Register Committee

Stéphane Lauwick has extensive experience not only in the French higher education sector, at the University Institute of Technology (IUT) in Le Havre, but also at a European level, as former President of EURASHE and Secretary-General of ADIUT. In this capacity, he promoted the French Institutes of Technology, mainly outside Europe and worked with a variety of stakeholders.

He started his career at the University of Le Havre Normandy (FR) where he was head of the Electrical Engineering department.

Stéphane was also  for several years (2007-2011) the Director of the Life Long Learning Centre and Apprenticeship Training Centre at IUT Le Havre and also (2011-2014) reviewer at the HCERES (then AERES), the French Higher Education Quality Assurance agency.

Stéphane Lauwick, as President of EQAR, has a mandate until 1 July 2026.

supporting Austrian HEIs in implementing the Bologna Process.

In addition, she has been active as an independent consultant on higher education policy and trainer in students’ organisations’ capacity building in Austria and internationally since 2014.

Beate was involved in student representation on the local, national and European level, mainly working on issues of quality assurance and enhancement. She served as the International Officer of the Austrian Students Union (ÖH) in 2014/15 and as a member of the Steering Committee of the European Students’ Union’s (ESU) Students Experts’ Pool on Quality Assurance in 2015 and 2016.

From 2011 to 2016 she was a member of the General Meeting and the Governing Committee of AQ Austria.

Beate has contributed to research on QA from a student perspective that was presented in conferences such as the European Quality Assurance Forum (EQAF) and the EAIR Forum.

She is a Master student in Interdisciplinary Gender Studies at the University of Graz, Austria, from which she received her BA in Economics in 2010.

Eltjo has has been working in quality assurance of higher education since 2011. He is active in internal and external quality assurance, both at programme and institutional level. He also has experience in execution and system development.

Eltjo is active in several Dutch and European networks concerning quality and quality assurance in professional higher education. He has been trained and is active in several auditing roles, such as a chair of internal auditing panels at HU UAS Utrecht, member of institutional audit panels abroad and as assessor in EFQM. Though he loves innovative ideas and experimenting, his firm belief is that the best way to improve is openness and the willingness to learn from each other, whether it be on programme, institutional or system level.

Eltjo has degrees in Philosophy, Business Management and Professional Sailing. His activities in quality assurance are a perfect combination of his love for education and the fields of philosophy and business management. Sailing has been diverted to his free time.

Sandra Bezjak started her career at the University of Zagreb and moved to the Croatian Agency for Science and Higher Education (ASHE) in 2005 after its establishment. Since then, she has been working in the field of quality assurance in HE.

During the first years at the agency, she was included in the setting up of the national QA scheme in HE in line with ESG and good international practices. Her work and topics of interest are especially related to institutional and program accreditations, and in recent years, to the implementation of the CroQF, the European Approach for Quality Assurance of Joint programmes and cross-border evaluations.

She actively participated in providing support to Croatian HEIs in the development of their own internal QA systems and was an invited speaker at a large number of meetings and events organised at national and international level. She is very passionate about quality assurance issues and witnessed the impact that these processes can have on the development of quality in HE at a national level.

Sandra Bezjak was a member of the ENQA Agency Review Committee in its first term (2021-2023) and participated as expert in several ENQA agency reviews (as a panel member, secretary and a chair). She also participated in several international projects with a focus on strengthening some of the EHEA agencies and their alignment with ESG, especially in the region of South-Eastern Europe.

She obtained a Master’s degree in Molecular Biology and a Master of Science degree in Biotechnical Sciences, both from the University of Zagreb.

Higher Education, Research and Scientific Culture, Public Policies and Development of Educational System.

Maria Arminda Bragança de Miranda has a Master’s degree in American Studies by the Open University of Lisbon, with a post graduate degree from the National Endowment for the Humanities by the Connecticut College, New London, USA and graduated in British-American Studies by Faculdade de Letras, University of Lisbon.  She was an upper secondary school teacher and held positions as Department Coordinator, Teacher Trainer of Continuous and Specialist education.

Maria was a member of the Executive Board of the FNE (National Federation of Education) where she had positions as Department Coordinator (Communication and Press Department, International Department) and member active of the Social Dialogue Department.

She was also National Coordinator of several European Projects, a member of the ETUCE Committee, integrated the Working Group of the European Sectoral Social Dialogue in Education (ESSDE) and was not only President of the APPI (Portuguese Association of Teachers of English) but also General-Secretary of the FNAPLV (National Federation of Portuguese Language Associations) and a member of the board of the FIPLV (International Federation of Modern Language Associations).

