Experts

Lorenzo Squintani is founder and member of the managing board of the Like!Me Living Lab which studies how to improve the effectiveness of public participation practices in the field of energy and environmental matters.

He is also founder and member of the managing boards of the European Environmental Law Forum (EELF.info) and of the U4 Environmental Law Network. Besides, he is Chief Editor of the Journal for European Environmental and Planning Law (JEEPL) and Series Editor of the EELF Book Series. His research and teaching interests include EU substantive law and EU environmental, energy and climate law. Prof. Squintani has authored several publications in the areas of European environmental, energy and climate law. Prof. Squintani regularly advises Dutch, EU, and/or International institutions on (EU) environmental, energy and climate issues.

Goda Perlaviciute’s research interests lie in public evaluations and acceptability of energy sources, systems and policies, and which factors influence these evaluations and acceptability judgements. She focuses on theory development and applying theory in addressing acute environmental and energy problems.

Erika Darics is interested in the role and power of language in business and professional contexts, including for example how to communicate with the public. At the University of Groningen she teaches courses on Intercultural Communication, and Corporate and Marketing Communication. She is the convenor of RESPONSUS, a special interest group about Responsibility, language and communication. She is the vice president of the Association for Business Communication and she is one of the co-hosts of the Words and Actions podcast.

Leah Henderson has a PhD in philosophy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a DPhil in theoretical physics from the University of Oxford. Her areas of research expertise are philosophy of science and epistemology. She works on both basic philosophical problems and more applied topics. In particular, she is interested in what drives disagreements between people and groups – how do disagreements become deep and intractable? What causes societies to polarise in their beliefs? And how should we overcome deep differences in worldviews? She is also deeply engaged in thinking about the climate crisis, and she teaches a Masters course on Philosophy of Climate Change. She is interested in the role that public participation can play in solutions to the climate problem.

Over the past 15 years Philippe Hanna had extensive practical experience in applying impact assessment guidelines into community engagement processes in a variety of sectors (e.g., energy, extractives, transport, agriculture, water), aiming to improve spatial planning practices in collaboration with local communities. Focusing his research on social impact assessment, spatial planning and social movements, Philippe Hanna is currently a Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Groningen and an independent consultant on impact assessment and stakeholder engagement.

Marc Esteve del Valle’s research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of digital communication networks and social change, with a particular interest in online environmental politics. His works combine the methods of network science and computational social science with theories of communication studies. He has published 23 manuscripts in high impact journals such as New Media & Society, Information, Communication, Social Science Computer Review, and Sustainability (among others), 5 peer-reviewed book chapters, and one book.

He has received grants from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Netherlands eScience Center, and scholarships from the Volkswagen Foundation, the Toronto Metropolitan University, the Open University of Catalonia, and the University of Quebec in Montreal. To know more about Marc’s research, you can visit his website.