Prof. Michal Molcho (ENCOUNTER Co-Supervisor), Dept. of Children's Studies, NUI Galway

Prof. Michal Molcho, Head of the School of Education and founder of the Department of Children's Studies @University of Galway, Ireland is a world-renowned expert in the sociology of children and youths. She founded the Department of Children's Studies at NUI Galway in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: the only such department in Europe with a child-centred, multidisciplinary perspective. Currently, she serves as a Head of the School of Education @University of Galway.

Doc. Gabriela Seidlová Málková, PhD.

Gabriela is a supervisor of the ENCOUNTER project and IF fellowship. She is a founder of the Department of Psychology at the School of Liberal Arts and Humanities (ENCOUNTER Host Institution). She also acts as a vice-dean for research at the same School. She is an expert researcher in educational and developmental psychology, specialising in literacy and its impact on children's social exclusion/inclusion. With long experience conducting studies as a principal investigator in developmental psychology in European and Czech-funded projects and have a long experience supervising PhD fellows. She has co-authored publications on youth mentoring in the Czech and international context. Her expertise in tackling deprivation, creating conditions for positive change in education, and developing methodical tools for educators are particularly relevant in supervising the ENCOUNTER project. She will provide advanced training in current psychological theories on children's development in a social context and in methods and skills for developing intervention materials/programmes for school children while co-authoring ENCOUNTER publications and other outputs. She has long-standing collaborative relationships with several Czech primary schools, which will facilitate access to research participants during the fieldwork of the ENCOUNTER project.

Ms. Szilvia Simon, Head of the Mentoring Europe ENCOUNTER partner organisation is an expert in mentoring evidence-based practice and communicating research results to mentoring stakeholders across the EU and the Head of the Mentoring Europe. She is also a director of the bi-annual conference European Mentoring Summit for mentoring stakeholders across the EU. In the ENCOUNTER project, she is an important partner who will facilitate the intersectoral transfer of knowledge, networking, dissemination, communication and exploitation of the ENCOUNTER results and future collaborations among youth mentoring practitioners, professionals, academics and researchers, and the lay public across the EU.

Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship no. 101027291. The ENCOUNTER project was awarded funding H2020 MSCA-IF-EF-ST grant no. 101027291: ENCOUNTER: Experiences of youth in natural mentoring relationships. The project started on 27th September 2021 and lasted until 26th September 2023. https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101027291.

Department of Psychology, School of Liberal Arts and Humanities Charles University in Prague: ENCOUNTER project is hosted as an H2020 MSCA IF Research project at the School of Liberal Arts and Humanities (Faculty of Humanitities) at Charles University in Prague.

https://fhs.cuni.cz/FHS-2495.html, https://www.studujfhs.com/tvp