The Ecsite Board chose Maria Xanthoudaki, from the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia 'Leonardo da Vinci' (Milan, Italy), as the new Chairperson of the Spokes Editorial Committee. Congratulations!

Maria is taking over from Maarten Okkersen from Museon (The Hague, The Netherlands) and starting a three year mandate this June, renewable once.

At the Leonardo da Vinci Museum, Maria is the Director of the Education & Centre for Research in Informal Education (CREI). She also teaches “Research Methods in Education” at the Department of Education, Catholic University of Milan. She holds a BA in Pedagogy from the University of Crete (Greece), a Master’s degree in Arts Education and a Phd in Museum Education, both from the University of Sussex (UK). Her main research interests focus on informal (science) learning methodologies and on professional development of educators in museums.

Maria is already a familiar face for Spokes readers: she has been a member of the Spokes Editorial Committee since July 2015 and authored or co-authored several pieces in the past few years, for instance on digital & learning, STEAM, new learning philosophies or tinkering.

The Ecsite Board experessed sincere thanks to Maarten Okkersen. As Ecsite President Herbert Münder wrote in the introduction of the 2018 Spokes Panorama: "It was under Maarten's leadership that the long-standing Ecsite newsletter was re-born as a magazine in 2013, first as a quarterly paper publication and two years later as the monthly online magazine we know today. Maarten's insatiable trendspotting curiosity, his marketing expertise, his flair for design and his contagious enthusiasm lastingly shaped the soul of Spokes and its Editorial Committee".

Two other Committee members ended their mandates: Antonio Gomes da Costa, Director of Scientific Mediation and Education, Universcience (Paris, France) and Aliki Giannakopoulou, Project Manager, Ellinogermaniki Agogi (Pallini, Greece). Warm thank yous to them!