Chairperson of the Board

Mualla Aksu works at the Faculty of Education, Akdeniz University as a professor in the field of educational administration since 2005. She was a head of educational sciences department for four years and division of educational administration for 12 years. She has participated in ENIRDELM Conference 2009 held in Antwerp in Belgium for the first time and has admired friendly atmosphere of the network. Then, she organized 21st ENIRDELM Conference in Antalya, Turkey in 2012. She could have opportunities to participate in all the conferences since the first participation. Her professional interests are pedagogical leadership, developmental supervision, teacher induction, home-school partnership, and critical pedagogy.

Board member

Milan Pol works at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, as Professor of Education and, since 2014, Dean of Faculty. His professional interests are divided between school leadership/management and educational evaluation, recently focusing more intensely on evaluation in higher education settings. Among other subjects, he has been involved in research in school culture, school administration, organizational learning in schools and life/professional careers of school leaders. He is author and co-author of a variety of home and foreign publications and has been editor-in-chief of the journal Studia paedagogica since 2009.

Board member

Mika Risku works as the Head of the Institute of Educational Leadership, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Prior to joining the Institute full-time in 2008, he worked as a secondary education principal for fifteen years. In fact, his history with the Institute starts in 1996 when the first piloting programme of the Institute started. Then he was a student in the pilot as a fresh principal with no proper education in educational leadership. The piloting programme became the model for the present qualifying academic education for principals in Finland. Today the Institute is a full-service house with core, advanced, master, doctoral and professional development programmes together with research to have a sustainable social impact with educational leadership. We are looking forward to together with the ENIRDELM community to connect people with educational leadership to develop educational leadership, the field of education, and the whole world.

Board member

Kjersti Lien Holte works as an associate professor at Østfold University College, at the Faculty of Health and Welfare in Fredrikstad in Norway. She is coordinating masters degree study of integrated care. Her teaching activities are organization and leadership of work in the local region for health promotion. Formerly, for eight years, she lectured on a master degree programme study of organization and leadership and, for six years, in teacher education. She has a doctorate from the University of Karlstad in Sweden in 2009, in the field of working life science. Kjersti has participated in the ENIRDELM network since 2010 and has been an active contributor to paper sessions and workshops. Her main research interest is in leadership and development of schools as arenas for promoting wellbeing. She has done research on the role and management of homework in schools and on the communication of risk in ethical educational leadership. She has also written a book about occupational health. Her hobbies include hunting, gardening and photography.

Board member

Vesna Kovač has been employed as a full professor (tenured) at the Department of Education at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Rijeka since 1995, currently as a Head of Department. She participates in teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in the fields of educational policy and leadership, didactics, quality assurance and academic writing. She is the coordinator of the Postgraduate Specialist Study for Principals of Educational Institutions. She actively participates in the doctoral program and several lifelong learning programs in the field of education. She is a member of several domestic and international professional associations including ENIRDELM. She has published a series of scientific and professional papers, leads one scientific research project in the field of instructional school leadership, and collaborates on several scientific and professional projects. She is a co-author of two handbooks for civic education for elementary school pupils, initiated and published by the City of Rijeka. She actively participates in international and domestic scientific and professional conferences.