Alex Taylor is a European journalist. He has produced and presented TV and radio programmes for 30 years, mainly on French TV and radio (France Télévisions, France Inter), but also for international broadcasters (Euronews, TV5 Monde, ARTE, BBC). He was Programme Director for Radio France Internationale in charge of implementing the current 24 hours news format. Parallel to journalism, he has hosted some 1 500 international conferences on a wide variety of topics, especially environmental issues. He has also written a best seller on his passion, languages, of which he speaks (more or less) 7. He also once worked as a camel trainer in a circus.

Kurt Bassuener is co-founder and senior associate of the Democratization Policy Council, a Berlin-based think-tank established in 2005. His received his PhD in 2021 from the University of St. Andrews’ Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence for his dissertation titled: “Peace Cartels: Internationally Brokered Power-Sharing and Perpetual Oligarchy in Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia.” He resides in Sarajevo, where he serves as a regional strategic advisor for Kvinna Till Kvinna. He is also co-author and research director for the Diplomat’s Handbook for Democracy Development Support, a project of the Community of Democracies.

Dr. Jasmin Mujanović is a Political Scientist (Ph.D., York University) specializing in the politics of post-authoritarian and post-conflict democratization. He is the author of two books, Hunger and Fury: The Crisis of Democracy in the Balkans (Hurst Publishers & Oxford University Press, 2018), and The Bosniaks: Nationhood After Genocide, forthcoming from Hurst Publishers in December 2023. Originally from Sarajevo, he is currently an Advisory Board member of the Kulin Initiative and the Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center at Salve Regina University. 

Richard Wike is director of global attitudes research at Pew Research Center in Washington, DC, where he conducts research and writes about international public opinion on a variety of topics, such as democracy, international cooperation, and attitudes toward the United States and China. He is an author of numerous Pew Research Center reports and has written pieces for The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Financial Times, the Guardian, Politico, Journal of Democracy, and other publications.

Ahlam Saeed is a Jordanian/Palestinian Youth Representative, Human rights advocate and a recent awardee of Stipendium Hungaricum Scholarship in Social Policy MA in Hungary. For Ahlam, democracy takes on a deeply personal and aspirational meaning for a young Muslim woman of Palestinian refugee descent who is passionate about human rights. It becomes a vehicle for her to navigate, challenge, and contribute to the societal landscape in pursuit of justice, equity, and the realization of fundamental human rights. Democracy provides a platform for my voice to be heard and concerns to be represented. It offers a mechanism for us to actively engage in decision-making processes that impact our life and the lives of our community represents hope for positive change