Niall O’higgins

Niall O’higgins is a Senior Economist in the ILO’s Employment Analysis Unit and Professor of Economics at the University of Salerno. Niall holds degrees from Trinity College Dublin, York, and Sheffield Universities and a Ph.D. from the European University Institute in Florence. He is one of the main authors of the ILO’s biennial Global Employment Trends for Youth. Amongst his other recent publications are an edited volume on, Internships, Employability and the Search for Decent Work Experience, a book on youth employment policy entitled Rising to the youth employment challenge: New evidence on key policy issues, and articles in the European Economic Review, the Cambridge Journal of Economics, the Journal of Institutional Economics and the B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy.

Thomas Blondeel

Thomas Blondeel graduated as a social worker and accountant and later he was trained on business models in impact-driven economics and cooperative entrepreneurship. Thomas has the privilege of being able to combine wonderful family life with music and a committed professional career, where he became passionate about cooperative entrepreneurship as a key element in the economic transition. There is one constant drive in his studies and work: to contribute to a just and tolerant society. At SmartCoop, Thomas has worked since 2009 in different roles – as an employee, shareholder and member of the board of directors – on improved conditions for freelancers to work in. He focused on business support, embedding the structure in a network and more recently measuring the economic and social impact of our company. In addition to Smart, Thomas has also been spreading the cooperative values in a broader Flemish context as a member of the board of Coopkracht since 2020.

Martin Risak

Martin Gruber-Risak is Associate Professor at the Department of Labour Law and Law of Social Security at the University of Vienna (Austria). He holds a law degree as well as a PhD in Law from the University of Vienna. In 2007 Prof. Risak was awarded the venia docendi in labour law and law of social security. 2016 – 2020 he was the chairman of Senate II of the Austrian Equal Treatment Commission, 1999 – 2000 he was an associate with the international law firm CMS Reich-Rohrwig Hainz, 2008 – 2009 Professor of Labour Law and Civil Law at the University of Passau (Germany) and 2010 – 2012 Marie Curie-Fellow at the University of Otago (New Zealand). Prof. Risak is the national expert for Austria of the European Centre of Expertise (‘ECE’) in the field of labour law, employment and labour market policies that advises the European Commission and has published 25 Books, about 170 articles and book chapters on Austrian and European Labour Law and Social Security, Industrial Relations and Alternative Dispute Resolution.

Alex J. Wood

Alex J. Wood is an economic sociologist at the University of Bristol and lectures on the Future of Work. He is also a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute. His most recent research investigates worker voice, organisation and collective action in the gig economy and how digital technology shapes workplace regimes. His publications include the book Despotism on Demand (Cornell University Press, 2020) and articles for leading academic journals such as Sociology, Work, Employment and Society, Human Relations and Socio-Economic Review. He is PI of the British Academy funded ‘Gig Rights Project’.  

Radan Kanev

Radan Kanev was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1975. He graduated from a French language high school in Sofia and obtained a Master’s Degree in law at Sofia University. Since 2002, he has worked as a self-employed lawyer in Sofia, a partner and managing partner at several law firms, a trade mark representative for the Bulgarian patent office and the EUIPO. Radan married in 2006 and has one son. Radan Kanev started his political career as one of the founders of Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria (DSB), and became actively involved in politics from 2007 when he was elected member of the Sofia board of the DSB. He became a member of the national election HQ of the party in 2007, member of the national board in 2009, Vice-President in 2011 and President of the party in 2013. After resigning the leadership in 2017, he is again Vice-President of the DSB. In 2014, Radan Kanev was elected Member of the National Assembly (national parliament) of Bulgaria, co-chairing the parliamentary group of the coalition Reformist bloc, and served as Vice-Chairman of the standing committee for labour, demography and social policy. In 2019, he was elected to the European Parliament as a representative of the recently-founded ‘Democratic Bulgaria’ coalition. Besides his political and professional activities, Radan has always been a civil activist in various fields of civil rights, environment and urban environment protection. Before starting his political career, he was a Red Cross activist and volunteer, trainer in health promotion and social assistance programmes, member of the Red Cross youth board and President of the Red Cross youth organisation in Bulgaria. MEP since 2019.

Matthew Cole

Matthew Cole is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Fairwork Foundation and UK project lead. His current research explores how technological change, specifically platformisation, datafication and AI systems intersect with problems of unpaid labour and wage theft. He is also keen on developing policy responses to emerging problems at the national and supranational scale. He has been published in various academic journals as well as the Independent, Novara, Tribune, Open Democracy, and Vice, among others.

Dragos Adascalitei

Dragoș Adăscăliței is a research officer in the Employment unit at Eurofound. His current research focuses on topics related to the future of work, including the impact of artificial intelligence on jobs, the consequences of automation for employment and regulatory issues surrounding the platform economy. He is also a regular contributor to comparative projects monitoring structural changes in European labour markets. Prior to joining Eurofound, he was a lecturer in Employment Relations at the University of Sheffield, Management School. He holds an MA in Political Science from Central European University and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Mannheim.