Keynote speakers

Lectures supported by the ID-UB project (Inicjatywa Doskonałości - Uczelnia Badawcza: Initiative of Excellence - Research University), funded by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education

Jean-Claude Thill

(University of North Carolina, USA)

Jean-Claude Thill is the Knight Distinguished Professor of Public Policy in the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences at the University of North Carolina Charlotte. He is a core faculty of the doctoral programs in Public Policy and Infrastructure and Environmental Systems and is also a Faculty Affiliate of the School of Data Science. He earned his Doctorate in Sciences at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. His scholarship encompasses transportation and mobility systems, urban and regional science, geospatial data science, and place-based policy analysis. His has extensively published in these areas internationally over the past few decades and was recently recognized among the top 2% of most cited scholars by a Stanford University study. He has received a number of national and international scholarship and service awards and was named a fellow of the Regional Science Association International and of the American Association of Geographers. He is the recipient of the 2022 First Citizens Bank Scholars Medal at UNC Charlotte. He is Past President of the Regional Science Association International.

Kostyantyn Mezentsev

(Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv, Ukraine)

Kostyantyn Mezentsev is a professor and Head of the Department of Economic and Social Geography at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (Ukraine). His recent research examines the transformation of post-Soviet urban regions and cities, suburban spaces, migration, urban geopolitics, and IDPs issues. He is co-editor of the book Urban Ukraine: In the Epicentre of the Spatial Changes (2017) and has co-authored Ukraine’s Outpost: Dnipropetrovsk and the Russian-Ukrainian War (E-International Relations, 2021). He is involved into the international multi-disciplinary research project Ukrainian geopolitical fault-line cities: urban identities, geopolitics and urban policy, funded by the Research Council of Norway.