Erik Thau-Knudsens
curriculum vitae

Qualifications

ETK has carried out several assignments in linguistic services in contact with East Europeans and East European delegations, which include trade union cooperation, vocational schools, police force methods, fur trade, field research expeditions within sociology, ethnography, biology, and linguistics. As member of the International Humanitarian Preparedness of the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Internationale Humanitære Beredskab), ETK also has experience as elections observer.

ETK has a thorough experience with refugees and asylum seekers, including repatriation of Bosnians.

Countries with working experience in this respect: Russia, FYRO Macedonia, Greece, and Denmark. In Russia, the experience ranks from the community level and to parliament delegates, ministers, and high-ranking government officials.

ETK has co-operated with colleagues in Germany, FYRO Macedonia, Russia, Bulgaria and has some experience with the EU, Nordic Council and OSCE systems.

PROJECTS

Within the framework of TGK Consult, ETK is involved with capacity building in Kamtchatka.

In 1993, ETK was organising and carrying out Expedition Yakutia 1993, a combined project with research and filming scopes in North-East Siberia, involving 11 Danes and . The gathered ethnographic material was exhibited at the Moesgaard Prehistoric Museum (Aarhus, Denmark) in 1995 under the title "Ways of Siberia", and ETK was actively involved with the organisation of the exhibition on a volunteer level. A booklet from the event was also published, into which ETK also contributed. Another spin-off of the expedition was establishing fur trade with the indigenious peoples of the Kolyma regions of North East Yakutia, Swedish and Danish fur importers, and the Danish Fur Auctions. Negotiations were also conducted regarding eco-tourism in areas inhabited by the indigenous peoples (Yukaghirs, Evens, Yakuts, Chukchee).

EXPERIENCE FROM RELEVANT WORK IN DENMARK

ETK has more than 10 years of experience as a free-lancing interpreter and translator for the Danish police force and the judicial system of Denmark, thus also running and administrating his own company. He has been teaching Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, Russian, Yakutian (an indigenous language of North-East Siberia), and Mongolian for the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, University of Copenhagen, and on-demand free-lancing for individual clients. Apart from this, he has a carreer in research within the Balkan and Siberian areas.

Within the framework of TGK Consult since the beginning of 2004, ETK has been supervising the economy of the Information Centre in RAIPON (Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North) in Kamtchatka with its four regional centres. The Information Centre functions as a link to the central RAIPON organisation, based in Moscow. He has also been organising the set-up of updated versions of TGK Consult's web site.

While a student, ETK was engaged in students politics at a national level. His work-fields included internationalisation & international contacts. Within this frame-work, he had meetings with exchanges of experiences with his opposites in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Finland, as well as an international conference in WESIB (West European Students' Information Bureau) in cooperation with the European Council.

OTHER EXPERIENCES WITH THE INVOLVED COUNTRIES

Albania: Stayed a month there. Had meetings with prominent professors from Albania, as well as from Kosovo.

Bulgaria: Lived there for a year while a student. Many stays before and after that. Meetings with cultural workers, university professors, party members, communicating with mid-level government officials.

Croatia: Stayed there for a couple of times for summer courses. Exchange of experiences with high-ranking members of the political systems before and after 1991.

Kazakhstan: Six weeks in fall 2004 as long-term observer of the parliamentary elections (under ODIHR/OSCE). Negotiations with political candidates, proxies, election commissions, as well as with representatives of the authorities - executive (governour, mayors, police) and judicial (courts). First hand knowledge of the Pavlodar Oblast (Region).

Macedonia: Lived there for a year while a student. Many stays before and after that. Conference attention. Short term observation of referendum on November 7, 2004. Talks with parliamentarians, contact to and collaboration with the organisation Decata Begalci od Egejska Makedonija, a refugee orgnaisation. Friends in the printed and electronic press, and with top officials before the YU splitup.

Russia: Lived there for eight months while a student. More than a dozen stays after that on study and research occasions, including the above described Expedition Yakutia 1993. Experience as election observer. Having contacts to several members of the Academy of Sciences (notably in St Petersburg), as well as to central government officials. Negotiation experiences with parliamentarians, ministers and officials at all levels in Saha / Yakutia.

Serbia: Exchange of experiences with high-ranking members of the political system. Numerous acquaintances among intellectuals, especially within biology, arts and humanities.