Alexander Libman | Freie Universität Berlin

Alexander Libman is Professor of Russian and East European Politics at the Freie Universität Berlin. His main research topics are located at the boundary of economics and political science and include Russian domestic and international politics, economic and political development of Russian regions, as well as cooperation of authoritarian states in Eurasia. Before joining the FU, Alexander held positions at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik and Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He obtained his PhD degree from the University of Mannheim.

Veronika Movchan | Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting (IER), Kyiv, Ukraine

Veronika Movchan is a Research Director at the Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting (IER), the think tank in Kyiv, Ukraine. Her research focuses on trade policy, including WTO and EU-related issues, regional integration and free trade agreements, non-tariff measures, and policy modelling, particularly with computable general equilibrium models. Over the last decade, she worked on Eastern Partnership countries' European integration, centring on Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. She has been a team leader/trade expert on many international projects in Eastern Europe, South Caucasus and Central Asia. She is an associated consultant at Berlin Economics GmbH, Germany, and a member of the IAMO's Scientific Advisory Board and Editorial Boards of Economic System and VoxUkraine. 

Thomas Hertel | Purdue University, USA

Thomas Hertel is Distinguished Professor of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University. Prof. Hertel’s research and teaching focuses on international trade, food and environmental security. He is a 2022 recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize and is a Fellow, and a Past-President, of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA), Fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and Honorary Life Member of the International Association of Agricultural Economists. He is also the founder and Executive Director of the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) which now encompasses more than 26,000 researchers in 179 countries around the world.

Andrea Zimmermann | Markets and Trade Division, FAO, Italy

Andrea Zimmermann is an economist in the Markets and Trade Division of FAO in Rome. Her current work focuses on global and regional analysis related to trade and sustainable development. She has also worked on global cash crop markets and trade and agricultural policy impacts on farmers and markets. Before joining FAO in 2017, she worked as a researcher in quantitative agricultural sector analysis related to food security and nutrition, climate change and farm structure dynamics at the Institute for Food and Resource Economics of the University of Bonn, Germany and Wageningen Economic Research, the Netherlands. She holds a PhD and an MSc in Agricultural Economics from the University of Bonn.

Thomas Glauben | Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO), Germany

Thomas Glauben is a Director of IAMO and Head of the Department Agricultural Markets. He is also a full professor at the Faculty of Natural Science III and a co-opted professor at the Law and Economics Faculty of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. From 2013 to 2015 he has been a member of the Presidium of the Leibniz Association. Currently, he is a member of the boards of various journals and trade publishers. Since 2007 he has been an associate member of the REAP Center of Stanford University, USA. Thomas Glauben studied agricultural sciences at Kiel University, where he obtained his doctorate and habilitated.

Reint E. Gropp | Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH), Germany

Reint E. Gropp has been the President of IWH and Full Professor of Economics at the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg since 2014. He is Associate Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and serves as consultant for various central banks. In 2021, Reint E. Gropp was elected Speaker of the section B institutes of the Leibniz Association. Reint E. Gropp studied economics at the universities of Freiburg and Wisconsin-Madison, where he obtained a PhD in 1994. Prior to his appointment at the IWH, he held the endowed Chair for Sustainable Banking and Finance at Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main and worked for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as well as the European Central Bank (ECB), where he was Deputy Head of the Financial Research Division.

Ingo Pies | Professor of Business Ethics, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany

Ingo Pies is Professor of Business Ethics at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. He has published widely in top disciplinary journals including Business Ethics Quarterly, Journal of Business Ethics, Business and Society, Voluntas, Business Strategy and the Environment and Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Unternehmensethik. Under the title "Ordonomics", Ingo Pies explores how societies can use competitive processes as an instrument to promote cooperation and how companies can use moral commitments as a factor of production. His current interest is focused on “public discourse failures” and the “moral paradox of modernity” caused by a mismatch between moral sentiments and modern ways of implementing moral progress via counter-intuitive but highly functional incentive structures.

Johannes Varwick | Professor of International Relations and European Politics, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany

Johannes Varwick has been Professor of International Relations and European Politics at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg since 2013. Before that, he has been a Professor of Political Science at the Universities of Erlangen-Nuremberg and Kiel; the Theodor Heuss Visiting Professor at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, Mexico City; a Research fellow at the University of the Federal Armed Forces, and the German Council on Foreign Relations, Berlin. He is a member of the Presidium of the German Association for the United Nations and co-editor of the journal POLITIKUM, from 2010 to 2020 he was a member of the UN Political Advisory Council at the Federal Foreign Office, until 2022 the President of the Society for Security Policy. His main research topics are international security, multilateralism, international organizations and strategic issues.

Special Guest:

Rudolf Georg Adam | Former President of the Federal Academy for Security Policy and former Vice President of BND, Germany

Dr. Rudolf Adam worked for almost 40 years in the Foreign Office and in posts in China, Russia and Great Britain. He was speechwriter for President von Weizsäcker, Vice President of the BND and President of the Federal Academy for Security Policy. Dr. Adam has published extensively (books on Brexit, articles in NZZ, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Cicero, FAZ and various magazines). He is particularly interested in issues of global security and global governance.

Ekaterina Krivonos | Investment Centre, FAO, Italy

Ekaterina Krivonos is the Chief for Latin America and the Caribbean Service at the FAO Investment Centre. She is an agricultural economist with over 20 years of experience in research, technical advisory and policy dialogue on agrifood trade, commodity markets and agricultural investment. At FAO, she also led the work of the Trade Team in the Markets and Trade Division and trade policy work in the Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean. Her work experience includes conducting research on trade and agriculture at the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the UN Regional Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Ekaterina holds M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of Maryland.

