Steering Committee

Steering Committee

Steering committee members oversee the foundation's mission, strategy, and operations.

  • After completing a bachelor's degree in Political Science in Brussels, Viola Denizon joined l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, during which she wrote a thesis on "The perception of immigration by the Sicilian population". Since 2021, Viola Denizon has been a contractual doctoral student at the University Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne and the Ecole Française de Rome, under the supervision of Jean-Louis Briquet. She is co-supervised by the University Federico II of Naples and is affiliated with the Centre Européen de Sociologie et de Science Politique (CESSP). Viola Denizon's research focuses on the implantation of the far right in Southern Italy, specifically on Giorgia Meloni's party in Sicily, Fratelli d'Italia, in order to highlight the rise of extremism and right-wing populism within contemporary democracies. This thesis work is based on a 6-month ongoing field survey, combining participant observation and comprehensive interviews. She has participated in several international scientific projects (in New York, Rome, Sfax, Tunis, Paris, Madrid) during which she presented her ongoing work. Currently, she is writing a scientific article entitled "Campaigning for « La Meloni »: The Case of Regional and National Elections in Sicily."

  • Valérie is a Ph.D. Fellow from Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne studying European environmental Law and Access to justice in environmental matters. She earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degrees from the Free University of Brussels (Belgium). She completed a master of Advances studies in European law at Ghent University (Belgium) and an LL.M. at University of California, Berkeley. She has worked as a lawyer at the Brussels and Paris Bars and as a law clerk to Judges at the Court of justice of the European Union (Luxembourg). During her stay at Columbia Law School, she will focus on climate change litigation.

  • Unchain my Art has the ambition to enhance art exhibitions globally. Nowadays, numerous art pieces are in the hands of private collectors all around the world, while more exhibitions encounter large-scale public success. The need to connect both is pressing and would benefit all, but as collectors want to stay anonymous, museums can hardly connect with them. To solve this problem and enable exchange in a trustworthy environment we imagined a collective blockchain-based platform that can certify ownership while ensuring anonymity. Our project will help museums in their mission and make culture accessible to all.

  • Thomas Clay is a Professor of Private Law at the Sorbonne Law School (where he teaches Arbitration Law and Alternative Dispute Resolution. In 2020, he was also the University’s acting President and, in 2022, he founded Sorbonne Arbitrage. 

  • Thomas Bourveau joined Columbia University in 2018. He previously served on the faculty at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He obtained in PhD in Management Science from HEC Paris. He teaches financial statement analysis in Columbia Business School's MBA program. Professor Bourveau primarily conducts empirical research. His research lies at the intersection of accounting, law, and economics. He is most interested in evaluating the implications of regulatory interventions in financial markets, often through the role of information disclosure.

  • Thomas is a doctoral candidate in African history. His research focuses on histories of childhood, gender, health, and development in West Africa in the 20th century. His dissertation, titled « Burkinabè Humanitarianisms: Children, Mutual Aid, and Migration in and beyond Burkina Faso (1932-1990) » examines the multifaceted interventions that surveyed children’s lives in Burkina Faso (Upper-Volta before 1984) from the 1930s to the 1980s. These efforts played a critical role in defining communities’ interactions and interpretations of governmental practice in the late colonial and post-colonial periods. The project links a history of social work practice, an analysis of economic models that quantified households in the post-war period, and a social history of experiences of such interventions.

    Prior to pursuing his Ph.D., Thomas worked as a Peace Corps Fellow at University Neighborhood Housing Program, working on housing rights in New York. He served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Benin for two years, with a focus on health and education.

  • Thaís Tanure is a historian, PhD candidate (funded) at University Paris 1 Panthéon- Sorbonne. Member of the Centre for Social History at Contemporary Worlds and of the Labex Dynamite (Center of Excellence for Territorial and Spatial Dynamics). She is preparing a thesis on the heritage of slavery in Nantes and Rio de Janeiro (1983– 2019). Her research focuses on the processes of memorialization of the Atlantic slave trade and colonial slavery from a transatlantic perspective, as well as on the history of Afro-Atlantic cultures.

  • Sogol Edriss Abadi is a Ph.D. candidate in International and European Law at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, and her dissertation is on “The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iranian Nuclear Issue in the Light of International Law”. Her dissertation aims to analyze this complex agreement called JCPOA, which was endorsed by the Security Council, and to determine its legal nature, as well as its implementation, which has been called into question since May 8, 2018, following the Trump administration’s announcement to end the United States’ participation in the JCPOA.

    She received her Bachelor’s degree in Law from the University of Science and Culture in Tehran (in Persian: Daneshgah Elm va Farhang). She then came to France in order to continue her studies in international law and obtained a Master’s degree in International Law and International Relations from the University of Jean-Moulin (Lyon 3). In addition to her academic activities, during which she was a teaching assistant and tutor-librarian at the Universities of Paris 1 and Paris 2, respectively, she completed a three-year internship at Shearman & Sterling LLP in Paris, where she was in charge of enriching the Doctrinal database.

  • Advisor to the Russian government in the early 2010s, and Rector of the New Economic School in Moscow, the largest economics university in the country, Sergei Guriev left Russia in 2013 after denouncing the political repression and authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin. Threatened by the Russian regime and exiled to Paris, he joined the Economics Department at Sciences Po, where he became Scientific Director of the Master’s and PhD programmes in 2019. Between 2016 and 2019, Professor Guriev was also Chief Economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). At the beginning of his career, his research work took him to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Princeton University. He has recently taken up a five-year appointment as Senior Member to the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), Laureate of the Chair for Fundamental Research.

  • Sean Treacy is a Ph.D. student in Chemistry at Columbia University where he conducts research on the photocatalytic functionalization of C-H bonds in the Rovis Group. His research has focused the remote functionalization of aliphatic amines through nickel-photoredox catalysis and the intermolecular alkylation of feedstock alkanes with electron deficient olefins via copper catalysis. He received his BA from Princeton University in 2016 in Chemistry along with a certificate in Materials Science and Engineering.

