Geraldine de Bastion

Geraldine de Bastion is a bilingual (en/de) political scientist with an intercultural background and experience working with activists, governments, startups and NGOs across the word. Her work focuses on digital transformation and international cooperation, innovation, and human rights. de Bastion founded the consultancy Konnektiv in 2013. Konnektiv advises various organisations including the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the German Federal Ministry of Labour (BMAS) on digital transformation. Geraldine is also the founder of the Global Innovation Gathering (GIG), a network of grassroots innovators, social entrepreneurs, founders, and managers of makerspaces, hackerspaces, and innovation hubs. In 2018 she authored and moderated the Arte documentary "Digital Africa" which captures many of the innovators active in the GIG network. Since 2012, she has been part of the curatorial team for the re:publica, Europe's largest conference on the topic of the Internet and society, and regularly organizes and curates events in the field of politics and digitization. In 2018 she organised the first re:publica in Accra, Ghana with over 2000 participants and over 260 speakers from across Africa.