She has had a career in higher education policy and quality assurance at national and international levels. Previously she was Head of International at the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education having held senior posts in predecessor national quality assurance organisations in the UK. She has also held a post in the Erasmus Bureau in Brussels managing the pilot project for the development of the European Credit Transfer Scheme and in the Education Development Centre at Roehampton University.

Carolyn is currently the external Academic Board member for Ashridge
Business School, a UK degree granting institution, and of the International
Advisory Committee of the Lumina Foundation in the United States of
America. Over the last eighteen months she has represented the UK in the
Structural Reform Working Group in the Bologna Process and is an ex officio
member of the UK Bologna Stakeholders Forum.

Carolyn’s research interests include the regulation, quality assurance and
internationalisation of higher education. She has contributed to British
Council, European Commission, OECD and UNESCO publications and
projects on cross border higher education and quality assurance, and most
recently co-authored an international comparator study on the assessment
of quality for the funding councils in the UK.

She also participates as expert in different external panels or projects of different agencies, networks and organizations such as ANECA and AQU (Spain), NVAO (Nederland), CTI, AERES and CEIP (France) INQAAHE (international), CINDA (South America and Europe), DAAD (German), ECA or ENQA (Europe).

Since 1969 Gemma Rauret developed her academic career at the University of Barcelona, in the Analytical Chemistry Department and in the Faculty of Chemistry. She became full professor in 1984. She was Dean of the Faculty of Chemistry and General Secretary of the University of Barcelona, as well as member of its Academic Committee.

Along her career she supervised more than 20 doctoral theses and several graduation and master´s theses. She published more than 200 articles about Environmental Analytical Chemistry in specialized international publications. She took part and coordinated numerous international research projects within the European Union framework. In 1992 she was awarded the Narcis Monturiol medal for her outstanding scientific research.

Within the scope of university quality assurance, she reached the position of Director of the Quality Assurance Agency for the University System in Catalonia (AQU Catalunya) in 1998. From 2006 to 2009 she was director of ANECA, the Spanish Quality Assurance Agency.

She was member of the Board of the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA), of the Board of the European Consortium of Accreditation (ECA) and of the Board of the Red Iberoamericana para la acreditación de la Educación Superior (RIACES) and has participated in more than hundred national and international seminars and projects.

Jan De Groof is visiting professor at foreign universities worldwide. He is president of the European Association for Education Law and Policy and chaired both World Conferences on the Right to and Rights in Education.

He has been Chief of the Cabinet of the Flemish Minister of Education and Training. In 1987, he was appointed Government Commissioner for Universities in the Flemish Community of Belgium.

Jan De Groof holds the UNESCO Chair for the Right to Education and is former UNESCO Chargé de Mission. He is the only European member of the ‘Council of Senior Advisors’ of the International Association of University Presidents (IAUP), accredited to the UN.

Furthermore, Jan De Groof has been Team Leader of the EU-Project ‘The Rule of Law - Curriculum Reform of Legal Studies in Universities, especially in Iraq’. After the Balkan war, he founded the South East European University (SEEU), together with the OSCE High Commissioner for National Minorities, Mr. Max van der Stoel.

She is currently working on the ‘Understanding Knowledge, Curriculum and Student Agency’ project within the Centre for Global Higher Education, which is interested in knowledge practices and student transformation. Her research interests also include education governance, higher education industry and political economy of markets.

Before joining the Lancaster University, Janja was actively involved in higher education policy making in Slovenia, and in the Bologna Process in Europe. She has been active in quality assurance for many years both nationally and internationally. As a member of the “E4 group”, she participated in preparing policy and plans for the European Quality Assurance Register (EQAR) between 2004 and 2005. Between 2009 and 2011 she worked for the Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology in Slovenia, where she contributed to the legislative changes relating to quality assurance in higher education and to the National Programme for Higher Education 2011–2020. After that she worked for the University of Ljubljana in the field of internal quality assurance and institutional development before joining the University of Bristol and later Lancaster University.

She is still active as ENQA evaluator of quality assurance agencies and as evaluator of higher education institutions for some national agencies in Europe.