Jenny Bimrose  is deputy Director at the Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick, England.
With over thirty years’ experience in higher education, researching and teaching at post-graduate level, she has extensive experience of external project management and consultancy, both in the UK and Europe. She is a Legacy Fellow of the Career Development Institute, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a Research Associate at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, South Africa. She was a member of the Career Profession Task Force, convened by Government (2010-2012), lead manager for an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) seminar series on the careers profession (2010 - 2012) and Co Editor for the British Journal for Guidance and Counselling. One particular research interest relates to supporting the use of ICT and labour market information in careers practice. Another strand of research relates to the role of careers guidance in the career biographies of young people and adults making transitions into and through the labour market. Current and recent projects in this area include: a qualitative, five year longitudinal case study, which evaluated the effectiveness of careers guidance for adults, undertaken for the [then] Department of Education and Skills; research undertaken for the European Commission into the career trajectories of adults across Europe; a qualitative evaluation of a career adaptability framework being developed from an international research study, funded by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills; and an international comparative study of the career trajectories of older women across six countries. Other research includes an investigation into information, advice and guidance offered by Sector Skills Councils; a feasibility study into the provision of local labour market information (LMI) for career guidance; a national evaluation of the skills coaching pilot in England for the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP); the development of an on-line module to support guidance practitioners' use LMI in practice (LMI online learning module); a literature review for DWP on skills diagnostics and screening tools; qualitative research into careers education and guidance provision within Connexions Kent & Medway; a mixed methods study for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills into the career links between employers and education; two studies carried out for CEDEFOP on supporting the upskilling of skilled and unskilled workers across Europe; and an FP7 funded project into the professional identity formation of Public Employment Service (PES) practitioners across Europe. For full details of research and publications, go to:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/ier/people/jbimrose/

Vera Zamagni is graduated in history and philosophy at the Catholic University of  Milan, 1966, cum laude.
Ph.D. in economic history at the University of Oxford (G.B.), 1976.
Professor of Economic History at the University of Bologna.
Visiting professor of European Economic History at the Bologna Centre of the Johns Hopkins University 1973 to the present.
Co-founder and co-editor (1997-2001) of the European Review of Economic History.
Degree honoris causa from the University of Umeå (Sweden) in October 2001.
Secretary general of the Italian Economic History Society (1989-1993), member of the Italian National Research Council (1994-1999), trustee of the Bologna branch of the Bank of Italy (1996-2000, 2011), vicepresident of the Emilia-Romagna Regional Government (2000-2002); member of the Scientific Board of the Institute of the Italian Encyclopedia Treccani (2005-2011); vicepresident of Banca Carim (2012-14); vicepresident of the NGO Cefa (Bologna, 2002-2014); In the advisory board of the Italian publishing house Il Mulino. Publications include more than 80 essays, 10 volumes and 14 edited books, mostly in Italian, but some in English and a few in Spanish. They cover the economic history of Italy 1860 to present in the context of European and World economic history of the last two centuries, with special reference to reconstruction of national income estimates, regional disequilibria, income distribution and wages, state intervention, business history, evolution of the cooperative movement, European integration.

Wolfang Viechtbauer Maastricht University, Netherlands

Wolfang Viechtbauer is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology (Faculty of Health, Medicine, and Life Sciences) and the School for Mental Health and Neuroscience at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. He received M.S. and M.A. degrees in statistics and psychology from the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign, USA), where he also completed his Ph.D. in 2004, specializing in statistical methods and research methodology for the social and health sciences. Before joining his current department, he worked in the Department of Methodology and Statistics at Maastricht University from 2004 until 2010. His primary research is focused on the methodological aspects of systematic reviews and the statistical methods used for meta-analyses, but his interests more generally encompass the design and analysis of longitudinal and multilevel studies. He has published over 60 articles in internationally recognized journals and (co-)authored a number of book chapters. The impact of this work has been acknowledged, for example, through an award by the European Association of Methodology for the best article by a junior scientist and by becoming an elected member of the Society for Research Synthesis Methodology. He has also served as statistical consultant on numerous applied meta-analyses, clinical trials, and research projects and has served as reviewer for over 40 journals, as editor (BMC Medical Research Methodology, Research Synthesis Methods), and as committee member for national and international grant agencies. Within his current department, he support his colleagues in their research on the mechanisms through which social, genetic, and environmental factors interact and contribute to the development of psychiatric disorders.