Biography

Mr. Hajdinjak is a member of ARC Fund’s Research Ethics Board. He worked as a senior analyst at ARC Fund for 10 years, participating in and managing international research projects supported under FP7, Horizon 2020, Interreg Danube and Interreg-Europe programs. 

Before joining the ARC Fund team, Mr. Hajdinjak was a program director at the International Center for Minority Studies and Intercultural Relations, and an expert at the Center for the Study of Democracy. He also worked as an external expert for the Aston University on the project CITISPYCE – combating inequalities through innovative social practices of, and for, young people in cities across Europe (2012-2014).

His main expertise is in the fields of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI); socio-economic impacts of research infrastructures; energy citizenship and social-cultural aspects of green transition. In the past, he worked on a wide range of topics, from organized crime and smuggling, minority rights, migrations, nationalism, gender issues, exclusion and inclusion of disadvantaged communities, and safe and responsible use of digital technologies among children and young people.

He has been systematically engaged with the concept of RRI since 2016, when he became a principal investigator in a H2020-supported project Responsible Research and Innovation in Practice (RRI-Practice), which examined barriers and drivers to successful implementation of RRI in research conducting and research funding organizations. Other RRI-related initiatives Mr. Hajdinjak participated in are ResInfra@DR project (Facilitating Macro-regional Scope and Link Up to Socio-economic Actors of Research Infrastructure in the Danube Region), TeRRItoria (TErritorial Responsible Research and Innovation ThrOugh the involvement of local R&IActors), ETHNA System (Ethics Governance System for RRI in Higher Education, Funding and Research Centers), SuperMoRRI and RRI-LEADERS (Leveraging Leadership for Responsible Research and Innovation in Territories) – a project coordinated by ARC Fund. 

Mr. Hajdinjak led the work of a task group, which wrote ARC Fund’s Code of Ethics and Good Research Practices, Open Access Policy, Public Engagement Policy and Gender Equality and Diversity Plan.

He obtained a Master of Arts degree in Nationalism Studies at the Central European University, Budapest, Hungary in 2001, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Southeast European Studies at the American University in Bulgaria in 2000. In addition to his native Slovenian language, he is proficient in English, Bulgarian, Serbian and Croatian.