  • Rosanne Craveia holds a Master’s Degree in International Law and International Organizations from Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University and a LLM in International Human Rights Law from Oxford Brookes University (UK).

    She is now a Ph.D. candidate in International Law at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University where she conducts her research on extractive industries and human rights, under the supervision of Professors Laurence Dubin and Evelyne Lagrange. Her thesis focuses on issues of responsibility and is based on the in-depth study of rigorously selected real cases in which human rights violations are alleged.

    Rosanne was also a teaching assistant at the Sorbonne Law School for three and a half years: she has taught Public International Law, International Economic Law, International Relations, Administrative Law and Fundamental Rights.

  • Robert is a PhD candidate in Development Economics at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon- Sorbonne. He focuses in his research predominantly on climate risk and disaster adaptation in a development context. Hereby, instead of solely spotlighting the macro dimension of the international finance-climate nexus, he chiefly centers his research around local economic impacts of (climate) disasters in developing countries measured, amongst others, by high resolution satellite imagery. To improve his understanding of applied disaster models, he has spent part of his PhD as a Visiting Scientist at the United Nations University in the Institute of Environment and Human Security in Germany.

    Before joining the PhD program in 2021, he obtained a MSc in Economics and a MPhil in Development Economics from Paris 1 after completion of his undergraduate studies in Germany.

  • Professor Mukherjee received her B.S. from Presidency College, University of Calcutta and her M.A., MPhil, and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University. In addition to being a professor, she served as the previous chair of physics and astronomy at Barnard College

  • Racha Radja is currently a Ph.D candidate in Private International Law at Sorbonne Law School, entering her third year, under the supervision of Professor Pascal de Vareilles-Sommières. Racha holds two master’s degrees, one in European Economic Law and one in Private International Law and International Commercial Law, both from Paris 1 University.

    Racha's thesis challenges the dogma of the neutrality of Private International Law, which is very much rooted in the French doctrine, by focusing on the existence of policies underlying the connecting factors of choice of law rules and rules of jurisdiction. She has a strong interest in comparative law, she decided to include European Union Law and American Conflict of Laws in her thesis.

    Alongside her Ph.D, Racha is a teaching assistant, She teaches Private International Law and Human rights. She is also the President of the Lex Association, an association of students and alumni of the master’s degree in Private International Law and International Commercial Law.

  • Quentin Couvreur is a PhD candidate in International Relations at Sciences Po’s Center of International Studies (CERI), where he works under the supervision of Professor Frédéric Ramel. His research focuses on China’s approach to multilateralism and global governance, through the study of China’s policies across the United Nations Development System. He is a member of the Research Group on Multilateral Action (GRAM), funded by the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).

    Quentin Couvreur holds a Master degree in Political Science from Sciences Po (2022). He has also taught various courses to undergraduate students from Sciences Po’s campus in Le Havre, including Comparative Politics and Political Science.

  • Pierre François is a sociologist and CNRS research director at the Center for the Sociology of Organizations (CSO). He served as director of Sciences Po’s department of sociology from 2014 to 2017. His research focuses on the dynamics of the worlds of art – particularly contemporary poetry – and on the sociology of businesses and their leaders. Pierre François teaches in Sciences Po’s masters program as well as the Collège universitaire (undergraduate level), where he teaches the introduction to sociology course. He was a professor of sociology at the École polytechnique between 2009 and 2017. Pierre François aims to enable Sciences Po’s Doctoral School to meet the twin challenges of research internationalization and of the growing scientific and methodological requirements it involves. 

  • Pauline Bozo is currently a PhD candidate in law at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University under the supervision of Marta Torre-Schaub. Her research focuses on the jurisdictional treatment of climate change, and more precisely before the French administrative courts. During her stay at Columbia’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, she aims to carry out a comparative study of renewable energy litigation on both sides of the Atlantic.
    Prior to beginning her Ph.D., she completed a master’s in public law (Université Paris Nanterre) and one in environmental law (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne). Alongside her research, she teaches and regularly takes part in scientific events on environmental and climate law as part of the Climalex program.

  • Oliver Durnan is a Ph.D. candidate in the Columbia Lab for Unconventional Electronics (CLUE) at Columbia University. He obtained his M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Columbia and his B.Eng. in Electrical Engineering from McGill University. His research focus is the integration of thin-film metal oxide electronics with microLED devices for displays and illumination.

  • Occitane Lacurie is a PhD student in arts and visual studies at the École des Arts de la Sorbonne (Université Paris 1 – Panthéon-Sorbonne) under the supervision of Olivier Schefer and Christa Blümlinger (Université Paris 8 – Vincennes-Saint-Denis). Her doctoral research aims to enlighten the regimes of visibility and the modes rationality generated by ghostly apparitions and their scientific study. From a history of spectral sciences and an anthropology of techniques aiming at observing or reproducing ghostly phenomena, her dissertation proposes an archaeology of audiovisual media drawing on these paradoxical rationalities and an investigation of the artistic forms derived from them that still haunt our visual culture. At Université Paris 1 and Université Paris 8, she works as a teaching assistant in film studies and in philosophy of art. Prior to her doctorate, she completed two Master’s degrees in film studies and in arts at the ENS de Lyon and the EHESS.

    Occitane is also a film critique for the French cinema journal Débordements and the cultural podcast of the newspaper Mediapart. She programs Débordements’ film club in the Saint- André-des-Arts cinema in Paris.

  • Nitouche Anthoussi is a PhD candidate in Fine Arts and Art Sciences at the Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, under the supervision of Professor Jean-Marie Dallet. Her doctoral research is about the appropriation of space in asylums, psychiatric hospitals, prisons, and the world of metaverse, from an artistic, philosophical, and anthropological approach.

