KEYNOTES

Keynote speaker:

Iván Tosics is one of the principals of Metropolitan Research Institute (MRI), Budapest. He is mathematician and sociologist (PhD) with long experience in urban development, strategic planning, and housing policy and EU regional policy issues. Since 2011 he is one of the four Thematic Pole Managers of the URBACT programme. He teaches at the University of Pécs, Department of Political Studies, Doctoral School. He is vice chair of the European Network of Housing Research (ENHR), executive committee member of the European Urban Research Association (EURA). He is the Policy Editor of the journal ‘Urban Research and Practice’. He was part of the consortium performing for DG Regio the study on the use of housing interventions from European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) resources. He participated in the work lead by AEIDL ‘Good practice in urban development: Projects and approaches supported by the European Regional Development Fund during the 2007-2013 programming period’, prepared for DG Regio. He was invited as expert to the European Parliament public hearing on ‘The place of Europe’s towns and cities in Cohesion policy’. He was working for DG Regio in the Cities of Tomorrow programme, preparing an issue paper on ‘Governance challenges and models for the cities of tomorrow’. He was one of the organizers of the high-level conference on Demographic changes during the Hungarian EU Presidency. He was Lead Expert of two URBACT programmes. He represented for many years the Municipality of Budapest in EUROCITIES, as chair of the Economic Development Forum in 2007-2008 and as member of the Executive Committee in 2009-2010. He participated in the preparation of the Rehabilitation Strategy of Budapest, and he was the leader of a consortium working on the medium and long term Urban Development Strategy of Budapest.