Collaborating with the European Union under a New Context

Prof. Louis Patrick Leroux is a Professor and Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, Faculty of Arts and Science at Concordia University, Montreal.

He is the Founding Director of the Montreal Working Group on Circus Research and is a regular international speaker. He has been a Visiting Scholar or Professor at Duke University, Charles University in Prague, Centre national des arts du cirque in France, and the University of Chile.

He has published in French, English and Spanish translation on theatre, research-creation, and contemporary circus. He teaches an annual international graduate summer seminar in circus studies at Concordia University that attracts 25 students from a dozen countries.

He was awarded both national prizes for academic writing on the theatre and performing arts, the Prix-Jean-Cléo-Godin for best article in French and the Richard-Plant Award for best article in English.

Recent academic titles include: Contemporary Circus, co-authored with Katie Lavers and Jon Burtt (Routledge, 2019), Cirque Global: Québec’s Expanding Circus Boundaries, with Charles Batson (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2016); Le jeu des positions. Discours du théâtre québécois, with Hervé Guay (Nota Bene, 2014).

In 2017, on the strength of having developed contemporary circus studies as an emerging field, he was elected to the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.

Luigi Scarpa de Masellis joined the Delegation of the European Union to Canada in September 2005. As Advisor in the Economic and Commercial Affairs Section, he is responsible for contributing to the fulfilment of the Delegation’s mandate as regards EU-Canada cooperation, notably in the fields of science, technology and innovation; climate change; energy; environment; and transport. Mr. Scarpa de Masellis previously held the position of Researcher, Development Cooperation, at The North South-Institute.

Dominique Bérubé was appointed Vice-president, Research Programs, at SSHRC in October 2015. She assumed the new role as SSHRC’s Vice-president, Research, in November 2019, following a significant expansion of SSHRC’s mandate and launch of new programs. In her expanded role, Dominique is responsible for developing the long-term vision and future direction of SSHRC funding programs to respond to the current fast-evolving and complex research environment, the expansion of Tri-Council programs within the Tri-agency Institutional Programs Secretariat (TIPS), and changes in federal priorities, including the development and delivery of Indigenous research programs. Prior to joining SSHRC, Dominique worked in various positions at the Université de Montréal, including Acting Vice-rector, Research. She has played a key role in developing and directing Érudit, the digital gateway to French-language publications in the humanities and social sciences in North America. Dominique holds a doctorate in environmental sciences from the Université du Québec à Montréal.

Frédéric Mérand (Ph.D. Berkeley) est professeur de science politique et directeur scientifique du Centre d’études et de recherches internationales de l'Université de Montréal. Il est spécialiste de politique européenne et de sociologie des relations internationales. Ancien conseiller de politique étrangère, il a été professeur invité à Sciences Po Paris et aux universités de Toronto, Strasbourg, Toulouse, Lille et Guido Carli de Rome. Ses recherches actuelles portent sur les relations entre l'Europe et la Russie, la politisation de l'Union européenne et le déclin des grandes puissances.

Antoine Rayroux works as consultant in international affairs, with expertise in Canada-Europe relations. He is currently involved in two EU-funded projects that address the policy dialogue with Canada - covering both trade agreement (CETA) and strategic partnership agreement (SPA). Prior to that, he was a lecturer at the Department of Political Science at Concordia University. He holds a PhD in Political Science form the Université de Montréal and the Université libre de Bruxelles, and is also a guest researcher at CÉRIUM, the Montréal Centre for International Studies

Lissa Matyas is the Vice-President of International Partnerships at Mitacs. Funded by the federal and provincial governments of Canada, industry and universities, Mitacs’ mandate is to build domestic and international partnerships that support industrial and social innovation in Canada. Lissa has twenty years of experience spanning international R&D partnership development, graduate program development, graduate student training, university strategic planning, stakeholder relationship management and marketing. She comes to Mitacs from McGill University where she held the position of Director of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies and prior to this, Director of Graduate Enrolment Management. Prior to joining McGill University, she was at Concordia University for ten years. At Concordia she managed the university’s strategic planning exercise in the Office of the President, held the positions of Director of Graduate Student Recruitment for the John Molson School of Business and Associate Director of the John Molson MBA Program, as well as Director of Alumni Relations at Concordia University. Lissa holds a Greenbelt in Lean Six Sigma from Fujitsu Canada, as well as a Master of Science in Administration degree with a concentration in Marketing and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, both from Concordia University. Lissa sat on the Board of Directors for the Canadian Association of Graduate Studies and is a member of several other professional associations.