    At the Columbia University she will be working in residence at the Justice in Education Initiative under the supervision of Professor Neni Panourgiá (Academic Adviser at JIE Initiative). She will be developing a project on comparative carcerality between Ellis Island and Leros (Greece).

    Nitouche having previously completed a Master 2 at the same university in Fine Arts and Contemporary Creation. She has also graduated from the School of Fine Arts of the University of Ioannina, Greece. From her great love mathematics, she finds herself in art. She is the first Erasmus international student to have been accepted by the Centre Culturel Georges Pompidou in Paris as a photographer for the main art collection and has participated in several artistic exhibitions in Athens, Paris, Milan, Ioannina and Corinth. In her spare time, Nitouche sails with the Paris 1 university team.

  • Niklas Schoch is a PhD candidate in economics interested in the interplay of climate policy interventions and firms’ technology choices. In his thesis, he evaluates the incentives of firms to adopt green technology in response to carbon pricing schemes in varying competition environments. To do so, he is estimating a structural model of dynamic imperfect competition, using data on fuel consumption and green investments of industrial installations in France. Prior to joining Sciences Po, he obtained a master’s degree in economics from the University of Mannheim and worked on energy policy as a consultant at the Institute of Energy Economics at the University of Cologne and the International Energy Agency.

  • Natalie Yang is a PhD candidate in Economics at Columbia University. She conducts research in urban economics, with a particular interest in studying urban transportation infrastructure and policies. She received her Bachelor’s degree from Yale University in 2018, majoring in Applied Mathematics and English.

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  • Mohamed Bouabdallah has been appointed Cultural Counselor of France in the United States and Director of Villa Albertine. He officially took office yesterday in New York City.

    Working under the authority of the Ambassador of France in the United States, Laurent Bili, Mohamed Bouabdallah will lead France’s strategy for cultural, educational, and university exchanges in the US. This includes directing France’s expansive education initiatives in the US, such as ‘French for All’, and taking the helm of Villa Albertine, the multidisciplinary and innovative arts institution with hubs in 10 cities across the country.

     

     

  • Meryl Lavenant is a PhD candidate at the History department in Paris I – Panthéon Sorbonne University in France. She is an alumnus of the École Normale Supérieure, and studied Russian language at Inalco (Paris). She is passionate with foreign languages and masters French, English, Italian, Spanish and Russian.

    Her research deals with the Russian southern expansion and the maritime aspects of the imperial project developed in the Black Sea region from 1774 to the late nineteenth century. Meryl proposes a work at the crossroads of imperial and maritime History, paying special attention to the importance of space in imperial dynamics and representations. She is particularly interested in reflecting on methodological challenges, in a context of difficult access to archives in Ukraine and Russia.

    Apart from her research activity, Meryl teaches in the Sorbonne and would like to explore the various and innovative ways in which historical research can be publicized.

  • Meltem Yildiz is a PhD candidate at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, pursuing her studies in arts, aesthetics and sciences of arts. Her academic journey includes an MA in Visual Arts and Contemporary Creation from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, as well as an MA in Visual Arts from the University of Bordeaux-Montaigne. She kickstarted her academic pursuits with a BA in Graphic Design from the University of Haliç (Istanbul), which notably featured an Erasmus student exchange program at the Academia di Belle Arti of L'Aquila in Italy. With a diverse educational background, she brings a wealth of experiences to her research and academic endeavours. Her professional journey includes serving as a mediator at the Sorbonne Art Gallery, where she actively engaged with artistic expression and curation. Currently, she leverages her expertise by delivering lectures on professional English applied to fine arts. A member of the Institut Acte (Art, Creation, Theory, Aesthetic), she actively participates in various exhibitions and seminars in Paris, Istanbul, Berlin, Athens and L’Aquila, contributing to the vibrant discourse surrounding art and its intersections with society. Her research transcends disciplinary boundaries, exploring the nexus of arts, sociology, geopolitics, and political sciences. Her work in participatory arts seeks to harness the theories, experiences, and approaches of social sciences as an artistic medium. By creating spaces for viewers to question and confront socio-politically imposed behaviours and modes of thought, her research aims to provoke critical dialogue and societal reflection.

  • Each year, more than 1 million people in the world die because of counterfeit medicines.

    With Meditect, patients and health professionals can scan their box of medicine to verify its authenticity and benefit from several information such as posology in different languages.

    Using Blockchain technology, Meditect and pharmaceutical companies empower patients and health professionals and strengthen public health in developing regions.

    The Meditect app is designed for pharmaceutical companies, pharmacists and patients and is currently deployed in West Africa. 

  • Maya Chehade is a French-Syrian second-year Ph.D. student at Sciences Po Paris. Maya has worked for several years in the private sector with Syrian refugees in the Middle East, before starting her doctoral research at Sciences Po on the topic of “the impact of the private sector on Syrian refugees in Jordan”. During the Alliance Doctoral Mobility, she will work with ASPIRE, a Columbia University Research Project on Syrian refugees that include researchers and partners at local universities, governmental agencies, NGOs, and the UN in Jordan. Her doctoral mobility at Columbia aims to capitalize on data collected by ASPIRE in 2016 and 2018 to help the progress of her dissertation in a context of difficulty of access to the fieldwork due to the Covid-19 Pandemic.

  • Matylda Borcuch is a Ph.D. student at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University under the supervision of Professor Pierre Wat. She holds a Master’s degree in Art History from the Fine Arts Academy in Warsaw and in French Modern Letters from the University of Warsaw. Specializing in the field of Polish Artists in France in the 20th century, her Master’s thesis on the exhibition Autour de Bourdelle: Paris et les artistes polonais. 1900-1918 received distinction in the competition held by the National Art Gallery Zachęta in Warsaw and the Gessel Foundation.

