FH-Prof. Dr. Eithne Knappitsch is Professor of Intercultural Management and Program Director of a Business Bachelor in Intercultural Management at Carinthia University of Applied Sciences (CUAS). Eithne is the Co-Founder of SIETAR Carinthia, which has amalgamated with SIETAR Austria. Eithne’s research, teaching and professional training interests life in the fields of Intercultural Management, Diversity Management, Unconscious Bias and Intercultural Communication. Eithne is a member of the TRANS SPACE research group, an interdisciplinary research group working on issues relating to Transformative Social Political and Cultural Engagement and is also a member of the Transfrontier Euro-Insitute Network (TEIN), a network devoted to the practical business of cross-border cooperation in Europe. Eithne grew up in Ireland and has lived in Northern Ireland, Belgium, Germany and currently Klagenfurt, Austria.

Svetlana is a sociologist, manager and cross-border researcher with intercultural experience in six countries. She graduated from Gymnasium in California (the USA, 1997), completed a specialist degree in St.Petersburg (Russia, 2002), conducted doctoral research on American-Ukrainian management (Kyiv, Ukraine 2009), concluded her post-doctoral research with ERSTE Foundation (Vienna, Austria, 2013).

Svetlana has managed US-European national field research projects (leadership, women entrepreneurship, cultural intelligence), designed and delivered HRM training (onboarding programs, pre-departure orientations, and re-entries), published in peer-reviewed journals, and has delivered guest lectures and presented at conferences across the globe. She is a docent of intercultural management, teaching at MA level Program “Intercultural Management” of School of Advanced Social Studies, (Nova Gorica, Slovenia), and a Senior Researcher the School of Management at Carinthia University of Applied Sciences (Villach, Austria).

Svetlana is currently working on the research project “Cross-border entrepreneurship and innovation in the tri-border region: Slovenia-Italy-Austria” and serves as an instructional designer for the cross-border business COIL labs.

Birgit Hochreiter is a consultant, business coach and trainer with the main focus on intercultural competencies, development of personal potential, and vision finding. She is the founder of Birgit Hochreiter Consulting.

Birgit has studied business economics, has a postgraduate diploma in Intercultural Competencies and is a business and life coach.  Before her self-employment, Birgit worked for an international group and then as a project manager for a consultancy.

She speaks English, Italian, French and Spanish.

Colin Heller works as a full-time Senior Lecturer / Senior Researcher and Language Coordinator at the University of Applied Sciences Carinthia (CUAS). He teaches German as a foreign language, Russian and German Language for specific purposes.

As a studied Slavic and foreign Germanic, he completed his doctorate in 2017 at the University of Klagenfurt in Russian Linguistics (Lexicography).

For more than ten years, he has been working in the field of applied linguistics.

Research interests:

Teaching German as a foreign language, Russian, Terminology, language for specific purposes, dictionary-making (German – Russian).