ABOUT

Erika Widegren is Chief Executive of Re-Imagine Europa (RIE), the first incubator for new political ideas for Europe co-founded together with President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. The aim of RIE is to redefine how long-term policy and vision is developed through the use of new technologies to foster a dynamic public discourse, collective intelligence and realistic solutions for the benefit of a stronger, fairer and more competitive Europe.

Erika Widegren has been working in the field of connecting science, society and policy for over a decade. She is fellow at PlusValue, a UK-based European company focusing on social innovation; she is board member of Citizen Communication Platform, a Swedish project to promote stronger communication with citizens; and member of the committee supporting the work of Luc Van den Brande, Special Adviser to President Jean- Claude Juncker, for the Report on the “Outreach towards Citizen” Strategy.

Until September 2016, she was Chairman of the Advisory Board of REIsearch, an innovative non-profit European platform co-funded by the European Commission to demonstrate how a simple technological tool, coupled to a broad network of leading media, research institutions, researchers, civil society organisations, and citizens, can help policy makers to make better use of all knowledge and experience – wherever it may come from – to make better decisions, based on evidence and experience, for the benefit of society as a whole.

From 2010 to 2015 she was the Executive Director of Atomium – European Institute for Science, Media and Democracy working on issues like Science in Society, Responsible Research and Innovation, Digital Science, Evidence-based Policy Making and Citizen Engagement.

She is a frequent speaker and moderator at European conferences on these topics including: OECD NAEC conference on 10 Years After the Failure of Lehman Brothers (Paris – September 2018), OECD Forum 2018 (Paris – May 2018), Economic Ideas Forum 2017 (Brussels - November 2017), SAPEA International Science Conference on "Crossing Boundaries: new approaches to science for policy in Europe" (Tallinn - October 2017), European Innovation Summit (European Parliament - November 2016), the 2nd INGSA Conference on "Science and Policy Making: towards a new dialogue" (European Commission - September 2016).