Honorary Network Members

Wilfried Bos, Dr. phil., is Professor for Educational Research and Quality Assurance at TU Dortmund University. He is Director in the Center for Research on Education and School Development which he has headed as Managing Director from 2005 until 2014.

Wilfried Bos has steered Network 9 as Link Convenor from 2008 until 2017. Under his auspices the network developed considerably in size and structure. He fostered network cohesion, European collaboration and interdisciplinary exchange, ensured and nurtured the quality of research and debate, and initiated numerous opportunities for building research capacities at entry and advanced levels in Network 9 and beyond.

Ian Grosvenor is Professor and Head of the Department of Education and Social Justice at the School of Education, as well as Director of the Voices of War & Peace Centre at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of numerous articles and books on racism, education and identity, the visual and the material culture of education, and the history of urban education. He is Managing Editor of the journal Paedagogica Historica and a Fellow at the Royal Historical Society. He was Secretary General of EERA and a convenor of NW17. The community of historians of education highly appreciate his professional activities, which benefit of the discipline, as well as his creativity, open mind, and enthusiasm.

Frank Simon is Professor emeritus at the University of Ghent, Belgium and one of the most highly respected academics and experts in the field of the history of education. His current academic interests are devoted to the ‘New School’ movement, especially to the life of Ovide Decroly. Frank was among the creators of the NW17 at ECER, and he has edited several international journals and chaired international professional associations. Frank willingly shares his vast knowledge, supporting colleagues and educating young historians of education. As a respected scholar among international academics, he has made an invaluable contribution to the promotion of the history of education.

Prof. Samuel Gento is an educator who has contributed to educational systems around the world throughout his professional life. He was a Primary School Teacher, a Secondary School Teacher, an Inspector of Education, and continued on to university where he has been  Associate Professor, Tenure Professor, Full Professor and Emeritus Professor.

He is Doctor Honor Cause by the University of Latvia, founder and Honorary President of the ‘European Association of Leadership and Quality of Education’.

Along with his personal academic promotion, he focused on a variety of studies in education and pedagogy, and presented them at a various conferences, many at ECER, and published a wide variety of papers. He also supports new researchers and motivates them to participate in conferences.

Prof. Samuel Gento acted as link convenor for 9 years (from 2007 to 2015) and is still today active member of Nework 11 on ‘Educational Improvement and Quality Assurance’.

Network 3: Curriculum innovation gratefully provides the honorary network membership to Jan van den Akker. Jan is founder of the Curriculum Innovation network, which was established in 1994, and has served Network 3 in many ways for many years. Thanks to Jan’s inspiring and generous personality and proactive style of working, network 3 has gradually grown to become a robust network.

Johanna Lasonen has contributed to the founding process of VETNET. Since the beginning she worked as an active member in the VETNET Board and as a permanent reviewer of VETNET proposals since ECER 1997. She was the first VETNET programme chair for ECER 1999 in Lahti. She has been the pioneer in developing contacts between VETNET and UNESCO. During her work as a coordinator of EU-funded projects she has involved them in ECER symposia. Recently, she has supported the founding process of the International Journal for Research in Vocational Education and Training (IJRVET) and she is an active member of the Editorial Board of the IJRVET.

For the past 20 years, Dr Linda Hargreaves, Reader Emerita in Classroom Learning and Pedagogy, Cambridge University Faculty of Education, and Rune Kvalsund, Professor of Education, Faculty of Social Science and History, Volda University College, have devoted themselves to starting, developing and consolidating NW14, a network of scholars in Europe committed to rural schools, communities, families and those populations out of the mainstream. As founders of NW14, they have both been involved in the network as lead convenors, co-convenors, reviewers and presenters in all the conferences (with the exception of just one each) since 1995 and 1996, respectively.

Their contributions to NW14 have been essential all these years for the development and consolidation of the network. They have worked tirelessly to engage researchers from diverse countries and backgrounds making NW14 a multidisciplinary group of scholars. In particular, we would like to highlight their deep commitment to involving and collaborating with colleagues from different geographical areas in order to have a more dynamic and vibrant NW14, one that could reach more people (which, as it turned out, happened). They have engaged colleagues in the network from all the European spectrum (Cyprus, Czech Republic, Finland, Italy, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Spain, Switzerland, and UK).

