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Meet our Speakers

Day 1 | Monday  |  Febuary 1  |  2021

The State of Hate

The shades of hate and finding solutions
Ann Linde

Ann Linde (born in 1961) is the current Minister for Foreign Affairs of Sweden. She has held that office since September 2019. Prior to that, Ms Linde served as Minister for European Union Affairs and Trade, and from 2014 to 2016 she was State Secretary at Ministry for Home Affairs. From 2013 to 2014, she served as Head of the International Unit for the Party of European Socialists (PES), based in Brussels. She was the International Secretary of the Swedish Social Democratic Party from 2000 to 2013.

In the 1980s, she worked for several non-governmental organisations and during the 1990s she was working at the Swedish Government Offices, holding both political and non-political positions.

Among her numerous assignments she has served as a board member of the Olof Palme International Centre and the Anna Lindh Memorial Fund. Ms Linde has a bachelor’s degree in political science, sociology and economics from Stockholm University.

Ann Linde is married, has two children and lives in Stockholm.

Antje Jackelén

Antje Jackelén is Archbishop of the Church of Sweden since 2014 and before that bishop of the diocese of Lund. She was Professor of Systematic Theology/Religion and Science at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, USA, from 2003 to 2007.

Archbishop Antje Jackelén has also been the director of Zygon Center for Religion and Science and president of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology (ESSSAT). Her research interests include the dialogue between science and theology, the role of religion in society and Trinitarian theology. She is honorary doctor at the University of Greifswald, at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and at Virginia Theological Seminary. Her most recent books are Together in hope (2016), God is Greater: Theology for the World (2020) and Otålig i hoppet (‘Impatient in hope – theological reflections in the time of the pandemic’) (2020).

Her international engagements include the office of Nordic Vice President of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and member of the LWF Council.

Mina Dennert

Mina Dennert is a Swedish writer, journalist and the founder of I Am Here International, which has inspired 150 000 people from all over the world to take up the fight for a democratic and inclusive society.

The #iamhere method is to encourage people to speak up and engage in online debate. Members of the network counteract hate speech and misinformation on social media to strengthen journalists and politicians and opinion formers by making people react and stand up when others are exposed to hatred and threats.

Mina has won several awards for her work, including the prestigious Anna Lindh prize in 2017, for supporting just and democratic causes.

Richard Wilson

Richard Wilson is a writer, human rights activist and co-founder of Stop Funding Hate. Launched in August 2016, the campaign seeks to make hate unprofitable, and promote the idea of 'ethical advertising' by persuading companies to pull advertising from media that incite hatred against minority groups.

Since the campaign began, there has been a substantial reduction in the number of anti-migrant front pages in the UK press. Stop Funding Hate is now working to bring about longer-term change by promoting "ethical advertising" as a mainstream business ethics issue, and through sharing knowledge of the #StopFundingHate campaigning model, both in the UK and internationally.

Richard is the author of two books – Titanic Express (2006) and Don’t Get Fooled Again (2008).

Dr. Eleonora Esposito

Dr. Eleonora Esposito is a social scientist exploring complex intersections between language, politics, gender, and society in a vast number of global contexts, encompassing Europe, the Middle East, and the Anglophone Caribbean.

She is currently Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra (Spain). She is Principal Investigator of WONT-HATE, an EU-funded research project which explores motives, forms, and impacts of online violence against women in politics.

She was recently appointed Seconded National Expert at the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), where she is in charge of an EU-wide study on gender-based cyberviolence.

Louisa Klingvall

Louisa Klingvall is Team Leader European Commission - Directorate General Justice and Consumers Unit C.2 Fundamental rights Policy. She will explain the EU legal framework for the criminalization of hate speech (The Framework Decision on Racism and Xenophobia) and how the European Commission tackles online hate speech, including through the enforcement of the Framework Decisions as well as in the context of work with Member states, IT platforms and NGO’s under the Code of Conduct on Countering Illegal hate speech that is in place since 2016. She will also say a few words on the impact of the newly published Digital Service Act on the responsibilities for platforms to tackle illegal hate speech.

