Bridging Perspectives

Panel discussions on immigration and integration of Eastern Europeans

On the 25th April 2024 at CREA, EESA Amsterdam welcomed students and teachers to the biggest event of the year - Bridging Perspectives. Our goal was to educate and discuss brain drain and integration dynamics from the viewpoint of Eastern Europe. Our keynote speaker, Emil Kishmerov, is an advisor at the Bulgarian Embassy to the Kingdom of the Netherlands in The Hague. We are thankful to all the participants as well as the guests who joined the event.

The event was made possible through the generous funding of the Amsterdam University Fund and Stichting Toekenningen

Panel I: On Integration Dynamics

Moderator: Marie-Majbritt Toiger

Speakers: Maria Francesca Burger & Bojana Većkalov

Speaker I

Bojana Većkalov

She is currently finishing her PhD studies in Social Psychology at the UvA. She studies belief systems (science scepticism or conspiracy beliefs) from a psychological perspective and she is interested in using psychology and behavioral science for the greater good.

Bojana immigrated to NL from Serbia four years ago to do her PhD at the University of Amsterdam.

Speaker II

Maria Francesca Burger

She is German Romanian and a Master student in Business Information Management at RSM.

Moreover, She is a passionate personal finance educator and currently building her own business around that field, while also taking roles such as in data consulting.

Additionally, she love to collect languages and dive into different cultures.

Panel II: The Why and the Effects of Brain Drain

Moderator: Kinga Pőcze

Speakers: Dimiter Toshkov & Tibor Harsányi

Speaker I

Tibor Harsányi

Professional originally from Budapest, Hungary. He moved to the Netherlands to complete his Master's degree at the University of Amsterdam in 2020. Currently, he is part of the Strategic Business Development team of ABN AMRO, where he assesses and advises the bigger change programs to help the bank become more profitable while remaining regulatory compliant.

Speaker II

Dimiter Toshkov

A social scientist from Bulgaria at Leiden Universitywith research interests in European integration, migration, comparative public policy and research methodology. He has published on the political effects of immigration from Eastern Europe, on the drivers of asylum migration to Europe, and many others. He is the author of the popular textbook Research Design in Political Science (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).