Judith Neisse

Judith Neisse has an MA with distinction from Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg, Germany and the Sorbonne in Islamic Studies. She has been working since 1994 with the European Commission, first as internal expert and than as a free-lance on cultural and gender issues. She has focused on the themes of cultural heritage, artistic production, intercultural dialogue and youth especially for the Mediterranean area and the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership between the EU and its 12 Southern and Eastern Mediterranean countries. After Three years as a programme officer for Culture and Media within the European Commission, General Direction for External Affairs, the Mediterranean Direction, she established herself as freelance to run her own consultancy company, Mediana sprl. It focuses on training about EU programmes and projects management, evaluation and policy advice in the fields of culture, intercultural dialogue, gender and youth. Judith Neisse worked again closely with the EC in 2003 as a programme officer at the Technical Assistance Office for the Socrates Programme for the Adult Education Programme Grundtvig. Since than she is evaluating project proposals for the same programme, especially concerning culture and cultural dialogue as active citizenship.

More recently, in 2005, Judith Neisse has been elected as the president of the Roberto Cimetta Fund, which is giving mobility scholarships for artists coming from Arab Mediterranean countries. It supports the exchange and cooperation in the performing arts between the artists from the EU and from the Mediterranean basin, which is a solid form of intercultural dialogue.

Since 2004, Judith Neisse was the team leader to evaluate the youth exchange programme Euromed Youth II that was mainly promoting intercultural dialogue among young persons from the EU and the Mediterranean. She also assisted the EC by the design and the launching of the new youth exchange programme Euromed Youth III. This work involved the set up of a new administrative management scheme together with proposal for contents to be addressed by the new programme that targeted again the intercultural exchanges.