Their work has been crucial to increasing the number of papers NW14 has received over the years as well as the outputs obtained in terms of publications and joint projects with other colleagues within the NW14, and they continue in these efforts to this day.

Building capacity within the NW14 is another crucial aspect for which Linda and Rune have always worked.  They have been extremely supportive of the young scholars and emerging researchers, such as Dr Joana Lucio and Dr Rocío García-Carrión, who owe an important part of their learning and achievements in academia to them both. As young scholars, both have been always supported by Linda and Rune to take the responsibility of being Link Convenor counting always on their help for the betterment of the NW14.

Linda and Rune have given such an invaluable contribution to the NW14 along with their outstanding scientific careers - NW14 has benefitted enormously from having them with such great commitment for 20 years. Their contributions have been significant in their countries and relevant for many educational researchers in Europe. Linda Hargreaves is one of the leading scholars in the study of classroom interaction, groupwork, transfer, educational provision in rural schools and teacher status, using classroom observation where appropriate. Rune Kvalsund has led the longitudinal and cross-sectional research in rural schools and their communities in Norway, focusing on different arenas of informal social learning in schools and children’s home environment. He has also done research on life course transitions of young persons with special educational needs and traced consequences of schooling into their adult life. Both have had their research published in highly respected international journals and their contributions to the research on rural schools have been internationally recognised in several publications and have been essential in advancing knowledge in the field.

Linda and Rune’s contributions have made Network 14 open for voices outside the main-stream of educational policy and research, not the least by arguing for improvements in the quality of research design, for example, through comparative and longitudinal studies, and how basic theoretical choices influence the planning, process, meaning and ethics of research in rural schools and communities. This cross-disciplinary network of researchers has been supporting research themes with schools and communities ‘outside the mainstream’ of education systems over a period of 20 years. The activity of Network 14 has gradually extended internationally.

Martin Lawn was one of the founders of the Network 28 ‘Sociologies of Education’. He promoted the constitution of the Network and supported its development since the beginning in 2010 by contributing to the elaboration of its foci, helping in the shaping of its agenda, fostering its consolidation, and by structuring its governance.

In particular, his work has been fundamental in anchoring the network on the European social dimension of education and in opening a new space of sociological imagination and research in the European Educational Research Association. His publications on Europeanization of education are key references for sociological investigation. He is encouraging the interdisciplinary studies of the European space of educationthrough a book series he is co-editing.

Martin Lawn helped establish the Network links with EERJ by favouring the collaboration among the sociological journals and the network activities and in promoting the publication of the best papers of the field coming from the network.

He has been a very active participant at ECER by promoting paper proposals each year, chairing sessions and symposia,  organising roundtables and workshops, and reviewing for several networks. He served as Secretary General of EERA and Editor of European Educational Research Journal. He took part as well in the constitution of the Network ‘Histories of Education’ and the Network 23 ‘Policies Studies and Politics of Education’. Finally, he supported the collaboration between the networks and the training of the next generation of researchers in the field of education in Europe and elsewhere.

Jenny Ozga, professor emeritus of Oxford University, was one of the founders of network 23, Policy Studies and Politics of Education. She was one of the researchers proposing the network in 2001 and after the network had been approved she served for the first years as one of the three network coordinators.

Jenny Ozga’s main research area is education policy in international comparative contexts. She has focused especially on new forms of governance through the use of new policy technologies such as quantitative data. In pursuing this line of research she has collaborated with colleagues in the UK and Europe to develop theory and empirical investigation. The results of this research have been published in recognized books and articles, but much of it has also been presented and discussed in paper sessions and symposia at ECER conferences. It also informed the keynote on ‘Governing Knowledge: Research Steering and Research Quality’ that she gave at the 2007 ECER in Ghent.

Jenny Ozga was Professor of Sociology of Education in the Oxford University Department of Education from 2010-2015. Before that she was Director of the Centre for Educational Sociology at the University of Edinburgh, and she has earlier worked in the other universities. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and holds an honorary doctorate from Turku University, Finland.