Day 2 | Tuesday  |  February 2  |  2021

From Fake to Facts

Leaving post-truth and achieving fact-based thinking
Krisztina_Stump

Krisztina Stump is Head of the Media Convergence and Social Media Unit, in Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology of the European Commission.

The Unit is in charge of social media policy as well as research and innovation funding to address the challenges brought by media convergence and social media, and to foster technological developments to allow for new types of media services and user experience. The Unit is also responsible for the Commission’s policy on combatting disinformation online. This work entails close collaboration with the main social media actors, as well as European media providers and fact checking professionals. The unit fostered the development of ‘The Code of Practice on disinformation: social media and platforms accountability’ in 2018.

Krisztina Stump holds Master of Laws degrees, with a focus on Media Law from Columbia Law School (2010) and from Humboldt University (2003). She graduated in Law from the ELTE University in Budapest in 2001 and obtained there later also a Master's in Communication and Media Studies. She joined the European Commission in 2011. Formerly, from 2005 until 2010, she was working at the Research Department of the Court of Justice of the European Union. Her experience prior to joining the EU Institutions includes work at the legal department of the Hungarian Radio and Television Commission, the legal department of MTM-SBS Television and at the Andrási Law Firm in Budapest".

Rudy Reichstadt

For more than a decade, Rudy Reichstadt has become a recognized specialist in the critical analysis of conspiracy theories and contemporary antisemitism in France.

He is regularly quoted and interviewed in mainstream media, has intervened in several conferences, and consults with the French public authorities about hate and extremism on the Web. He has published a large number of articles on conspiracy theories and contributed to the implementation of the government website OnTeManipule.fr (2016).

He is the co-author of the documentary film “Complotisme : les alibis de la terreur” (2018) and published at Grasset Editions in 2019 an essay entitled The Opium of the fools (French: L’Opium des imbéciles). He is a member of the Observatoire des radicalités politiques of the Jean-Jaurès Foundation. He is also a member of the online hate Observatory, attached to the Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel (CSA).

Dina Hussein
Lawrence Muli

Dina Hussein
Head of Counterterrorism & Dangerous Organisation Policy for EMEA at Facebook

Lawrence Muli
Public Policy Manager, Counter-Terrorism and Dangerous Organisations Policy at Facebook

Hadiya Masieh

Hadiya Masieh is an expert in the area of community cohesion, interfaith relations, counter-extremism, and women’s involvement in extremism. She has been a counter-extremism consultant for various Governments and NGOs worldwide.

Although much extremist ammunition is found online, these groups cannot operate if their audience is immune to their material. However, we see huge amounts of this material on social media, so what chance do we have of beating it? Groundswell Project’s solution is simple, we find, connect, and amplify everything that weakens extremists and we push and grow the antidote.

The antidote comes in the form of communities promoting voices of reason, togetherness, understanding, and respect. And tech companies, media, and businesses working in sync to combat on all fronts this growing disease.

Groundswell Project’s online platform is a practical tool that helps facilitate this process. Working at a hyper local level, we direct ordinary people to find and support local groups involved in community building, so effectively facilitating dialogue and actively creating and encouraging opportunities for mixing and knowing the other. This creates an environment hostile to the growth of extremism. The work is not easy and under no circumstance can only one group or people defeat this growing threat. We need everyone's involvement if we want to end this problem that is dividing and destroying our world as we know it.

David Friggieri read law and international relations in Malta and Rennes and European law at the College of Europe in Bruges. Since 2018 he has worked to further the Commission’s engagement with media freedom and pluralism within the Commission’s Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CNECT).

Between 2013 and 2018 he worked on fundamental rights and anti-racism policy within the Commission’s Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers (DG JUST), managing and developing the Commission's policy on combating Antisemitism, and was later appointed the Commission's first Coordinator on combating anti-Muslim hatred.

Previously, and since 2004, he held legal and policy officer posts dealing with anti-drugs policy, consular protection, European citizenship, and the free movement of goods and persons.