Dr Nikos Kastrinos is a Senior Fellow in the Global Education and Innovation section. He is a former EU official of the Directorate General for Research in the European Commission, where he led foresight activities and coordinated the use of strategic foresight. Previously he served as special advisor to the EU Presidencies of Cyprus and Ireland and to the Greek Minister of Education. Previously he was responsible for social sciences humanities and strategic studies. Nikos has dedicated his life to generating value from research in the social sciences and humanities for policy processes, and is currently serving in the board of the EU Staff Fund for a Fair and Sustainable Future, and works with the European Alliance for the Social Sciences and the Humanities, and futurist think tanks including the US based Millennium Project, the Department of Sociology of the University of Alicante, and the School of International Futures and SAMI consulting in the UK..
Nikos has a global reputation as a leader, teacher and mentor in research and practice of foresight, innovation policy and evaluation. Important European Foresight endeavours have been launched under his leadership including those supporting Strategic Planning in EU Research Policy and the Futures for Europe Platform Nikos has been a Member of the Scientific Committee of the 2021 New Technologies and Techniques in Statistics Conference of EUROSTAT; and has taken part in number advisory fora for the OECD and the European Environment Agency. He has given numerous invited talks on foresight and science and technology, including the 2019 “Distinguished Global Speaker” 2019 Lecture at the US National Science Foundation. His recent work focusses on techno-optimism and especially in the ways technology functions in the politics of global environmental governance. In 20203 he Chaired a track on Science and Technology Policy for flourishing ecosystems in the 2023 - Conference of the European Forum for Studies of Policies for Research and Innovation Eu-SPRI – SPRU, University of Sussex 14-16 June. Nikos holds a first class degree in public law and international relations from the University of Athens, and a Masters in Technical Change and Industrial Strategy and a Doctorate in Science and Technology Policy from the University of Manchester.