144 / 150
THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
144
Jesús A. Núñez Villaverde
is economist
and military officer (reserve force). He is special-
ised in security, peace building and conflict pre-
vention, with a particular attention to the Arab-
Muslim world. He is currently codirector of the
Institute of Studies onConflicts andHumanitarian
Action (
Instituto de Estudios sobre Conflictos y
Acción Humanitaria
, IECAH) and professor of
International Relations at the Comillas Pontifical
University. He is also president for the office in
Spain of the United Nations Relief and Works
Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East
(UNRWA) and works as a consultant for different
agencies such as the Spanish Agency for
International Development Cooperation (
Agencia
Española de Cooperación Internacional para el
Desarrollo
, AECID) and the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP). Member of
the International Institute for Strategic Studies
(IISS), he collaborates with numerous media both
written and audiovisual.
Vicente Palacio
is Deputy Director of the
Fundación Alternativa’s Observatory of Spanish
Foreign Policy and professor at the School of
International Relations of the Instituto de
Empresa. He has directed and coordinated re-
search for the Socialist group in the Spanish
Parliament, the Cabinet of the Spanish President
and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and
Cooperation. Palacio has been Associate
Professor of Internal Relations at Syracuse
University and a visiting fellow and researcher at
Harvard University’s Department of Government.
He is author of dozens of analyses and articles
for the specialised press on the subjects of
Spanish and EU foreign policy, transatlantic rela-
tions and EU–Latin American relations. He is a
frequent contributor to
El País
and CNN’s Spanish
language news channel.
Jorge Pérez Martínez
gained his Ph.D. in
Telecommunications Engineering from the
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and his M.Sc.
in Political Science and Sociology from the
Universidad Complutense. He has been a
Professor at the Higher Technical School of
Telecommunications Engineering of Universidad
Politécnica de Madrid since 1990 and his
research topics relates to socio-economic as-
pects of Information and Communication
Technologies and telecommunications policy. In
addition to his distinguished academic career,
he has held several positions in public and pri-
vate institutions including dean of the Official
College of Telecommunications Engineers and
Director General for the Development of
Information Society at the Science and Culture
Ministry of Spain. Nowadays he is director of
the Information and Communications
Technologies Group of Universidad Politécnica
de Madrid and manages the Red.es chair,
through which he advices the Secretary of State
for Telecommunications and Information Society
at the Industry, Energy and Tourism Ministry.
Moreover, he leads the Spanish Internet
Governance Forum in Spain (IGF-Spain).
Alfred Pfaller
works as a free-lance consult-
ant and analyst on issues of political economy.
Before he was an editor, analyst, researcher and
program coordinator with the Friedrich Ebert
Foundation (FES) in Bonn, Germany. From 2004
to 2007 he was director of the FES Bucharest of-
fice, developing programs of political education,
civic mobilization, consulting and international
exchange for Romania, Moldova and South East
European region. In the 1970s he worked with
the FES offices in Chile and Ecuador. Alfred Pfaller
studied sociology and economics. He holds a
Ph.D from the University of Pittsburgh, USA.