A refreshed Management Board and Members Council
As a democratic association, each year the Europeana Network Association (ENA) holds elections to our Members Council, a group of 36 representatives from across our network who decide on the Association’s priorities, steer its activities and ensure general progress against the Europeana Strategy.
Following the elections in 2023, which saw nine new colleagues join the Council, we are pleased to announce that our Management Board, composed of six Councillors who lead the development of ENA’s strategic vision, has also now been refreshed!
We are delighted to welcome Juha Henriksson and Ines Vodopivec as new members to the Board, and welcome back Milena Dobreva for another term. They join Rob Davies, Sofie Taes and Marianna Marcucci as Board Members.
Meet your new Management Board members
Juha Henriksson is the Director of Music Archive Finland. He is also an Associate Professor at the University of Helsinki and works part-time as the RFC Editor for the Time Machine Organisation, a close partner of Europeana. He says that he is honoured and privileged to be able to bring his long and versatile experience in cultural heritage and its digitalisation, research, system architecture, copyright, communication and networking, to ENA's operations and management. He wants to further strengthen ENA's position as a key operator and cooperation network of European digital cultural heritage.
Ines Vodopivec is the Deputy Director of the National and University Library of Slovenia and Vice Dean at Nova University, Faculty of Slovenian and International Studies. She says she is excited to have the opportunity to be actively involved in ENA’s strategic vision development and implementation, and honoured to be able to work with such a great team of colleagues from diverse digital heritage sectors. Her main focus will be given to the promotion of ENA as one of the main pillars of the Europeana Initiative. She will also support ENA Communities as sustainable driving forces of the network’s activities, work in Country Groups initiative and actively participate in the Innovative Operating Models Working Group.
Milena Dobreva is a Senior Lecturer in Information Behaviour at the University of Strathclyde. She notes that when we were exploring new technologies in the past, the biggest interest was in improving discovery, more fascinating engagement with the users or better management of the collections. But, she says, the challenges we face today are different and combine scale and flexibility. 'Our large ENA community grows and upskills with all the technological shifts. If the Europeana Foundation is the brain spearheading the ambitious agenda of the common European data space for cultural heritage, ENA is the heart which ‘pumps’ the innovation to reach institutions of various sizes and sectors, and engage diverse communities of users. Being part of this process is a great learning experience!’
As we welcome our new members, we would also like to take this opportunity to thank Fred Saunderson and Dafydd Tudur for their years of service to the Management Board. Their contributions have been invaluable, and we wish them all the best in their future endeavours.
Get involved
Would you like to get involved in the Europeana Network Association? It is open to all working in and around digital cultural heritage to join, no matter what stage of your career! Find out how to join, and in the coming years, we might see you on our Management Board!