Menno Bart
Menno Bart is a labour market expert, working as Head of Policy Advocacy at the Adecco Group. As such, he is responsible for managing the Group’s relationship with global and European policy makers, and for representing the Group in institutional settings. Menno’s areas of expertise include labour market flexibility and diverse forms of work, skills, labour mobility, and the impact of the digital and green “twin transitions” on the world of work.Menno holds mandates at the World Employment Confederation (WEC), the industry federation representing the HR services industry. These include member of the global Board, chair of the European Public Affairs Committee and member of the Executive Committee of WEC-Europe. In addition, Menno is closely involved with employment and social policy topics working via BusinessEurope, the International Organization of Employers, and Business at OECD. Menno acted as Co-Chair of the GFMD’s Government Round Table on Labour Migration, and was a business representative on the ISO Ad Hoc Group on Flexible Work in the Gig Economy.
Orsetta Causa
Orsetta Causa is senior economist at the OECD Economics Department, Deputy head of the Public Policy Analysis Division and head of the Labour market & Inequalities team. Her research interests and publications cover a number of areas, including labour market dynamics and transitions, jobs and incomes, inequality of opportunities and inequalities of outcomes, social mobility — with a strong emphasis on policy traction in terms of growth and distributional outcomes. Orsetta holds a PhD from the Paris School of Economics.
Sukti Dasgupta
Sukti Dasgupta is currently the Director of the ILO Work and Equality Department (WORKQUALITY), previously Chief, Employment and Labour Markets Branch in the ILO Office in Geneva. She has worked at the ILO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok and in the field offices in South Asia and East Asia. She holds a PhD degree in Economics from the University of Cambridge, UK. She has published widely in the areas of employment, poverty and gender. She has extensive experience in working with policymakers on employment and labour market policies.
Lisa Dorigatti
Lisa Dorigatti is an Associate Professor in Economic and Labour Sociology at the Department of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Milan. Her research interests lie in the area of comparative employment relations, with a specific focus on unions and precarious employment, outsourcing and working conditions, institutions, inequality and technological change. Her work has been published, among others, in the British Journal of Industrial Relations, European Journal of Industrial Relations, ILR Review, Work, Employment and Society.
Anja Eleveld
Anja Eleveld is a professor of social-legal studies in precarious work and poverty at the VU University. She had conducted empirical-legal research on the activation of social assistance recipients in the Netherlands and comparative legal research on activation regimes in Europe. In one of her latest articles she investigates whether mandatory work for social recipients can be meaningful work.
Marta Kahancová
Marta Kahancová is the co-founder and managing director of CELSI and an associate professor in public policy at Comenius University, Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia. Her research interests are in industrial relations, precarious and non-standard work, new forms of work and undeclared work, trade unions and collective bargaining and integration of persons with disabilities to the labour market. She has led many international research projects, actively participated in international conferences, seminars and collaborative work. She also serves as an expert for the European Commission and the European Labour Authority, supporting the European Centre of Expertise in Labour Markets and Employment Policies, and the European Platform for Tackling Undeclared Work. She has published in international peer-reviewed journals in Industrial Relations, Sociology and Human Resource Management. Prior to her current position, Marta was a visiting assistant professor at the Department of Political Science, Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, Hungary (2009-2010), a postdoctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany (2007-2008) and a lecturer at the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies of the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2007-2008). She earned her PhD in Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. Her dissertation ‘Making the Most of Diversity. Social Interaction and Employment Practices in a Multinational Firm’ studied why work practices of the same firm differ across Western and Eastern European subsidiaries, focusing on the social foundations of workplace employment practices. In 2009, this dissertation won the award Best dissertation in Sociology in the Netherlands in 2007-2008 by the Netherlands Sociology Association.
José Luis Gil y Gil
José Luis Gil y Gil is PhD (1991) and won the special award of PhD of the University of Alcalá and the prize for the best doctoral thesis of the Ministry of Labour and Social Security (1991-1992). Since September 2011, he is Professor of Labour Law at the University of Alcalá. He has done extended research stays at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano, the Université de Bordeaux, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and the Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main.
Miguel Martínez Lucio
Miguel Martínez Lucio is a full Professor at the University of Manchester (Alliance Manchester Business School and the Work & Equalities Institute). He has worked on a range of areas in terms of work and employment. Firstly, he has been concerned with the de-collectivisation and deregulation of employment relations and the role of management strategies in relation to these changes. Secondly, he has worked on how trade union and worker voice have developed in terms of new issues at work and new agendas (e.g. equality at work). Thirdly, he has an interest in the transformation of the state and the way it has been constrained and redefined in terms of its regulatory roles. Finally, he is interested in how new political agendas and political identity have developed as counterpoints to the economic and industrial changes we are facing at work and more broadly. He works mainly on comparative projects and research but the UK and Spain have been a key part of his interests, amongst others.