Erik Livny | European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Georgia

Eric Livny joined the EBRD in September 2019. In his current role as Lead Economist for Central Asia and Mongolia, he covers economic developments in the region and advising senior management on the Bank’s country strategies. Previously, he has lived and worked in Georgia, establishing and leading the Tbilisi-based International School of Economics and the affiliated ISET Policy institute. There he conducted economic policy research and consulted the Georgian government, international organizations and business associations. In 2015-2017, he advised Georgia’s ministers of Economic and Sustainable Development Dimitri Kumsishvili and Giorgi Gakharia. From 2012-2019, he chaired the Economic Commission of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC-Georgia) and represented ICC on Georgia’s Foreign Investor Council.

Vlade Zaric | University of Belgrade, Serbia

Vlade Zaric is a full professor at the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Agriculture and Head of Chair of Finance and Business Operations. He teaches undergraduate, graduate, MBA and doctoral studies. His research interests include trade, marketing and business operations in the agro-food industry, with a special focus on micro, small and medium businesses and knowledge transfer activities. Furthermore, he is the director of the AgroNET - Center for Education and Research, a voluntary, non-governmental and non-profit organisation which brings together experts of various professions and profiles, striving to ensure top-quality applied and development research and education for food value chain members. 

Jing Zhu | Nanjing Agricultural University (NAU), China

Jing Zhu is Chair Professor of Nanjing Agricultural University (NAU), and Cheung Kong Chair Professor, Distinguished Professor by the Ministry of Education of China. She is a Chairperson of the Agricultural and Forestry Economics and Management Disciplinary Appraisal Committee of the State Council Academic Commission of China, vice-chairperson of the Advisory Committee for the Agricultural and Forestry Economics and Management Disciplinary of Higher Education of the Ministry of Education of China, member of the Expertise Advisory Committee for the trade promotion center of the Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Affairs of China (MARA), member of the Academic Committee for the Agricultural Economics Research Center of MARA, and member of the Board of Trustees of ILRI, CGIAR.  

Prof. Zhu obtained her Ph.D in NAU before joined International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) of the CGIAR as a post-doctoral research fellow, with Research areas in agricultural economic management, agricultural trade, especially food security policy studies. She is a widely published author and recipient of awards for research achievements, and is currently undertaking a series of key research projects from authoritative national research foundations as well as government agencies.

Cornelia Berns | Head of the Directorate for International Cooperation and World Food Affairs at the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL), Germany

Cornelia Berns has been in charge of the Directorate for International Cooperation and World Food Affairs at BMEL since February 2020. Previously, she had been in charge of the Directorate for the Land Market, Export, and Trade Promotion, and the Staff Unit 05 for Export Coordination. As the head of the division for international trade policy, she was able to gain significant experience in international matters since 2011. Throughout her career, she has dealt with various issues related to plant production, such as breeding research and organic farming, as well as environmental issues. She has also worked on the dialogue between the agricultural sector and society as well as the development of the Common Agricultural Policy. Moreover, she has considerable experience in the field of trade policy. From 1995 to 1998 Cornelia Berns served as agricultural attaché at the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Beijing.

Per Brodersen | German Agribusiness Alliance (GAA), Germany

Per Brodersen is the Director of the German Agribusiness Alliance (GAA) at The German Eastern Business Association in Berlin. Holding a Ph.D. in Eastern European History, Brodersen has been working for numerous internationally active organisations – including Humboldt Foundation in Bonn, the Max Planck Society in Munich and Berlin, and, as the Advisor to the Executive Board, at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), before joining GAA in 2015.

Lena Kuhn | Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO), Germany

Dr. Lena Kuhn is a senior researcher at IAMO with a research focus is on sustainable rural development and agricultural transformation. Specially, she works on climate risk management and innovation adoption for dealing with global challenges like resource scarcity and climate change in China and Central Asia. Since 2021, she is coordinating the research project DITAC on the digitalization of China’s agriculture. Further, she is one of the coordinators of IAMO’s China Research Group.

Jens-Peter Loy | Professor and Director in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Kiel University, Germany

Jens-Peter Loy is Professor and Director in the Department of Agricultural Economics at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Germany. He has published in high ranked journals, including the European Review of Agricultural Economics, Journal of Agricultural Economics, Economics Letters, Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organization, China Economic Review, and European Journal of Marketing. He is current President of the German Association of Agricultural Economists (GEWISOLA) and serves on several editorial boards. His current research focuses on futures markets, grain marketing and food retail pricing.

Etel Solingen | University of California Irvine, USA

Etel Solingen is Distinguished Professor and Tierney Chair in Peace and Conflict at the University of California Irvine. She was president of the International Studies Association, Susan Strange Professor at the London School of Economics, Richard Holbrooke Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, and president of ISA’s International Political Economy Section. She received the William and Katherine Estes Award from the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Political Science Association’s Woodrow Wilson Best Book Award, a MacArthur Foundation Peace and International Cooperation award, and the Distinguished Scholar award in international security.

Sergiy Zorya | Lead Agriculture Economist, World Bank, Europe and Central Asia Region

Sergiy Zorya is a Lead Agricultural Economist of the World Bank, based in Vienna, Austria. In his current position he leads agricultural policy and investment dialogue in Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Sergiy joined the World Bank in 2005 as a Young Professional and since then worked in Africa, East Asia & Pacific, and Europe & Central Asia regions. He also worked in the global engagement unit of the Agriculture and Food Global Practice. Sergiy holds the master’s degree in Agricultural Economics from the Agricultural University of Zhytomyr, Ukraine, and Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from Georg-August University of Göttingen, Germany.