Jenny Ozga has continued to have a strong presence in network 23 and has also contributed to network 28, Sociologies of education. In research and discussion she eminently represents the qualities of educational research based on strong theoretical and empirical foundations as well as on critical questioning of dominant assumptions and practices.   

Professor David Bridges: MA (Oxon) MA PhD (London); Hon.D.Univ (Open University); Emeritus Professor, University of East Anglia; Emeritus Fellow, St Edmund’s and Homerton Colleges Cambridge; Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences; Overseas Fellow of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences

David Bridges has been an enthusiastic supporter of EERA since its very early days. It was at a symposium at a joint EERA/BERA conference in Bath in 1995 that the idea of a Philosophy of Education Network for EERA was conceived. David came to the ECER conference the following year in Seville with a proposal for its establishment. As Dieter Lenzen did the same, they joined forces and became the first convenors of Network 13. Dieter almost immediately took on a position as Vice President of the Freie Universität in Berlin and his place as co-convenor was taken by Volker Kraft. These two remained co- convenors of an expanding and flourishing network with the early addition of Zdenko Kodelja from Slovenia, Eliane Ricard Fersing from France, Bob Dahlin from Sweden and Leena Kakkori from Finland. David continued as co-convenor for 10 years until 2006.

David was elected to BERA Council in 2006 and was immediately nominated to represent BERA on EERA Council, which he did for six years. Between 2008 and 2011 he was part of the EERA initiated project on European Education Research Quality Indicators (having previously served on the Education panel for the UK Research Assessment Exercise). In his last year on the Council he joined with Leijf Moos in drafting EERA’s response to the EU consultation on what was to become the Horizon 2020 Research Programme and representing EERA at a senior level meeting in Brussels. Working in Kazkahstan over the last five years, he has been an active supporter of the establishment of the Kazakhstan Educational Research Association and its successful application to join EERA

Though best known for his work in philosophy of education (and he is an Honorary Vice President of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain), David has directed or co-directed some 27 empirically based research projects. A lot of his work has focussed on the relationship between philosophy and educational research and a collection of 26 of his papers has been published by Springer in 2017 under the title "Philosophy in Educational research: Epistemology, ethics, politics and quality".

One year after the establishment of Network 12 Library and Information Science Network (LISnet) in 1998, Alexander Botte started to work for the network and promoted LISnet as a co-convenor until 2015.

Alexander was committed to the idea of creating sustainable European infrastructures in educational research and educational practice. He became actively engaged in preparing the ground for collaboration, and interlinking in research and development across borders and beyond nation states. In this regard, Alexander has addressed a broad range of topics spanning information literacy, monitoring of educational research and literature reference systems and European thesauri for education or digital scholarship, i.e. virtual research environments. Thanks to Alexander’s profound knowledge and innovative mindset - and of course owing to his warm-hearted, engaging personality - LISnet has become an interface of infrastructures in education that meets the challenges of digitization on a European level.

LISnet highly appreciates Alexander’s long-standing commitment, and would like to award him with an Honorary Network Membership.

Ludger Deitmer had his premiere with VETNET at the ECER 2003 in Hamburg. Whilst his institute – ITB, University of Bremen – had a long track record in VETNET activities and European projects, Ludger had not been directly involved so far. However, this was compensated by a rapid start. To the VETNET colleagues Ludger was already known as an organiser, so he was the natural choice as the ‘local’ VETNET program chair for that conference. This task was not unimportant because VETNET had a visitor from the European Commission, DG Research, and there were negotiations going on about the role of vocational education and training  (VET) in the EU 6th Framework Program for Research and Development. Ludger managed his program chair duties well and was elected as a new member to the VETNET board – and directly as the VETNET convenor.

