Keynote Speakers

Prof. Nico Carpentier is a world-renown researcher and practitioner of media and communication science. The area of his research interests embraces variegated relationships between communication, politics and culture that could be reduced to five topical fields: media, participation and democracy; media, death and war; journalism and identity; audience and reception; discourse theory. He is an author and co-author of 16 monographs and science books, over 300 research articles, as well as of over 200 papers presented in national, regional and international conferences. Prof. Carpentier is the president of International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) and one of founders of European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA). Earlier, he was IAMCR Audience Section Chair (2010-2012), ECREA Treasurer (2005-2012) and Vice-President (2008-2012), IAMCR Treasurer (2012-2016) and IAMCR Participatory Communication Section Chair (2016-2020).
 

Janis Chakars is program director and associate professor of communication and digital media at Neumann University in Pennsylvania, USA. He is a past board member and conference chair of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic studies. His research often centers on questions of communication and sovereignty in Latvia and the Baltic states. He has published these studies in Journalism History, American Journalism, the International Journal of Communication, International Research in Children’s Literature, the Central European Journal of Communication, Lituanus, and most recently the book, edited with Indra Ekmanis, Information Wars in the Baltic States: Russia’s Long Shadow (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).
 

Prof. dr. Marta Dynel is a world-renown researcher in linguistics as well as in media and communication science. The area of her research interests involves social media, humour studies, Neo-Gricean pragmatics, pragmatics of interaction, film discourse, rhetoric of verbal and pictorial advertising, linguistic gender studies, (im)politeness studies, multimodality studies (communicational, pragmatic, sociopragmatic, semantic and cognitive aspects). She is an author of 2 monographs,130 research articles, as well as of over 90 papers presented in national, regional and international conferences. Prof. Dynel is also a member of editorial boards of 10 international research journals and scientific books series and a winner of 3 national and international prizes for research and lecturing. 
 

Yevhen Fedchenko, Ph.D is co-founder and Chief Editor of fact-checking website StopFake.org, leading hub of expertise on Russian disinformation. He is also Director of the Mohyla School of Journalism at National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Kyiv, Ukraine. He advises on issues of tackling disinformation and media literacy, is an active commentator of Ukrainian politics and speaker at numerous high-level international conferences. Yevhen spent more than 25 years with the media industry, covering international stories. After moving to academia, his main interests are information wars, propaganda and weaponization of information, coverage of international politics in media and public diplomacy, digital journalism and innovations, journalism education in transitional societies, news standards. He contributed his comments to the NYT, RFE/RL, BBC, NPR, WNYC, Politico, Public Radio International, Radio Canada International, CBC, Mashable, SKY etc. In 2010-2011 Yevhen Fedchenko was Fulbright visiting professor at USC Annenberg(Los Angeles, USA) and in 2022-23 is a visiting professor at Media at Risk Center, Annenberg, University of Pennsylvania.  
 

Dr. Monika Mačiulienė is an associate professor and senior researcher at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University. Her research examines co-creation of value in R&I, emergence of collective intelligence in social networks, citizen and open science. M.Mačiulienė actively participates in international conferences, seminars, and scientific exchange programs and published more than 30 research articles individually and in collaboration with international research teams. Currently, she is involved in a number of international scientific projects (e.g. Horizon Europe project CLIMAS, H2020 projects INCENTIVE and EU-Citizen.Science) focused on synergies between science and the society as a senior researcher. M.Mačiulienė is also the Head of Citizen Science Association in Lithuania and in this capacity actively participates in the promotion of Open Science ideas in the region.
 

Prof. dr. Aelita Skaržauskienė is is an internationally recognized researcher of management as well as of media and communication science. The area of her research interests involves digital communication, citizen science and its communication, open science and its communication, responsible research and innovation (RRI), collective intelligence, artificial intelligence, fake news and disinformation. She is an author of 10 monographs and scientific studies, 50 research articles, as well as of over 60 papers presented in national, regional and international conferences. Prof. Skarzauskienė is also a member of editorial boards of 5 international research journals, a member of 5 international associations as well as leader or implementer of over 10 international projects including 3 "Horizon Europe" projects.
 

Prof. A. Zelenkauskaite is an internationally recognized researcher of media and communication science. The area of her research interests involves mass communication, social networks, social media, social technologies, the impact of media on society, personalization of communication contents, digital communication, political communication etc. She is an author of 1 monograph, 6 collective monographs and science books, 40 research articles, as well as of over 80 papers presented in national, regional and international conferences. Prof. Zelenkauskaite is also a member of editorial boards of several international research journals and a winner of 14 national and international prizes for research, lecturing and organizational activities.