Cristobal Molina Navarrete
Ph.D. in Law from the University of Bologna (Italy), awarded in 1992. Full Professor of Labour and Social Security Law at the University of Jaén (Spain) since 2000. Labour arbitrator for SIMA (Interconfederal Mediation and Arbitration Service) and SERCLA (Extrajudicial System for the Resolution of Labour Conflicts in Andalusia). Director of the Laboratory-Observatory on Psychosocial Risks of the Andalusian Regional Government (IAPRL) since 2007. Scientific advisor to the Spanish Economic and Social Council from 2018 to 2021. Member of the European Social Dialogue Group on violence and harassment at work. Scientific advisor to the European Economic and Social Committee since 2022. He has been awarded five official research productivity evaluations (“sexenios”) for his academic output, which includes over 400 publications on topics related to his area of expertise. Several of his works have received recognition in prestigious legal competitions in Spain: for example, winner of the La Ley Prize for doctrinal articles in 2017; co-winner of the 5th Prize on Equality and Gender by the University of Castilla-La Mancha in 2023; and winner of the CEF Prize for doctrinal studies in Labour Law in 2024.
Ruth Paserman
Director, DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, European Commission An economist, Ruth Paserman joined the Commission in 1993. She has since worked in a number of services: Eurostat, DG Employment and Social Affairs, DG Competition, DG Enterprise and Industry. She was also member of cabinet of Vice-President Tajani, Vice-President Dombrovskis and deputy Head of Cabinet of Commissioner Thyssen. Since November 2020 she is Director for Funds Programming and Implementation in DG Employment, Social Affairs and inclusion.
She is responsible for the legislation, policy development and coordination of implementation of the funds managed by the DG (ESF+, EGF, Invest EU social window, Social Climate Fund), as well as for the social economy and better regulation. These funding instruments are the EU’s main instruments for investing in people, contributing to employment, social, education and skills policies, including structural reforms in these areas.
Aída Ponce Del Castillo
Aida Ponce Del Castillo is a lawyer by training. She obtained her European Doctorate in Law, focusing on the regulatory issues of human genetics, from the Universities of Valencia and Bonn. She also holds a Master’s degree in Bioethics. Within ETUI’s Foresight Unit, her research focuses on strategic foresight and on the legal, ethical, social and regulatory issues of emerging technologies. She is a member of the Competent Authorities Sub-Group to regulate nanomaterials at the European Commission. At the OECD she is member of the Working Party ‘Bio, -Nano and Convergent Technologies’ , and AI Governance. Previously, she was the Head of the ETUI Health and Safety Unit, working on occupational health and safety policies in the EU. She also was the Coordinator of the Workers’ Interest Group at the Advisory Committee of Safety and Health to the European Commission.
Luz Rodríguez
Luz Rodríguez is Professor of Labour Law at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain). She has been a Senior Specialist in Labour Market Institutions at the International Labour Organisation, where she prepared the report ‘Decent work in the platform economy’. She has authored over 200 publications, with her most recent publication being her book Labour Law and Decent Work in the Platform Economy, published by Routledge in 2025. She is currently leading a research project on digital rights in the workplace and is involved in GDPoweR, a European research project being carried out in five European Union countries.
Manfred Weiss
Born 1940 in Southern Germany. 1960 – 1964 legal education at the universities of Freiburg and Berlin. 1965 – 66 Research Fellow at the Center of Law and Society at the University of California in Berkeley. 1974 – 1977 Full Professor of Civil Law and Labor Law at the University of Hamburg and 1977 – 2008 at the Goethe University in Frankfurt. Since 2008 Professor emeritus. His main research topics have been German, European and international labor law. Visiting professor at many universities all over the world, in the USA particularly at the University of Florida, at the University of Pennsylvania, at the NYU (member of the Global Law Program) and at the University of Illinois. For many years consultant to the International Labor Organization (ILO) and to the European Union (EU).1990 – 1995 President of the German Association of Industrial Relations and 2000 – 2003 President of the International Industrial Relations Association (now renamed International Labor and Employment Research Association). He also served as German correspondent to the NAA. He holds several honorary doctorates and in 2015 the international Labor Law Research Network(LLRN) endowed him the prestigious Award for outstanding contribution to labor law. He is a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS).
Yiran Zhang
Yiran Zhang is Proskauer Assistant Professor of Employment and Labor Law at Cornell University Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) School and an Associate Faculty Member of the Cornell Law School. She studies how legal systems govern care work at the intersection of the often-informal labor market, the welfare state, and the economic household. Her current projects employs a socio-legal approach to examine public care programs and the employee classification of non-traditional laborers in the US. She also writes about care migration and social reproduction in China.
Yiran’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in UCLA Law Review, Boston University Law Review, Indiana Law Journal, Stanford Law & Policy Review, Cornell International Law Journal, Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, and Critical Sociology. She has received an S.J.D. and an LL.M. from Harvard Law School and an LL.B. from Tsinghua University.
Further keynote and plenary speakers will be confirmed and announced in the coming weeks.