Maria Arminda Bragança de Miranda participated in the debate and launching sessions of the Bologna Process in Portugal and in the evaluation sessions presented by A3ES-Agency for Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation. Furthermore she published co-authored books, book chapters, course books and journal articles.

Patricia Georgieva obtained a Master degree in Education at the Faculty of Philosophy in St. Kliment Ohridski university in Sofia, followed by a PhD degree at the same university. She was a Head of Higher Education Research Department at the National Institute of Education and specialised in the field of quality assurance at the Institute of Education in London University (1996-1997).

Patricia Georgieva was a member of the International Accreditation Council of AKKORK (2015-2019), Secretary General of the National Evaluation and Accreditation Agency of Bulgaria (2002-2008) and co-opted Board member of ENQA (2004-2005; 2008). She served as a Review Panel secretary and Review-Panel member in ENQA coordinated quality reviews of agencies (EUA, 2009; AKKORK- Russian Federation, 2011 and 2014; NOKUT- Norway, 2013; HCERES- France, 2016).

Inga holds a Doctor`s degree in Economics and a Master of Science in Education; she also has a Professional Master’s degree in Economics with a specialisation in Statistics. She has over 25 years of experience in higher education management, research, quality assessment and international project management.

Since 2008, Inga has worked in more than 30 peer-review experts teams evaluating higher education institutions, study directions and programmes. She is appointed Deputy-Chair of the Study Quality Commission in Latvia.

Professor Lapiņa has gathered significant experience by participating in Latvian and international organisations. She is an elected member of the Latvian Employers’ Confederation in the Tripartite Cooperation Subcommittee of Vocational Education and Employment, a member of the Council of Experts in Business, Finance, Accounting, and Administration, as well as a Board Member of Baltic Management Development Association. She is also the RTU representative in the Latvian Quality Society, in the Conference of European Schools for Advanced Engineering Education and Research (CESAER) and the American Society for Quality (ASQ), as well as in the United Nations Initiative Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME). She is an expert in the Latvian Technical Committee for Standardization LVS/STK/10 “Quality Management and Quality Assurance”, incl. issues related to the development and harmonisation of terminology.

where he works with the Vice-Presidents Academic group across the Irish university system.

Within the Irish Universities Association (IUA) he has overall responsibility for a broad portfolio of policy areas, including access, admissions, teaching and learning, student engagement, skills and graduate outcomes, graduate studies and quality.

Prior to joining IUA in 2005, Lewis worked at the European University Association and with several United Nations agencies in educational, health and social fields. He is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin and of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies at the University of Geneva.

Lewis has contributed to more than 25 evaluations of university quality assurance in over 15 European countries since 1998. While these have mostly been with the Institutional Evaluation Programme (of which Lewis is currently a steering committee member), he has also been a member of expert evaluation panels with national agencies in Belgium, Germany, Iceland, Latvia and Switzerland.

She has had a long career teaching at the university level and conducting research as a professor of Russian Studies.

She has also been active in the development of higher education as, e.g. a national coordinator for the Finnish Bologna implementation in 2002-2005 and a member of the Finnish Bologna Promoters’/Experts’ Team in 2006-2013 and several other national working groups and projects. In 2015-2016 she was chairing a Nordic working group for quality in higher education, appointed by the Nordic Council of Ministers.

From 2004 she was a member, and from 2008 until 2014, the Chair of the Finnish national quality assurance agency FINHEEC. She has participated in several European evaluations and reviews as a member or chairperson of the evaluation panel.

He previously worked as Senior Consultant in Ramboll Management Consulting, where he was project director of large international contracts with the EU, the World Bank and the ADB with a focus on capacity building in the public sector. Later he also worked with national and European evaluations, and with analysis of impact of EU policy. Steffen Westergard Andersen  also spent 4 years in Brussels with responsibility for Intra-Community Affairs in the Red Cross EU Office.

He holds a Master’s degree in Public Governance from the Copenhagen Business School and a BA in Management and Organization. Originally, he was formed as a Master of Political Science at the University of Aarhus.

Steffen Westergard Andersen is a CAIP commission member in the Catalan accreditation institution AQU Catalunya, situated in Barcelona. He is also active in quality assurance discussions at a European level, and he is currently involved in the EU/ASEAN SHARE project, where he is taking part in peer reviews of quality assurance institutions in Malaysia and Indonesia