Keynote Speakers

Keynote Speakers

 

Kenneth Ruud

Dr Kenneth Ruud is Director General at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI), where he joined in January 2022. He holds a Dr.Philos. in theoretical and computational chemistry from the University of Oslo. His main research focus has been on developing and applying electronic-structure methods to light-matter interactions in a wide frequency range, including nonlinear optical processes. He has partial leave from his position as professor of theoretical chemistry at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. He has extensive experience with research and research leadership, including the position as pro-rector for research and development at UiT (2013–2021), where he was actively engaged in the university’s activity on open science.

Jemimah Steinfeld

Jemimah Steinfeld is CEO of Index on Censorship, a UK-based NGO that reports on and campaigns for freedom of expression worldwide.

Patrick Weil

Dr. Patrick Weil is an emeritus research professor of history at the University of Paris1, Pantheon-Sorbonne. From 2008 to 2024, he was a Visiting Professor of Law at Yale Law School. In the fall 2025, he was a fellow at the University of Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression.  

He is the author – in English of The Sovereign Citizen, Denaturalization and the Origins of the American Republic, (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013) and, most recently of The Madman in the White House. Sigmund Freud, Ambassador Bullitt and the Lost Psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson (Harvard University Press, 2023, paperback 2025).  

Patrick Weil is also the founder and the chairman of the international NGO Libraries Without Borders (Bibliothèques Sans Frontières).  

Since 2006, Libraries Without Borders has been working to provide access to knowledge for all in some thirty countries.  The NGO creates innovative cultural and educational tools and spaces to reach out to people affected by crises and precariousness, allowing them to enjoy themselves, continue learning and dreaming, forge connections, and (re)build their future.