    Currently, she is focusing on her thesis dedicated to the Polish-Jewish painter Alice Halicka (1889-1974), who lived and created in France upon 1912. During her stay at Columbia, Matylda Borcuch will explore the lesser-known American chapter of Halicka’s career in the 1930s, including research in archives of different institutions, among others: MoMA, The New York Public Library for Performing Arts, Yale University Art Gallery. A stay at the American institution will be also an opportunity to enrich her research with new methods and examine the reception of Halicka’s art in the US.

    In addition to her doctoral dissertation, Matylda Borcuch works in the cultural field between France and Poland and has collaborated with different institutions such as Bourdelle Museum or Polish Institute in Paris.

  • Matthew Easton is a PhD candidate in economics at Columbia University. His current research interests are primarily in the fields of urban and spatial economics. In particular, he is studying urban growth and decay in the U.S. and France, and also is working on understanding how networks of cities can grow and succeed in developed and developing countries. Prior to beginning graduate work at Columbia in 2019, he graduated from Pennsylvania State University in 2016 and then worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

  • Mathilde De Sloovere is completing her fourth year in the PhD program at the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, working under the supervision of Professor Loiseau.

    Mathilde holds a Master’s degree in Employment and Labor Law from Paris I Panthéon-  Sorbonne University. She is also graduate in Work Psychology from Paris II Panthéon-Assas. Her doctoral thesis focuses on the question of sick leave through the following subject: « L’arrêt de  travail, symptôme d’un mal-être ou syndrome précontentieux» (i.e. in English : Does the use of  sick leave illustrate a malaise at work or an abusive behavior ?). She has a comparative approach.

    In the meantime, Mathilde taught as a teaching fellow and worked as a lawyer for three years in a  law firm.

    Mathilde  has  chosen  an  interdisciplinary  approach  that  establishes  a dialogue  between law, psychology, medical, and sociology.
     

  • Martina Olivero is currently a Ph.D. Candidate and ATER in Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art at the Sorbonne School of Arts, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, where she is a member of the Institut Acte (Aesthetics and Critical Theories of Culture). She holds both BA and MA in Philosophy from Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milan), with a focus on Existentialism and Psychoanalysis. She then specializes in German Philosophy (XVIII-XX century) and Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School. Her doctoral dissertation questions, with a critical approach, the role of the medium from ancient to contemporary artistic practices and mass culture by dealing with the acknowledgment of original devices, narratives, and representations in a late aesthetics of tragedy.

  • Martin Barnay is a Ph.D. candidate and Paul F. Lazarsfeld Fellow in the Department of Sociology at Columbia University. His doctoral dissertation deals with loneliness and social isolation in old age. He uses large, multi-country data sets from the telecare industry to explore the social nature of loneliness.

    Martin has MA degrees in Sociology and History, and a BA degree in History and Economics. Prior to joining Columbia, he worked as a researcher at the Centre de Sociologie Européenne in Paris, France

  • Martial Manet is a Ph.D. candidate in law at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne under the supervision of Professor Jean Matringe. He is a graduate in philosophy, political science and law from the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris and Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.

    Based mainly on the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, his research attempts to identify past and present legal figurations – understood as representations that make a concept legally perceptible and operational – of the notion of people, as given and constructed by drafters, interpreters, and all actors in African human rights law.

    Martial has chosen an interdisciplinary approach that establishes a dialogue between law, history, anthropology and sociology. These disciplines mobilized and articulated in a coherent manner, make it possible to move away from the law in its positive form by “historicizing” it, socializing it, and reintegrating it into the historical, social, and political environments of its emergence and contemporary practice.

  • Marie Robin is a third-year Ph.D. student in French colonial history at Columbia University where she studies the intersectionality of gender, race, sexuality, and military culture in the 20th-century French Empire. Her dissertation, tentatively entitled, “Managing Sex Overseas in the French Army: Bordel Militaire de Campagne (Mobile Field Brothels), Sexual Violence and Decolonization in Algeria and Vietnam (c. 1940-1960s),” provides the first comprehensive analysis of the strategies, policies, and practices employed by the French military to regulate and control sexual behavior and relationships among its troops during the First Indochina War (1946-1954) and the Algerian War (1954-1962) and the impact of these policies on broader processes of decolonization.

    Prior to starting her Ph.D. at Columbia, Marie graduated Summa Cum Laude with a BA in History and Middle-Eastern Studies from the American University of Paris (2017) and completed her MA in History at Durham University (2018). Marie writes public-facing history for the Synapsis: A Health Humanities Journal on military prostitution and has translated chapters of the forthcoming Cambridge History of the Vietnam War, vol. 1 & 3.

  • Marie Azuelos, based in Paris, FR, is currently a Acting Vice President for International Affairs at Sciences Po, bringing experience from previous roles at Sciences Po. Marie Azuelos holds a 2005 - 2007 Master's Degree in European Affairs @ Sciences Po. With a robust skill set that includes Bioinformatica, Program Evaluation, African Affairs, Capacity Building, Microbiologia and more, Marie Azuelos contributes valuable insights to the industry.

  • Mariana Katz is a PhD candidate in History at Columbia University. Her dissertation explores the relationship between state formation and regimes of unfree labor in postcolonial Latin America, with a focus on nineteenth-century Paraguay. Her research, funded by the Social Science Research Council, lies at the intersection of the history of popular politics, the social history of labor, comparative slavery studies, and the scholarship on state making. Prior to starting her graduate studies, Mariana studied history at the University of Buenos Aires, in Argentina, and conducted research on the history of workers and artisans in nineteenth-century Buenos Aires. She has been involved in different public history initiatives, including working as a researcher and exhibition curator at the Museo Nacional del Cabildo in Buenos Aires and co-creating the podcast series The Sounds of Calibán: A History of Latin America through Music. At Columbia, she collaborates with with Separated: An Oral History Project, which documents the experiences of families separated by the Trump Administration’s Zero Tolerance Policy.

