Professor Evaldas Kazlauskas – is a clinical psychologist and one of the leading experts on trauma- and stress-related disorders in Europe. He is the President of the European Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (2021-2022). Prof. Kazlauskas is the founder and Head of the Center for Psychotraumatology at Vilnius University in Lithuania. For the last two decades, his work has been dedicated to trauma recognition and advocating for the implementation of trauma-informed care. His current research is focused on the assessment and treatment of ICD-11 stress-related disorders, internet-based interventions for stress-related disorders, effects of trauma across the lifespan.

Professor Rachel Dekel serves as the academic head of the International School at Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. She is a full professor at the Louis and Gabi Weisfeld School of Social Work, and a former head of the school. She is the winner of the I-CORE grant: Israeli Centers of Research Excellence, in the area of mass trauma. Professor Dekel is known for her research on caregiver burden, and couple and family coping, in the context of trauma, PTSD, and domestic violence. She is the founder and director of the Family Trauma Clinic, which promotes advances a family-oriented perspective in helping survivors of various traumatic experiences, such as road accidents, crime, and terror. She has won several Israeli and international grants and has published more than 150 scientific publications and supervised around 60 students. Read more about her work at: https://www.racheldekel.com/.

Siri Thoresen, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and a senior researcher at the Norwegian Center for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies and professor at the Department of Psychology, University of Oslo. Dr. Thoresen has conducted research on a variety of topics within the violence and traumatic stress fields, including sexual and physical violence, childhood violence, revictimization, and consequences of violence, such as shame, loneliness and health problems. Her particular research interests include social relationships and social responses, life course perspectives, and research methodology.

Professor Krzysztof (Krys) Kaniasty teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in research methodology, social psychology, and stress and coping at Indiana University of Pennsylvania where he is a Professor of Psychology. He is also a research professor in the Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences. He conducted and collaborated on several large-scale longitudinal studies investigating social support exchanges, individual and communal coping, and psychological well-being following natural disasters and other major traumatic stressors in the US, Mexico, China, New Zealand, France, Israel, and Poland. He is the past editor of Anxiety, Stress and Coping: An International Journal, and past president of the Stress and Anxiety Research Society (STAR). He is perhaps the foremost authority on postdisaster social support, having authored or co-authored numerous empirical and theoretical articles, chapters, and reports on the topic. Kaniasty’s scholarship has been recognized with several prestigious honors including the Individual Award from the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education for his book about the 1997 Polish Flood (2003), STAR´S Lifetime Career Award (2011), and Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s 2014-15 Distinguished University Professor.