Birgitte Simonsen has an academic background in education and sociology. She has been an associate professor of the Department of Sociology at Copenhagen University and the Department of Educational Research at Roskilde University. From 2000 she was for ten years a professor and director of the Center for Youth Research, which is set up and run by an association of interested partners and has been attached to various universities.

BS has participated in and directed a great number of Danish and international research and development projects about youth conditions and problems in areas stretching from education and employment to abuse and criminality. She has a deep insight into the condition and situation of youth today, the challenges they meet and how they cope with them in a society with and overwhelming pace of development and uncertain future perspectives.

BS is involved in extensive national and international activities of lectures, courses and writings about contemporary youth issues, youth education, youth culture and youth problems.

Knud Illeris has an academic background in educational psychology and has been an associate professor and since 1995 a full professor of educational research at Roskilde University. In 2005 he changed for a chair of lifelong learning at the Danish University School of Education (now attached to Århus University). He left this job in 2009 when SIMIL was started, but is still attached to the university. In 2004 he was appointed Honorable Adjunct Professor of Educational Learning and Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York. In 2006 he became a member of The International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame. In 2010 he received the Dutch Chris Argyris Award of Organizational Learning.

KI has played a central role in the development and dissemination of project work as an educational method. He has especially worked with the generic and vocational training and education of youth and adults, learning in working life, and the development of a comprehensive and contemporary theoretical understanding of learning processes and barriers.

KI’s many books and articles on learning, adult education etc. have been published in great numbers in Danish, English, Chinese and many other languages, and he has given lectures, presentations and keynotes in 26 countries at five continents. His publications in English include “The Three Dimensions of Learning” (2002), “Adult Education and Adult Learning” (2004), “Learning in Working Life” (2004), “How We Learn: Learning and Non-Learning in Schools and Beyond” (2007), “The Fundamentals of Workplace Learning” (2010), and the edition of “Contemporary Theoties of Learning” (2009) and “International Perspectives on Competence Development” (2009).