  • Marco Santoro is a Private and Comparative Law PhD candidate and teaching assistant at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University. He conducts his research on the Europeanisation of maritime law and is member of the editorial committee of the Sorbonne Doctoral Law Review. Prior to starting his PhD, he graduated summa cum laude in Transport Law at the University of Messina and was awarded the Italian 2021 Degree Prize “Prof. Romanelli” in Maritime Law. He also completed the Master program in Diplomacy at the Istituto per gli studi di politica internazionale (ISPI) of Milan. Alongside his studies, Marco conducted a research project on organized crime in the maritime sector, founded by the Fondazione Falcone of Palermo, and published several articles related to his topics of research.

  • Mame Mor Ndiaye is a first-year PhD Candidate in the Department of Philosophy at Paris 1 Pantheon- Sorbonne University (ISJPS). I am writing a dissertation on “Western universalism and African philosophy: From the universal as principle to the achievement of its effectivity through the common prism of human rights”, under the supervision of the professor Magali Bessone. His research interests lie at the intersection of African philosophies, postcolonial studies and the decolonial approach, both of which are linked to Western philosophical theories.

    Mame Mor received the first part of his academic education in Senegal up to the baccalaureate before joining the University of Lille in 2017, where he completed his undergraduate degree. Mame Mor obtained his Bachelor in philosophy (2018), before leaving for Sorbonne University for his first year of research master (2019). The following year, he returned to Lille University where he obtained a master degree in moral and political philosophy (2021), writing a Master thesis on the following topic: "Civil liberty and political liberty in Rousseau's thought", (passed with honors) under the supervision of Pr. Gabrielle Radica. After his master in philosophy, Mame Mor decided to do a second master in business administration at Sorbonne University thanks to an apprenticeship program with Paris City Hall which he obtained last year (2022). However, this year of transition made him feel how much he missed research and that this is what suits him best. Mame Mor decided to prepare a thesis project and to register for a PhD at Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne University.

  • Maialen Salcedo Berrueta is a third-year PhD student in History of Art at the HiCSA laboratory of the Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. Under the supervision of Prof. Pascal Rousseau (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) and Prof. Xosé Manoel Núñez Seixas (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela), she studies the role of Spanish haute couture in the process of nation-building in Franco’s Spain (1939-1975). This project is generously supported by a doctoral studentship awarded by the Collège des Écoles Doctorales of the Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne.
    Fellow of the Casa de Velázquez, she has been a doctoral visiting researcher at the Department of History of Thought and Social and Political Movements at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, under the guidance of Prof. Javier Moreno Luzón, and at the Museo del Traje in Madrid.
    Her long-standing interest in the history of Spanish fashion and its links with the contemporary history of Spain has led her to participate in various seminars and conferences in both Spanish and French universities. In line with this commitment, she also serves as secretary of SARTORIA, the Association for Fashion and Art History Research, where she co-organises a monthly doctoral seminar that aims to broaden fashion studies towards an interdisciplinary approach, confronting them with current debates in Art History, such as the decolonial perspective, visual culture, and transcultural history.

  • Maëlle Gélin is currently a Ph.D. candidate in history at Sciences Po Paris. Her work is at the crossroad of literature, intellectual history, and political history. Her Ph.D. dissertation focuses on the complex transatlantic circulations of the Négritude movement from the 1940s to the present day. Maëlle also teaches an undergraduate course on the history of the 20th and 21st centuries and she works as a teaching assistant for a graduate course on the intertwined relations between literature, history, and social sciences. Prior to joining the Center for History at Sciences Po, Maëlle completed a master’s degree in history at Sciences Po and taught history and geography in the secondary education.

  • Madeline Woker is a PhD student in International and Global History at Columbia University in New York. In June 2014, she obtained an MPhil in Modern European History from the University of Cambridge. She holds also a Double Master in European Affairs from London School of Economics and Political Science and Sciences Po Paris. Her dissertation project examines the politics of taxation in the French colonial empire.

  • Luz Colpa is a fourth-year doctoral student in African history at Columbia University. Her interests include the history of household, family, and gender in twentieth-century West Africa and late-imperial France. Her dissertation is a history of out-marriage or marriage between individuals from different natal communities (1939-1980). From 2017-2018 She served as the Co-President of the Columbia Graduate History association.

    Prior to starting her Ph.D. at Columbia, Luz graduated Summa cum Laude with a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies from SUNY Stony Brook with Minors in Post-Colonial History and Literature. Luz then served as an ESL teacher in Peace Corps Azerbaijan (2012-2014). In 2016 she completed an M.A. in History and Literature at the Columbia Reid Hall Program in Paris. In 2017 she completed an M.A. in History and Civilization at the EHESS in Paris.

  • Lucile Dehouck is a PhD candidate working at the intersection of environment, development, and migration economics. In her thesis project entitled “Climate-induced forced migration”, she aims to contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between migration and climate. To this end, Lucile uses econometric techniques and data science tools to provide new empirical evidence in those fields. She likes using satellite data and remote sensing products to help answer policy questions. As an applied development economist, she is also aiming to directly contribute to the knowledge of the impact of climate change in the Global South.

    Before coming to Columbia, Lucile obtained a master’s degree in economics from the Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay and Polytechnique.

  • Léo Denis is a PhD candidate at the Management Research Center (CRG-i3) of École Polytechnique since 2022. His research lies at the intersection of the Finance and Strategic Management fields. It focuses on the development of sustainable finance and impact investing strategies in the private markets, as well as their performance and legitimacy. Before joining CRG, he graduated from École Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay and worked in private equity firms for several years.

  • Léa Dousset is a Ph.D. candidate at the Université Paris 1 – Panthéon Sorbonne, Paris School of Economics under the supervision of Julien Grenet. Her research is in the field of the economics of education, with a particular focus on the under-representation of female students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) studies and careers in France.

