2025 Directors Forum

The Ecsite Directors Forum is an annual meet up for Senior Managers from Ecsite Full and Associate members. Multiple representatives per organisation are welcome.

The 2025 Ecsite Directors Forum is hosted by Ciência Viva at the Pavilion of Knowledge in Lisbon, Portugal on 20 & 21 November (+ optional networking tours on 22 & 23 November). 

The Directors Forum is the ideal opportunity to build relationships and network with peers from across Europe in this 2-day Forum which offers a confidential platform to share expertise, debate and exchange knowledge with one another.

Registration closes 7 November.

Programme

At this year’s Ecsite Directors Forum, journalist and novelist Richard Zimler will open with a keynote on polarisation and preserving memory, followed by workshops on real-life case studies led by Agata Komendant-Brodowska from the University of Warsaw.

The Ecsite Board and Team will then share updates on new activities for 2026 before a networking dinner with writer Afonso Cruz.

On Friday, Professor Helena Freitas of the University of Coimbra will speak on depolarisation, closing on a look ahead to Ecsite’s 2026 events and a networking lunch.

Agata Komendant-Brodowska

Agata Komendant-Brodowska is a sociologist, project leader, educator and researcher, she is currently an assistant professor at the Faculty of Sociology at the University of Warsaw. She is most interested in understanding the micro-to-macro problems, that is how individual behaviours, decisions, motivations, or attitudes lead to group or global outcomes. Agata Komendant-Brodowska is leading multiple international educational projects, such as, ActIPLEx (Action for Interactive Anti-Polarisation Learning Experiences for a Better Democracy) whose aim is to create courses, educational games and game-based workshops about social polarisation and dialogue, and the project ACTiSS (Action for Computational Thinking in Social Sciences), to foster the analytical capability in behavioural dynamics using computational methods in social science students.

Helena Freitas

"Science holds a commitment to society": this statement perfectly encapsulates the mission of Helena Freitas. One of the most respected voices in the fields of biodiversity and nature conservation — not only for her academic and scientific contributions but also for her associative, political, and public engagement work — Helena Freitas is a Full Professor of Biodiversity and Ecology at the Department of Life Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Coimbra, where she also holds the UNESCO Chair in Biodiversity and Sustainable Development. Representative of Portugal and Vice-President of UNESCO’s International Coordinating Council of the Man and the Biosphere Programme (MAB-ICC), she is currently the Director of the Serralves Park. Among the many positions she has held, notable roles include: Founder and Coordinator of the Centre for Functional Ecology - Science for People & the Planet | TERRA - Associate Laboratory for Sustainable Land Use and Ecosystem Services IPBES Focal Point for Portugal. Scientific Coordinator of FitoLab, President of the League for the Protection of Nature and of the Portuguese Ecological Society, and National Correspondent of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences. She received her PhD in Ecology from the University of Coimbra, in collaboration with the University of Bielefeld, in 1993. She published hundreds of scientific articles throughout her career and wrote several science dissemination articles.

Richard Zimler

Richard Zimler’s books have been translated into 23 languages and have appeared on bestseller lists in 12 different countries. His most recent novel in English, The Incandescent Threads, was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Awards in the United States and a Number 1 bestseller in Portugal. Richard has lived in Portugal since 1990 and has both Portuguese and American nationality. He has published 14 novels and eight children’s books over the last 30 years. He writes his novels in English and books for children in Portuguese. Since 2000, he has lectured about his writing, Jewish history and culture, and various political and social topics at more than 400 schools and universities, 150 bookshops, 100 libraries and 50 cultural centers. In July 2017, the city of Porto awarded Richard its highest distinction, the Medal of Honor. His website is: www.zimler.com