Katarzyna Królik-Atilla is the Grant Holder Manager of the COST Action PAAR-net – Participatory Approaches with Older Adults(CA22167), affiliated with the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. She is responsible for the coordination of administrative, financial, and logistical processes that support the network’s collaborative research and knowledge exchange activities across Europe and beyond.
She brings to PAAR-net over 15 years of international professional experience in business development and strategic partnerships, having held senior leadership roles in the financial sector in Denmark and Cyprus. Her expertise spans project management, multi-stakeholder collaboration, and the operational delivery of large-scale initiatives. Katarzyna holds a recently completed Master’s degree in Oriental Studies with a specialisation in Turkology and Turkish Literature from the Jagiellonian University. Her academic interests focus on cultural heritage, identity, and the role of literature in shaping social understanding. She also holds degrees in Business Administration and International Marketing and Management from universities in Poland and Denmark.
Willeke van Staalduinen is the CEO of AFEdemy, academy on age-friendly environments in Europe founder and co-director of the SHAFE Foundation (Smart Healthy Age-Friendly Environments). She graduated as a political scientist and was a nurse in practice in mental healthcare. She worked at the Dutch Parliament as a policy advisor on health politics and internal affairs. During her policy advisor work at a governmental agency, she delivered implementation policy advice on the building of residential care homes, functional requirements for care at home and for independent living of people with chronic conditions or impairments. Since 2013, Willeke worked with the WHO concept of age-friendly cities and communities. She is actively involved in Age-Friendly City The Hague and co-developed with The Hague University of Applied Sciences the Age-Friendly Cities and Communities Questionnaire with which older adults themselves can express their opinions on the age-friendliness of their community. She is the member of the Dutch network of Age-friendly Cities under formation. She was the vice-chair and Grant Holder of COST Action NET4Age-Friendly and is currently active as a Co-coordinator Stakeholders and Management Committee member of COST Action PAAR-net, on participatory approaches with older adults (2023-2027). She is a member of the Age-friendly Western Balkan Countries Network since 2024.
I am a professor for participatory health care research at the Bern University of Applied Sciences in Switzerland. As a social and health geographer my particular interest lies in caring spaces and practices across the globe and locally. More recently, I have been exploring the nexus between care and participatory approaches in projects initiating caring communities to support healthy aging.