Graduated in International Studies from the Université de Montréal, Mr. Jason Naud accumulates more than ten years in the Government of Quebec. He has acted as an international affairs advisor in various ministries responsible for education, immigration and science and technology. He led, among other things, the research and science component of the Prime Minister's official visit to China (2014), Mexico (2015) and France (2018).

Currently, Mr. Naud, as Coordinator, specializes in research and technology cooperation between Québec and European Union within the Canadian and International Partnerships Division of the Ministère de l’Économie et de l’Innovation (Gouvernement du Québec). He has been working for many years on developing relations between Quebec and Europe, Asia and Latin America.

As of January 2020, Mr. Naud will be the Director of the Québec government Office in São Paulo.

Agnieszka Weinar is an Adjunct Research Professor at the Institute of European Union and Russian Studies at Carleton University and a Team Leader of the EU-Canada Policy Dialogues in Ottawa. Between 2011 and 2014, she was a Scientific Coordinator at the European University Institute (EUI). In 2014, she was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Outgoing Fellowship for Experienced Researchers at the EUI and Carleton University. Her current research interests address EU-Canada relations and North-North mobility systems. Since 2017, Agnieszka has been involved with the evaluations of the MSC proposals, and since January 2019 she has acted as the Chair of Marie Curie Alumni Association- North American Chapter.

Dr. Effrosyni Diamantoudi earned her Ph.D. in economics from McGill University in 2000. From 2000 to 2003 Professor Diamantoudi worked as an Assistant Professor at the University of Aarhus in Aarhus, Denmark. In 2003 she joined the Department of Economics at Concordia University as an Assistant Professor, she got tenured in 2006 and was promoted to Full Professor by 2015. Her teaching and research interests include game theory and coalition theory in particular, and its applications to environmental economics and industrial organization. Dr. Diamantoudi has published several papers in top ranking international journals and has presented her work in numerous international conferences. She collaborates with leading scholars in Europe and US. She has been the principal investigator of a major FQRSC team grant for 8 years among other grants from SSHRC and other funding agencies. Recently, she was awarded a very prestigious Marie Curie fellowship to fund her research project on International Environmental Agreements. It is worth noting that Dr. Diamantoudi has supervised 28 graduate students to date. Finally Dr. Diamantoudi has been serving as Associate Dean of Recruitment and Awards at the School of Graduate Studies for the last two years.

Dr. Hanrahan received his PhD from the UBC and completed post-doctoral studies at Yale Univ. Sch. Medicine from 1982-1985 supported by fellowships from NSERC/NATO and the Medical Research Council of Canada. At Yale he carried out noise analysis and patch clamp studies of anion channels in the rabbit urinary bladder epithelium. In 1986 he was recruited to the Department of Physiology at McGill where he was supported as an FRQS Chercheur Boursier, and by MRC Scholar, Scientist and Senior Scientist awards. He is currently professor of Physiology, founding director of the Cystic Fibrosis Translational Research centre (CFTRc), and associate member of the Meakins-Christie Lab. and RI-MUHC. While at McGill Dr. Hanrahan helped to identify the anion channel that is defective in cystic fibrosis and establish that the defective gene product is that channel. He is co-founder of Traffick Therapeutics, a Montreal-based spin-off company. He recently completed an E-rare collaboration (INSTINCT) with groups in Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal and Canada and is currently a scientific advisory board member for a Strategic Research Centre of the UK CF Trust, which includes researchers in the UK, Germany, Portugal and The Netherlands.

Viktoria Bodnarova is the Regional Representative for EURAXESS North America, responsible for Canada and the US, as of 2013. Her main role is to inform the community of researchers of all scientific domains and nationalities based in North America about the funding and career opportunities the European Research Area (ERA) offers (European, national or regional funding opportunities). Another important role is the management of the European Scientific Diasporas in North America initiative together with the EU Delegations and EU Member States & Associated Countries. Her latest personal passion project is the Joint European Mentoring Initiative (JEMI) of which she is a cofounding director leveraging her substantial transboundary personal network for a more comprehensive support platform for mobile researchers’ career development. Prior to her position in the US, she was a Project Manager and EURAXESS Network Coordinator at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. Born in Slovakia, Viktoria holds a Master of Arts degree in International Relations and European Studies from the Metropolitan University in Prague. She was an international student herself in the UK, France and Canada and speaks six languages.