In ECER 2003 the VETNET opening was arranged as a panel discussion on the role of VET in European research cooperation (involving VET researchers and the Commission representative). In the following conferences during his period Ludger worked closely with the local program chairs to develop the opening sessions - and other joint VETNET sessions – as highlights of the VETNET program. As such we remember the following:

• At ECER 2004 in Crete the opening panel on the prospect of VET-PISA with Nikitas Patiniotis, Rainer Bremer and Jenny Hughes;
• At ECER 2005 in Dublin the opening keynote of James Wickham on the new European gospel of labour market policies and the panel of the Maastricht study on attainment of educational goals of the Lisbon summit involving Tom Leney, Anneke Westerhuis, Annie Bouder and Felix Rauner;
• At ECER 2006 in Geneve the keynote of Rolf Dubs on the Swiss developments in VET and VET research and the subsequent debate on European qualification framework (EQF) involving Jörg Markowitsch and Georg Spöttl;
• At ECER 2007 in Ghent the keynote of Ides Nicaise on European and Belgian policy developments in education and training and the joint panel to reflect the 10 years presence of VETNET network at ECER (involving several colleagues).
• At ECER 2008 in Göteborg the keynote of Per-Erik Ellström on institutionalisation of interactive innovation research in education (with response from Bernd Hofmaier) and the special VETNET event presenting journals in the field of VET.
• At ECER 2009 in Wien the symposium on the role of European and National Qualification Frameworks involving Lorenz Lassnigg, Jordi Planas, Michael Young and David Raffe.
• At ECER 2010 in Helsinki the keynote of Johanna Lasonen and Marianne Teräs on the role of VET in integrating migrants into working life and opening alternative career prospects.
• At ECER 2011 in Berlin the transformation of the VETNET opening event into a participative workshop moderated by the new VETNET convenor Michael Gessler.

During Ludger’s period as the VETNET Convenor the engagement of VETNET members in the peer review process was opened to broader participation (beyond the board). Also, the board worked several times with the description of VETNET and the main areas of research to be covered by the network. In this context there was a debate, whether the name of the network should be changed, but the conclusion was to keep the network grounded on the field of VET. However, the interface areas with neighbouring disciplines were highlighted in the updates of the research areas.

Also, Ludger’s period was characterised by several cooperation initiatives to promote the visibility of European VET research. The key initiative during those years was to launch a new journal for the field of VET research with a prominent publishing house. The first attempt had been made already before Ludger’s time. Now, a working group was set up to prepare the plans and to negotiate with publishers. Due to intervening factors this initiative was delayed and then decoupled from the VETNET network. Yet, the network had got its initial training for taking action at a later phase.

In a similar way during Ludger’s period VETNET got involved into cooperation with affiliated networks as co-organiser of joint events (e.g. the TVET teacher education workshop with UNESCO-Unevoc Centre in Hamburg 2004 and with INAP network on innovative apprenticeships on different occasions). Also, within ECER at that time had some joint events with neighbouring networks (e.g. with the Teacher Education network in Ghent 2007 and with the Quality of Education network in Berlin 2011).

Further initiatives that have been implemented during Ludger’s period have been the creation and reshaping of the VETNET website(s). The initial website (supported by a Wales-based software-house) was prepared for the ECER 2004 in Crete. It provided a platform for presenting the VETNET program (at the time when EERA website was not yet developed so far).  For the ECER 2005 in Dublin the website was also equipped by VETNET conference blog (which was used for conference documentation in Dublin 2005 and Geneve 2006). For ECER 2009 in Wien the VETNET website was reshaped as a Mixxt-hosted network site (supported by Graham Attwell). This new site was lighter to maintain and provided more functionality for network members to set up their profiles and participate (e.g. via blogging). Parallel to the development of these sites VETNET continued its cooperation with WIFO Research Forum and Sabine Manning to publish the annual VETNET proceedings on WIFO site.

All this gives a picture of Ludger as a teamworker and promoter of joint community-building initiatives. With different teams, working groups and cooperation relations Ludger has mobilised his colleagues in vicinity and afar to work together.  In a similar way when Ludger had served his terms of office he paved the way to his successors to join in as a team member to support further initiatives – the newly established VETNET journal “International Journal for Research in Vocational Education and Training (IJRVET)” and the global network “Internationalisation of VET research” under the auspices of World Educational Research Association (WERA).

Barbara Zamorski is the founding convenor of Network 22. Research in Higher Education, which was established in 2000. She has served Network 22 for many years, first as the only link convenor and later with a growing team of co-convenors until 2009.

Thanks to Barbara’s inspiring and kind personality, thoroughness, creative energy and commitment, Network 22 has gradually grown to be one of EERA’s largest networks.

Network 22 is immensely grateful to Barbara and feels that she fully deserves this honor.

