the forthcoming Anti-Discrimination Law: Texts, Cases and Materials, 3rd Edition (with Aileen McColgan, Hart, 2019). His scholarly writing can be found in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, Race & Class and the UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs. He currently serves as Assistant Director of Birkbeck’s Centre for Critical European Law and is a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History, in Frankfurt, Germany, for his ongoing research on the British colonial indenture system. He is a member of the New York Bar and an Associate Academic Fellow of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple. He serves on the Board of Governors of Birkbeck College, the Editorial Board of the Journal of Asylum, Immigration and Nationality Law, the Board of Trustees of the UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group and the Board of Directors of the Institute of Race Relations.

Keynote Presentation (2018) | Contemporary Continuities: Racism, Populism and Migration
James W. McNally
University of Michigan, USA & NACDA Program on Aging

Biography

Dr James W. McNally is the Director of the NACDA Program on Aging, a data archive containing over 1,500 studies related to health and the aging lifecourse. He currently does methodological research on the improvement and enhancement of secondary research data and has been cited as an expert authority on data imputation. Dr McNally has directed the NACDA Program on Aging since 1998 and has seen the archive significantly increase its holdings with a growing collection of seminal studies on the aging lifecourse, health, retirement and international aspects of aging. He has spent much of his career addressing methodological issues with a specific focus on specialized application of incomplete or deficient data and the enhancement of secondary data for research applications. Dr McNally has also worked extensively on issues related to international aging and changing perspectives on the role of family support in the later stages of the aging lifecourse.

Evangelia Chrysikou
University College London, UK

Biography

Dr Evangelia Chrysikou is registered architect and senior research fellow at UCL. She owns the awarded SynThesis Architects (London – Athens), that specialises in medical facilities. Her work received prestigious awards (Singapore 2009, Kuala Lumpur 2012, Brisbane 2013, Birmingham 2014, London 2014). Parallel activities include teaching at medical and architectural schools, research (UK, France, Belgium, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Greece and the Middle East) and advisory. She advised the Hellenic Secretary of Health and is the author of the new national guidelines for mental health facilities. Dr Chrysikou is the author of the book ‘Architecture for Psychiatric Environments and Therapeutic Spaces’, healthcare architecture editor, reviewer, active member of several professional and scientific associations and a TED-MED speaker. She is a Trustee, Member of the Board and Director of Research at DIMHN (UK) and Member of the Board at the Scholar’s Association Onassis Foundation.

Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | East Meets West – Healthy, Active and Beautiful Aging in Europe