    She holds a dual B.A. from Sciences Po Paris in social sciences and in applied mathematics from Université Paris 1 – Panthéon Sorbonne, and a M.A. in economics from the EHESS, Paris School of Economics. Prior to starting her Ph.D. at the Université Paris 1 – Panthéon Sorbonne, she worked as a research professional at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business for Rebecca Dizon-Ross and Manasi Desphande.

  • A graduate of the French National School of Public Administration (ENA) (Victor Hugo Year, 1989-91), Laurent Bili joined the French Foreign Ministry’s Strategic Affairs and Disarmament Directorate (1991-93).

    Seconded to the Defense Ministry as Deputy Diplomatic Adviser (1993-95), he then held several positions at the Quai d’Orsay:

    • First Secretary and then Second Counsellor at the Embassy of France in Ankara (1995-99),
    • First Secretary, Permanent Representative of France to the Western European Union (WEU) (1998-2000),
    • Adviser to the European Union’s interim Political and Security Committee (PSC) in Brussels (2000-02),
    • Head of Strategic Affairs (2002).

    In 2002, he was Director of the Private Office of the Minister Delegate for European Affairs and became technical adviser at the Diplomatic Unit of the Presidency of the French Republic (2002-07).

    He successively held the positions of Ambassador to Thailand (2007-09), Director of the Defense Minister’s Civilian and Military Office (2009-10), Ambassador to Turkey (2011-15) and then to Brazil (2015-17).

    Laurent Bili was then Director-General for Global Affairs, Culture, Education and International Development at the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs and G7/G20 Sous-Sherpa (2017-2019).

    Prior to his appointment in Washington, Laurent Bili was Ambassador to China since September 2019.

  • Laurence Cuny is a human rights lawyer and researcher. Following her studies in international law at the Geneva Graduate Institute, she was teaching assistant in international public law at this institute for three years. She then joined the World Organization Against Torture (OMCT) as program manager of the Observatory for the protection of human rights defenders. Between 2008 and 2018 she provided support in evaluation and training for the EU and for NGOs human rights programmes. Since 2011, her work focuses on cultural rights and artistic freedom. She collaborates on a regular basis with the mandate of the Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights (artistic freedom, marketing practices and cultural rights, cultural rights and public spaces, cultural rights and migration). She has been a member of the UNESCO expert group on the 2005 Cultural Diversity Convention since 2018. In this capacity she authored the report Freedom & Creativity: Defending art, Defending diversity in 2020 and has helped the Secretariat develop a training programme on artistic freedom in the digital environment. As a researcher she is currently doing her PhD at Paris I Sorbonne and the UNESCO Chair on the diversity of cultural expressions at the Faculty of Law, Université Laval in Québec. Her recent publications focus on relocation of artists at risk in Latin America (Ifa, 2020), working conditions and status of the artist (IFACCA, 2022), artistic freedom in the digital environment (Lex Electronica, 2023), Art and Human rights (Elgar, 2023). In 2023 she joined the group of experts of Columbia University Global Freedom of Expression Programme.

  • Laure Colin joined the Centre de Recherche en Gestion of l'École Polytechnique in September 2021 after working in a Parisian consulting firm.

    Her thesis focuses on the management of defense innovation projects and the functioning of the French public defense innovation agency.

  • Laura Chaubard, Director-General of École polytechnique has also been entrusted with the interim role of president of the School's Board of Directors, as of September 17th, 2023.

    Eric Labaye's term as Chairman of X, which he had held since 2018, ended on September 16th. Eric Labaye's role as President of the Institut Polytechnique de Paris also came to an end on this date. École polytechnique is one of the founding Schools of the Institut Polytechnique de Paris, alongside ENSTA Paris, ENSAE Paris, Télécom Paris and Télécom SudParis.

    The ministerial order appointing Laura Chaubard, issued by the Minister of the Armed Forces on September 13th, states that the Director General of the École Polytechnique, "is responsible for acting as president of the Board of Directors of the École Polytechnique, as of September 17th, 2023".

    At the same time, Professor Thierry Coulhon was appointed acting Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Institut Polytechnique de Paris.

    After completing her studies at École Polytechnique, Laura Chaubard joined the Corps de l’Armement, a high level engineer and public servant body in charge of the French State armament policy, and pursued a PhD in algorithms at the University of Paris Diderot (Paris VII), focusing on the theory of formal languages from 2002 to 2006.

    In September 2006, she joined the General Directorate for Armament (DGA), the French Defense procurement agency, where she held technical responsibilities for six years as an expert in big data and artificial intelligence. Between 2013 and 2016, she was head of the strategic SMEs office in charge of identifying, accompanying and supporting the 600 French SMEs of interest to the Ministry for Armed Forces. From January to August 2017, still within the DGA, she was in charge of budget programming. There, she supervised the work of preparing the 2018-2022 Military Programming Law, in a context of a historic increase in resources for the Ministry for Armed Forces.

    In August 2017, she was appointed advisor for innovation and digital technology in the cabinet of the Minister of Armed Forces, Florence Parly. There, she successfully led the creation of the Defense Innovation Agency, the "Definvest" investment fund, the General Directorate of Digital Technology, as well as the drafting of the "Artificial Intelligence" roadmap of the Ministry for Armed Forces.

    She took up her position as CEO of the Établissement Public du Parc et de la Grande Halle de la Villette (EPPGHV) in October 2019. Located in the northeast region of Paris, La Villette encompasses a national museum of science and technology, a major architectural complex devoted to music and an urban park dedicated to culture and open to all.

    At the head of this public cultural institution, Laura Chaubard was in charge of coordinating the fifty or so players present on site and of supervising the multidisciplinary artistic program hosted in the Grande Halle de la Villette, the park or the new venues staging performances and events

    Laura Chaubard is a Knight of the National Order of Merit and a Knight of the Legion of Honor.