Brian Hudson served as Network 27’s first link convenor. He was very successful in promoting cooperation amongst educational researchers, especially between researchers in English speaking countries in Europe, where didactics is often not a university or higher education discipline, and researchers in continental European, where it is.

Brian has been outstanding at finding a balance between the English speaking and publishing colleagues working in the fields of instruction research, curriculum theory and implementation, subject research such as mathematics, physics, foreign language education, in primary and secondary education etc. on the one side, and the continental didacticians on the other side.

Brian’s position concerning methods and theory of educational research is based on the conviction that fragmentation, as it characterizes the present situation of didactics/instructional research etc. in Europe, has to be overcome. He has managed to convince us that a state of research beyond fragmentation is a sound objective.

The broad and high acceptance of Brian’s approach toward research in our network is documented in an impressive list of publications and of works in progress, all made possible by Brian’s combination of communicative competence with his willingness to find compromises.

Brian’s competence in educational management and educational policy can also be seen in the expansion of his activities as head of the WERA IRN on Didactics, Learning and Teaching. Brian has successfully integrated the work of EERA’s Network 27 into the WERA (World Education Research Association) programme.

Vivienne Collinson, PhD, has served as a professional educator for close to 45 years in Canada and in the United States and she is a well-known expert in the field of professional development. Her publications focus on the  professional learning of teachers and educational leaders. Certified as a teacher, principal, and superintendent, she served as a teacher and in numerous leadership roles in education before beginning to teach principals in Canada and the US. Her work, research and service have frequently taken her to Europe and Asia, where she has lectured on organizational learning and professional development.

Vivienne Collinson served the EERA’s Network 01 as convener and link convener from 1999 to 2012. She worked very closely with the other conveners of the Network 01, especially with Ene-Silvia Sarv and Maureen Killeavy. The conveners’ team made considerable efforts to build up a wider group of reviewers, and the review process and program scheduling was developed in collaboration with other networks and the EERA office. During this period, new collaborative and interactive methods were introduced, such as interactive workshops and symposia. Much attention was paid to supporting early career researchers and having business meetings on a regular basis. The theme of the network was also broadened from individual learning into educational leadership and organizational development. As a result, the volume of the network activities has grown threefold; the average number of presentations has grown from about 30 papers to 100 - 130, and the number of parallel sessions has increased from about 10 to 30 - 40.

Maureen Killeavy, PhD, has made a distinctive career as a primary and post-primary teacher as well as university lecturer and researcher in Ireland. She is an internationally well-known expert of teacher development. She has worked as professional educator at University College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin and Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. She has served in various elected positions, including as a member of a number of committees and boards in Ireland and in the UK, and as the President of European Association for Teacher Education and Vice President of Global Association for Teacher Education.

Maureen Killeavy served EERA’s Network 01 as convener and link convener from 1999 to 2012. She worked very closely with the other conveners of Network 01, especially with Ene-Silvia Sarv and Vivienne Collinson. The conveners’ team made considerable efforts to build up a wider group of reviewers, and the review process and program scheduling was developed in collaboration with other networks and the EERA office. During this period, new collaborative and interactive methods were introduced, such as interactive workshops and symposia. Much attention was paid to supporting early career researchers. The network also initiated business meetings on a regular basis. The theme of the network was also broadened from individual learning into educational leadership and organizational development. As a result, the volume of the network activities has grown threefold; the average number of presentations has grown from about 30 papers to 100 - 130, and the number of parallel sessions has increased from about 10 to 30 - 40.

Ene-Silvia Sarv, MA, is known as an expert of curriculum development and educational reform, especially in Eastern Europe. Since the independence referendum of Estonia in 1991, she has actively contributed to the rapid development of the new republic’s educational system, being one of the founding members of the Forum of Education of Estonia (1995). She has received national awards in Estonia for her publications and for her input into the school reform. She has an extensive list of scientific publications, covering a wide range of topics, such as school development, national and science curriculum development, comparative studies on pedagogical, philosophy of education and alternative pedagogies. She has contributed to the educational reform in a number of countries in Eastern Europe through consulting on educational development in the post-Soviet countries.

