Markku Markkula is the President of the Helsinki-Uusimaa Region (Chair of the Board). He is Vice-President of the European Committee of the Regions (CoR), having been the CoR President in 2015-2017. He has been a member of the Espoo City Council from 1980 – including for several years being the Chair of the Council, the Board, and the Committee for Urban Planning. His professional experience focuses on knowledge creation, lifelong learning, societal innovations, and change management. Mr. Markkula has many influential roles in the EU policy, including the CoR Rapporteur on important opinions such as innovation, digitalization, research policy, industrial renaissance, start-ups, and climate. Recently, he was appointed the CoR Rapporteur on European Missions. He has worked for years as the Advisor to the Aalto University Presidents and as the Director of Lifelong Learning Institute Dipoli at the Helsinki University of Technology. He has been a Member of Parliament of Finland 1995-2003. As an MP, his international role included the Presidency of EPTA Council, European Parliamentary Technology Assessment Network.

Anastasia Panori (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece)

Anastasia Panori is an Assistant Professor at the School of Spatial Planning and Development of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She holds a master’s degree in Economics (University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki) and a PhD in Economic and Regional Development from Panteion University of Athens. Her work has been published in top academic journals. She has contributed to generating more than 10 million euros through research and consultancy projects, mainly supported via European funding schemes (H2020, Horizon Europe), and she has worked as an expert for the European Commission and the Greek National Documentation Centre. Anastasia serves on the editorial boards of REGION and IET Smart Cities, and she has been invited to edit Special Issues on the digital transition of regional and the future of cities for Regional Studies and Frontiers in Sustainable Cities. She also co-edited the Greek book “Spatial planning in the digital age” (Kritiki).

Seamus McGuinness (Economic and Social Research Institute, Ireland)

Research Professor and the Research Area Co-ordinator for labour market research. Seamus McGuinness is a Research Professor and the Research Area Co-ordinator for labour market research at the Economic and Social Research Institute. Most of his published research has been in the areas of labour economics and the economics of education, with a particular focus on skill mismatches. He has also published research in the areas of industrial relations, regional economics, small business economics, social deprivation and the economics of constitutional change in Ireland. Seamus is also a Research Fellow in the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) Bonn and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Economics at Trinity College Dublin.

Session moderator: Terence Hogarth Professor of Practice, Institute for Employment Research University of Warwick. Professor Terence Hogarth is a leading researcher at the Institute for Employment Research (IER), specializing in vocational education and training (VET) and apprenticeships. His work examines how national VET systems address labour market needs and explores skill mismatches through surveys, forecasting, and text mining. Previously, he was Senior Adviser at the Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini, leading EU-wide research on skills governance and apprenticeship systems. Over his 35-year career, his research has been funded by major international institutions, and he recently edited Economy, Employment and Skills: European, Regional and Global Perspectives in an Age of Uncertainty.