  • Keïsha Corantin is a PhD candidate in geography at University Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne
    under the joint supervision of Professor Antonine Ribardière and Professor Géraud Magrin. Her dissertation focuses on the role of armed groups in the informal urban production in Medellín (Colombia). Rooted in political geography, her research is part of a novel approach that addresses the influential role of organized crime in urban planning and organization. She holds a Bachelor's degree in law and another in geography, both from the University Paris1 Panthéon Sorbonne, where she also completed her Master's degree in geography. In 2022,
    Keïsha was awarded a research grant from the prestigious Doctoral School of Geography of Paris She also teaches undergraduate courses of Urban geography and Geographic information systems GIS)

  • Kees van der Beek has been appointed Vice-Provost for Research at École Polytechnique, effective as of February 1, 2023. He will report to Dominique Rossin, Provost, and will succeed Benoît Deveaud. He is in charge of defining the strategy and supervising all activities of the Institution’s 23 research laboratories. He is a member of École Polytechnnique’s Executive Committee and Institut Polytechnique de Paris’ Teaching and Research Committee.

    Native of the Netherlands and a physicist by profession, Kees van der Beek began his career as a researcher in the United States in 1996 at Argonne National Laboratory. Two years later and back in Europe, he started a second post-doctorate at the EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) within the Institut de Génie Atomique.

    Kees van der Beek continued his career in France from January 1997 at École Polytechnique, as a researcher assigned to Irradiated Solids Laboratory (LSI). From 2002 to 2015, he carried out his research activity in conjunction with teaching at École Polytechnique. In 2009, thanks to his Habilitation to Supervise Research, he obtained the title of Director of Research. He directed LSI from January 2014 until May 2017.

    In January 2019, he was assigned to the Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies in Palaiseau. He also joined the CNRS Institute of Physics. In January 2021, he was appointed Assistant to the Scientific Director (ADSR) at the CNRS for the Grenoble-Alpes site.

    Simultaneously, Kees became Director of the "Physics of Light and Matter" (PhOM) Research Department of the ComUE Université Paris-Saclay from January 2016 to December 2020, then Director of the "Physics of Light and Matter" (PhOM) axis of the Graduate School of Physics of the same university in 2021. The same year, he also became Director of Institut Intégratif des Matériaux of Université Paris-Saclay.

    Author of nearly 180 publications in international scientific journals, the new Vice-Provost for Research at École Polytechnique was chairman of the Condensed Matter Physics Division of French Physical Society from 2009 to 2013, chairman of the Condensed Matter Physics Division of the European Physical Society from 2015 to 2020, and he is currently a member of the Executive Committee of the European Physical Society. It has allowed him to establish numerous European contacts, notably through the Institute of Physics (UK), the Deutsche Physikalischen Gesellschaft (Germany), and the Real Sociedad Española de Física (Spain).

    Kees van der Beek graduated from University of Leiden in 1988 and 1992 and holds a Diploma in Experimental Solid-State Physics and a PhD in Mathematics and Natural Sciences.

  • Justine Brisson is currently a Ph.D. candidate in political theory at Sciences Po Paris. She holds a MA in Modern Literature from the Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle, a MA in Political Philosophy (first year) from the École Normale Supérieure, and a MA in Political Theory from Sciences Po. She has taught literature and the history of political ideas at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and at Sciences Po. She is a member of the Editorial Board of Fabula-LhT. Littérature, histoire, théorie. Her research is at the crossroads of literature, philosophy, and political theory. More precisely, she studies the relations between politics and literature in mid-twentieth century France, focusing on the theme of the “neutral” in the works of Maurice Blanchot, Roland Barthes, and Emil Cioran. She aims to question the ethical meaning of the temptation to withdraw from the political. Before joining Columbia, she was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard, where she worked on Blanchot’s archives at the Houghton Library. She has published articles on Michel Foucault, Georges Bataille, Jean-Luc Nancy, Guillaume Dustan and Pascal Quignard.

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  • Julius is a PhD candidate at Paris School of Economics and Université Paris 1. His research examines alternative peer-to-peer sharing platforms that limit the use of money. He investigates how these restrictions affect user behavior and what they imply for the market design of these platforms. A large part of his dissertation focuses on a popular online platform for trading holiday homes with token money. These tokens are earned by hosting others and can only be spent on visiting other platform users. Using economics theory and econometric techniques for causal inference, Julius studies the design of prices with token money and the impact of interactions with people of different backgrounds on users’ trust. He is also interested in how prices and users’ dual role as hosts and guests shape norms of behavior. Recently, he has started exploring related questions on BlaBlaCar.

    Julius holds a MA in Economics and a BA in Philosophy and Economics. Prior to his Master's, he worked at the Center for Impact Evaluations (C4ED), where he evaluated public policies in his field, and at the digital economy department of the Center for European Economic Research (ZEW), where he studied e-commerce and online ratings.

  • Julien Mabille is currently in the third year of PhD at University Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne under the supervision of Grégoire Loiseau. He studies the means of legal actions Labor Unions have at their disposal. His research puts em hasis on field work, especially in Labor Unions. He studied at Paris 1, where he graduated with a Masters in Labor Law, after a License in Law and Philosophy.

  • Julia Tomasson is a PhD candidate in the History Department at Columbia University studying the history of science, mathematics, knowledge and material culture, focused on early modern Mediterranean textual cultures. Her research explores how our current standards of proof and persuasion came to be and how other forms and ideals developed and came to be thinkable and unthinkable in different contexts. Her graduate work at Columbia University has been supported by numerous fellowships, including a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and two Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships (Classical Arabic). Tomasson holds an A.B. from the University of Chicago and an M.A. and M.Phil. from Columbia University.