Ene-Silvia Sarv has been a member of Network 01 since 1999 and served from 2006 to 2014 as convenor and link convener. She worked very closely with the other conveners of Network 01, especially with Maureen Killeavy, Vivienne Collinson and Sara Bubb. The conveners’ team made considerable efforts to build up a wider group of reviewers, and the review process and program scheduling was developed in collaboration with other networks and the EERA office. During this period, new collaborative and interactive methods were introduced, such as interactive workshops and symposia. Much attention was paid to supporting early career researchers. The network also initiated business meetings on a regular basis. The theme of the network was also broadened from individual learning into educational leadership and organizational development. As a result, the volume of the network activities has grown threefold; the average number of presentations has grown from about 30 papers to 100 - 130, and the number of parallel sessions has increased from about 10 to 30 - 40.

Pekka Kämäräinen is a Finnish educational researcher working at Institut Technik & Bildung (ITB), University of Bremen. During his early career years (1986 – 1994) he worked as one of the founding members of the Work Research Centre of the University of Tampere. At that time he specialised in comparative and international research on vocational education and training (VET). In 1990-1992 he supported a joint Nordic (Scandinavian) R&D program for vocational teachers and vocational teacher educators.

In 1994 the Finnish government sent him as a national seconded expert to Cedefop (European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training), then located in Berlin. From 1995 to 2002 he worked as a project manager (temporary EU-official) at Cedefop in its new location Thessaloniki, Greece.

In 2002 he returned to Finland and worked a short while as a visiting researcher at the Vocational Teacher Education College (AOKK) of the Jyväskylä Polytechnic (JAMK). During this period he participated as a European keynote speaker in the International UNESCO Meeting on TVET teacher education in 2004 in Hangzhou, China.

From 2005 on he has worked as a senior researcher at ITB. He has mainly participated in European and international projects on workplace learning, vocational teacher education, training the trainers as well as use of digital media and web resources in vocational learning.

Pekka Kämäräinen has participated regularly in European Conference on Educational Research from ECER 1992, Enschede, on (with few exceptions). In ECER 1996, Sevilla, he supported Martin Mulder in the founding process of the VETNET network. During his years in Cedefop he organised symposia and workshops to promote knowledge sharing between European cooperation projects and networks in the field of VET. He also took initiatives to create closer cooperation between Cedefop and VETNET (and their wider international pendants UNESCO and IVETA). After his service in Cedefop he continued his support to VETNET with similar symposia and workshops with focus on European cooperation projects. He has also supported VETNET convenors and program chairs in the arrangement of opening colloquia with insights into VET research in the host country and with reviews on the development of European VET research. Most recently he has been supporting the work of the WERA International Research Network on “Internationalisation of VET research” (WERA IRN-VET) as its rapporteur for WERA.

Currently a co-Director of Assessment Europe, Sandra Johnson has a professional lifetime of experience in the field of educational assessment and evaluation, including large-scale assessment and school leaving qualifications.

She is a qualified mathematics teacher, a UNESCO/IAEA accredited international expert in educational assessment, a Chartered Statistician (Royal Statistical Society) and a Chartered Scientist (Science Society). She is also a Visiting Fellow in the Graduate School of Education in the University of Bristol, and a member of the editorial boards of the journals ‘Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy and Practice’ and ‘Educational and Psychological Measurement’.

Further, she is a founder member and Fellow of the Association for Educational Assessment - Europe (AEA-Europe), and a member of the AEA-Europe Council.

Sandra was one of the two founding convenors of Network 9 and served as the first Link Convenor for this Network for ten years since its inception at the European Conference on Educational Research in 1997.

Francesca Gobbo helped to establish and promote the work of Network 7, "Social Justice and Intercultural Education" since 1999, when she also co-founded  Network 19, "Ethnograpy".  She has been an active participant in ECER conferences every year, presenting papers, chairing sessions, organizing symposia and bringing interdisciplinary perspective that was always qualified by an attention for the European dimension. She contributed to the work of EERA as a network convenor as well as a Council Member.

During her term as link convenor of Networ 7 she and the other network convenors succeeded to edit a jointly edited book, based on papers presented in network 7 during two ECER conferences. The preparation of the anthology was a rather long process as the network was keenly engaged with the issue of Europeanization of themes. The editors, all of them network 7 convenors, made a point to present research on intercultural education and social justice that explored other approaches (the arts, for instance, or the life story methodology). The anthology is a good picture of network 7 at that time.

