Katerina Vlasaki is the Director of the Regional Observatory for Social Inclusion of the Region of Crete.
She holds a PhD and an MSc in public policy analysis in the field of social policy and employment policies, from the Department of Political Science and Public Administration of the National & Kapodistrian University of Athens. From 2021 to present, she is conducting a post-doctoral research in related thematic fields at the same Department. She is a graduate of the Department of Sociology of the University of Crete. She also studied at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Birmingham (U.K.) and at the Migration Policy Center of the European University Institute in Florence. During her studies she was a scholar of the Onassis Foundation and the State Scholarships Foundation (IKY).
She has many years of research experience and participation in conferences, workshops and programs in Greece and the EU. Since 2011, she has been an executive of the Region of Crete, a specialist in social policy issues at the national and interregional level in the development of partnerships in the EU. In this context, she has coordinated and undertakes initiatives related to regional strategic planning for social inclusion and combating poverty, social and solidarity economy, social entrepreneurship, social innovation, sustainability, integration of immigrants, active aging, fighting child abuse, gender equality.