Hanne Bjurstrøm is the Norwegian Minister of Labour, having been appointed to Jens Stoltenberg's second cabinet on 20 October 2009. She is responsible for the labour market policy, the working environment, pensions and welfare policy. Hanne Bjurstrøm has been Norway’s chief negotiator under the United Nations climate change negotiations and is Vice-President of The Norwegian Labour Court. She represents the Norwegian Labour Party. She will participate in the opening plenary session of the conference focussing on the Nordic programme for sustainable futures.

Frances Fitzgerald is Ireland’s first ever Minister for Children and Youth Affairs and has a M.SC in Social Administration and Social Work. She trained as a social worker and family therapist and has worked with inner city communities in London and Dublin and lectured in social work at Trinity College, Dublin.  Elected to the Senate as Fine Gael Spokesperson on Health 2007 – 2011 she was previously a member of the Irish Parliament for Dublin South East Constituency. 

Massimiliano Mascherini is a research manager at Eurofound, the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions. His main research interests lie in the fields of social cohesion and labour market participation, with great emphasis on young people and the social consequences of their exclusion from the labour market.  Before joining Eurofound he worked as scientific officer at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. He has been visiting fellow at the University of Sydney and at Aalborg University. Over the past few years he has produced in these fields a steady flow of publications in international peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings and policy reports.

Frits Tjadens, previously a senior administrator at OECD, Vilans and at NIZW in the Netherlands, studied at Radboud University in Nijmegen. He initiated one of the first quantitative research projects in the Netherlands on family care in 1987, co-edited an international comparative study on support for family carers in 1998 and later co-authored a book on caring for a loved one suffering from dementia. He was project leader on the area of free movement of health professionals and was - as Dutch correspondent – involved in the first SSGI report. He co-wrote the 2010 OECD report on long term care entitled; Help wanted? as well as the 2012 final report of the 25 country EU 7FP endeavour MoHProf, about the mobility of health workers.

Hugh Frazer was a European Commission policy expert on the development of the EU’s Social Inclusion Process between 2001-06. He is now an independent expert on European social inclusion policies with a particular focus on child poverty. He will chair the final plenary session of the conference – a European Round Table debate which will look at social, economic and environmental sustainability of the welfare state and ask how we can best use resources to meet people’s needs and measure effectiveness to invest well for the future.

With a legal background, Yvan Ferrier began his career as Health and Social Affairs Inspector for the Val de Marne County where his particular focus was the issue of hospital supervision and social action for the elderly and disabled.  In 1991, he joined the General Council of the Gard as Director of the Care and Social Action for the Elderly and Disabled Department before being appointed Assistant General Director for Education and Culture in 1999 and in 2002, Assistant General Director of Social Development.  He currently teaches Social Politics at Masters level.  He will join the European Round Table debate in the final plenary session of the conference.