Thanks to Francesca’s membership in IAIE, she was then able to organize a presentation of the anthology at the XIII World Congress of Comparative Education Societies in Sarajevo, within the section of the WCCES and Intercultural Dialogue: Historical Perspectives and Continuing Challenges that was very successful. In addition to the above, Francesca has published journal articles in EERJ and has engaged with discussions about EU policy on education.

Also during her term as link convenor, together with the network convenors, she improved the ways to evaluate abstract proposals for ECER, that was rather positively approved by the proposers themselves.

She also supported efforts

• to connect with other networks,

• to organize symposia, and internetwork symposia,

• participated into the ECER pre-conference and pledged to do so in 2014,

• to build a new generation of educators and social scientists by promoting doctoral students’ participation into ECER,

• to support the strong connection between EERA and IAIE,

• to volunteer for ECER

Tjeerd Plomp is 

• Professor Emeritus at the University of Twente, Netherlands (retired in 1999) where he was Professor of Education  since 1981.
• 1982-1985 Dean of the Faculty of Educational Science and Technology
• 1986-1989  Director of OCTO (Institute for Applied Educational Research)
• 1989- 1999 Chair of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA).
• Chair of the Steering Committee for several IEA studies (TIMSS 1995, SITES-M1, and SITES-M2), and director of the IEA Computers in Education Study and the Second Information Technology in Education Study 2006. Honorary doctor in psychology and pedagogical sciences of the University of Ghent (1996).
• Honorary member of the IEA (since 1999).
• Extraordinary Professor of Education, Faculty of Education, University of Pretoria, South Africa (2003–2005).
• As Chair of the Organizing Committee of the first ECER in 1992, Tjeerd Plomp is one of the founding fathers of the European Conferences on Educational Research and the European Educational Research Association. Tjeerd Plomp has steered Network 9 for over a decade, both as Link Convenor (2006–2008) and Co-convenor (1999–2006 and 2008–2011).

Sabine Manning was already involved in comparative educational research before the 1990s. After 1990 she established herself and the WiFo Research Forum with comparative studies on vocational education and training (VET). During the early years of the Leonardo da Vinci programme she worked with projects that studied integration of general and vocational (Intequal) and dually oriented qualifications (Duoqual).These projects and the parallel projects (Post-16 strategies and Spes-Net, led by Johanna Lasonen) were regularly present at the ECER conferences with their joint symposia. The cooperation of the two coordinators was continued by joint follow-up studies and by cooperation in preparing the VETNET programme (and the VETNET proceedings) for ECER 1999. After this period Sabine Manning proceeded with initiatives to shape European information services in VET research – currently known as the “WiFo gateway to research on education in Europe”. In this context she developed the tradition of electronic VETNET proceedings starting from 2000 and continuing up to present date. For most European VET researchers she is known as the editor of the Newsletter for European Research in Learning and Work [L&W].

The VETNET network honours Sabine Manning for her contribution to the VETNET Board during the early years, for her engagement in European cooperation projects and their joint activities and for her long-term commitment to the development of research-oriented information services for the European VET research community.

Martin Mulder was already an active team member in preparing the pilot ECER in 1992 (Enschede). During the following years he was involved in initiatives to launch a European network for research in VET and HRD (with a conference tradition of its own). In the founding phase of EERA he became the Dutch member of the EERA Council and took the initiative to set up the VETNET as an EERA network. From ECER 1996 (Sevilla) to ECER 2000 (Edinburgh) he served as the coordinator of the network and chaired the work of the executive board. After moving to Wageningen he was involved in developing the Cedefop journal into a Europe-wide research journal in VET. During his working period in Thessaloniki he tried to secure the basis for the journal (which unfortunately was abolished). When returning to Wageningen he made a comeback to the VETNET board and has been actively encouraging younger Dutch researcher to engage themselves in European cooperation and in VETNET activities.

The VETNET network honours Martin Mulder for the initiative to launch the VETNET network, for chairing the network during the early years, for his engagement in promoting journals for European VET research and for his long-term commitment to the development of European VET research community.