Rethinking Working Conditions and Social Sustainability in European Family Farming

Dr. David Meredith is a Senior Research Officer at Teagasc, Ireland’s Agriculture and Food Development Authority, where he leads the Department of AgriFood Business and Spatial Analysis. He serves as Principal Investigator for the Horizon Europe SafeHabitus project (2023-2026) and previously led the Irish RENEW2050 and BeSAFE projects, developing evidence-based interventions to improve farmer safety, occupational health, and mental wellbeing. His research examines the social and economic factors that influence farmer behaviour and safety practices, translating findings into actionable policy recommendations and practical resources for agricultural advisors and policymakers at national and EU levels. Dr. Meredith has published extensively on farm safety and rural occupational health, and currently supervises a team of PhD and Post-Doctoral researchers in these fields. He holds a PhD in Human Geography from Maynooth University and a Higher Diploma in Statistics from Trinity College Dublin, enabling him to combine rigorous quantitative analysis with applied social research to address critical safety and wellbeing challenges in agriculture.

Sustainability crisis and our responsibility as scientific community

Franz Faupel is Chairman of the North European Initiative Nanotechnology (NINa SH e.V.) and founding member of the International Alliance of Societies for a Sustainable Future (SFS). Until March 2025, he held the Chair for Multicomponent Materials at Kiel University and published over 400 research papers, inter alia, on metallic glasses, functional nanocomposites, magnetoelectric sensors, photocatalysis, plasma deposition, and memristive devices for bioinspired neuromorphic computing. After a research stay as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the IBM Research Center in Yorktown Heights, he completed his habilitation at the University of Göttingen in 1992. For more information, please visit https://www.tf.uni-kiel.de/matwis/matv/en?set_language=en and https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=YnVgzIoAAAAJ&hl=de.

How science can help us produce more biogas at lowest social costs

Biljana Kulisic, PhD, policy officer at the Unit C2 Decarbonisation and sustainability of energy sources within European Commission Directorate-General for Energy:

Biljana has over 20 years of experience in concerted policy and assessing socio-economic aspects of bioenergy. She is involved in IEA Bioenergy TCP since 2005 and was contracted as an independent expert for bioeconomy, bringing in the spirit of EU15 to the group, to the European Commission Directorate-General Research and Innovation 2020-2021. Since October 2022, she works as a policy officer at the European Commission, Directorate-General Energy: Decarbonisation and Sustainability of Energy Sources Unit, with biomethane, GHG emissions from biofuels pathways and general role of bioenergy within the energy and bioeconomy.

Before going to Bruessels, Biljana was a researcher, guest lecturer and assistant professor at the Faculty of Food Science in Osijek, Croatia, establishing the first bioeconomy specialist MSc in the country.