SPEAKERS HSIR 2020

Parag Khanna

Parag Khanna is a world-relevant strategic advisor, traveler, best-selling author as well as founder and managing partner of FutureMap. Born in India, he grew up between the United Arab Emirates, New York, and Germany and holds a PhD in international relations from the London School of Economics. He gives seminars at international conferences and offers specific advice to government leaders and corporate directors on global economic scenarios, systemic and cyclical risks at the technology level, and about market entry strategies ensuring professionalism and skill.

Parag Khanna was awarded the title of Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, at which he held research and advisory roles in areas such as urban development, mobility, and geoeconomics while in 2002 he received the Future Leader award from OECD.

In 2019 he published The future is Asian: trade, conflict, and culture in the 21st century.

Romano Prodi

Romano Prodi is an Italian politician, economist, academic, and public and business leader who has served as Prime Minister of the Italian Republic twice. He was president of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004.

Michele Valensise

Michele Valensise is an Italian diplomat who has carried out missions to Brazil, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and was secretary general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2012 to 2016. He specializes in German-Italian relations and is president of the German-Italian Centre for European Dialogue Villa Vigoni.

Enrico Letta

Enrico Letta is an Italian politician and currently heads the School of International Affairs at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris. He has held countless institutional positions including Minister of the Italian Republic, Deputy of the Italian Republic and Prime Minister. A graduate of the University of Pisa in Political Science and a Doctor of the Sant'Anna Institute of Advanced Studies, he began his political career by militating in the ranks of the Christian Democrats and is currently involved in the Democratic Party. From a very young age, he showed his interest in Europe and served as a Member of the European Parliament engaged as Member Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and in the Delegation for Relations with the Maghreb Countries and the Arab Maghreb Union.

Enrico Letta's studies and publications focus mainly on Europe and Italy, and the challenges facing them.

Bruno Simma

Bruno Simma was a judge of the International Court of Justice for nine years and was one of three third judges in the landmark Iran v. U.S. case in the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal. A professor at many universities, he was co-founder of the European Journal of International Law, and the European Society of International Law, and an associate member of the Institute of International Law. He was a member of the Committee on Economic Social, Cultural Rights and then obtained membership in the UN Commission on International Law before being read to the World Court.

Mario del Pero

Mario del Pero is a Professor of International History at Sciences Po in Paris where he teaches courses on the United States, with a particular focus on the Cold War and the history of the 20th and 21st centuries. Among his most recent publications are: Freedom and Empire. The United States and the World, 1776-2011 (Laterza, 2017, 3rd ed.), Obama Era. From the Hope of Change to the Election of Trump (Feltrinelli, 2017) and The Eccentric Realist. Henry Kissinger and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy (Cornell University Press, 2009). Before starting his career at SciencesPo, Del Pero was a professor at the University of Bologna and has also taught a number of courses at the European University Institute, the Kluge Center of the Library of Congress, Columbia University, New York University, and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies of Geneva. Mario del Pero maintains a blog and speaks on SkyNews Italian and Swiss radio stations about U.S. international politics.

Atifete Jahjaga

Atifete Jahjaga is a Kosovar politician and was the third female president of Kosovo. She was the first woman to hold this position after serving as a lieutenant for the Kosovo Police and a deputy member of the Democratic Party.

The chairwoman contributed greatly to strengthening democratic institutions and building and stabilizing international recognition for the country by normalizing relations with its neighbors. Jahjaga implemented a change in Kosovo's international image, promoting European and Atlantic alliance values and goals, as well as reconciliation, and tolerance. He redefined the presidential role in building a democratic and pluralistic life in a country, and continuously upheld and constitutional principles by fighting and acting against corruption, marginalization, and lawlessness.

Luca Ferrari

In his long diplomatic career, Luca Ferrari joined the Diplomatic Litigation, Treaties, and Legislative Affairs Service, then joined the Secretariat and Cabinet of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, most recently as deputy director at Globalization and Global Affairs. He served as First Secretary of Commerce in Moscow (1992) and Washington DC. He took over as head of the Middle East Office, served as ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and from 2019 to China, with which he has undertaken grandiose projects, revitalized relations, and faced various strategic and even epochal challenges, including that posed by the 'pandemic emergency in all its faces.

Angela Kane

Angela Kane was formerly the United Nations High Representative for Disarmament Affairs and Under-Secretary-General at the UN Directorate.

Nathalie Van Raemdonck

Nathalie Van Raemdonck is an analyst at the EUISS institute offering her research about cyber diplomacy to the European Union through the EU Cyber Direct project. Previously, Nathalie worked at the Belgian CERT and the Centre for Cybersecurity Belgium, focusing her work on building national capacity infrastructure. She holds a master's degree in Political Science and International Law.

Luciano Violante

Italian magistrate and politician (born Dire Daua, Ethiopia, 1941). A member of the PCI since 1979 and of the PDS (later DS) since 1992, he was chairman of the Parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission (1992-94) and from 1996 to 2001 of the Chamber of Deputies. In 2001 he was elected chairman of the DS-L'Ulivo group in the Chamber of Deputies, and in June 2006 he assumed the chairmanship of the first Commission on Constitutional Affairs of the Presidency of the Council and Interior. He did not run again in the 2008 general elections. His publications include topics on politics, anti-mafia, analyses of the judiciary, and the history of our Republic.

In 2017 he was awarded the title of Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.