  • Jean Makhlouta is currently a PhD Candidate in Geography at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne under the supervision of Nadine Cattan and Stéphanie Dadour. His dissertation focuses on queer practices and mobilities in Beirut and their potential to rethink the urban structure of the city. His research  interests lie at the intersection of Urban studies, Middle Eastern studies, and Gender studies.

    Jean is affiliated to research units Géographie-cités (CNRS, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Université Paris Cité, EHESS) and Architecture, Culture, Société (CNRS, École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris-Malaquais). He also serves as a teaching assistant at the Department of Geography at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.

    Prior to starting his PhD, Jean completed an MA in Architecture at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris-Malaquais where he graduated with distinction.

  • The Minister for Higher Education and Research, in agreement with the President of the Fondation nationale des sciences politiques (FNSP), has appointed Jean Bassères as the interim administrator of the FNSP and the IEP de Paris (Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris).

    An alumnus of Sciences Po and a distinguished senior civil servant, Jean Bassères has dedicated his professional career to serving the State. He began his career at the Public Accounts Department, which he later headed, and then worked successively as Secretary General of the Ministry of the Economy, Head at the General Inspectorate of Finance and Managing Director of France Travail (formerly Pôle Emploi). He was also chairman of the commission responsible for reforming the Institut national du service public (INSP, formerly ENA).

  • Janina S. Santer is a Ph.D. student and Richard Hofstadter Fellow in the History Department at Columbia University, researching the history of the Lebanese state in the 1940s-1950s. Before moving to New York, she completed a MA in Middle Eastern Studies at the American University of Beirut (AUB), and her work has been published in Arabic translation in Bidayat °28-29/2020 (Nashʿat al-qiṭāʿ al-siyāḥī wa namūdhaj “lubnān swīsrā al-sharq”). Her interests include the social and cultural history of modern Lebanon, and she is currently developing a public history project about Radio al-Sharq (1930s 1960s) in collaboration with UMAM Center for Documentation and Research.

  • Professor Ioannis Kymissis joined the Columbia University Electrical Engineering faculty in 2006. He teaches courses in solid state devices and display technology. He obtained his SB, MEng and PhD degrees from MIT, and also participated in a cooperative program through which he completed his M.Eng. thesis at IBM Research. He also held a postdoctoral appointment at MIT and worked as a consulting engineer at QDVision before joining Columbia.

    Prof. Kymissis's research focuses on the fabrication, characterization, and applications of thin film electronics, with a particular focus in the applications of organic semiconductors, thin film piezoelectric, and recrystallized silicon devices. In addition to his teaching and research work, he is also active in the Society for Information Display and IEEE EDS.

  • Idriss Fofana is a Ph.D. candidate in international and global history at Columbia University and a recent graduate of Yale Law School. He specializes in the history of international law and other forms of inter-polity order in Asia and Africa since the eighteenth century. He is especially interested in historical and contemporary attempts to regulate migration. His work spans the fields of modern Chinese history, the modern history of Atlantic Africa as well as the history of twentieth-century anti-colonial and Third World movements.

    His dissertation is titled “The ‘Chinese Solution’ to the Labor Question in Africa: Chinese Workers, African Railroads & the International Regulation of Labor Migration, 1860-1935.” It investigates how European colonial administrations’ long-held ambition to use Chinese labor to exploit resources in tropical Africa gave way to a series of novel experiments in the regulation of labor and migration in southern China, Senegambia, and the Congo basin during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

  • Heath Rojas is a PhD candidate in early modern European history at Columbia University. His research focuses on the political and intellectual transformations of eighteenth-century France, especially the development of deism during the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. He holds a B.A. in history and a B.A. in French from Stanford University, where he graduated with Honors and Distinction. Under the guidance of Professors Dan Edelstein and Keith Baker, Heath wrote an Honors Thesis entitled “The Power of the Executive: Redefining Monarchical Authority in the First Three Years of the French Revolution,” which was awarded the Robert M. Golden Medal for excellence in the humanities and the creative arts. In 2018, he was awarded the Raymond J. Cunningham Prize by the American Historical Association for the best article published in a journal written by an undergraduate student. In 2020, he was the recipient of the Jerrold Siegel Fellowship from The Consortium for Intellectual and Cultural History.

  • France Orain is a PhD candidate in Islamic Art History at Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, supervised by Prof. Jean-Pierre Van Staëvel and Prof. Sandra Aube Lorain. She is affiliated with UMR 8167 Orient et Méditerranée and CeRMI, UMR 8041. France’s dissertation focuses on the wooden art that adorned and furnished Timurid monuments (r. 1370-1506) across Iran and Central Asia, from a technical, structural, and socio-cultural perspective. Her doctoral research sheds new light on the sociocultural history of the Timurids, by exploring the variety of techniques and ornamental repertoire in the wooden arts, and by reconstructing the networks of artisans and patrons involved in their production. France is a member of the Young Researchers Board (BJC) of the GIS MOMM (Groupement d’intérêt scientifique - Moyen Orient et Mondes Musulmans) and is a member of the research department at APAMI (Association for the Promotion of Islamic Art).

  • Florian Cafiero is currently a Ph.D. student at Sciences Po Medialab, under the supervision of Prof. Jean-Philippe Cointet. His thesis focuses on the debate between pro- and anti-vaccine activists and its reception by the public. An Ecole Normale Supérieure - Paris-Saclay alumnus, he holds an MPhil. in Digital Humanities from Ecole Nationale des Chartes - Paris Sciences et Lettres Université (PSL). He has taught quantitative methods applied to social sciences and the humanities at the Geneva University, Ecole Nationale des Chartes (PSL), and Université d’Orléans. His works in computational social science and quantitative linguistics have been published in journals such as Science Advances, Social Networks, or Social Science and Medicine.

  • Felipe Lauritzen is a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at Sciences Po Paris, since 2022. Alongside his doctoral studies, he holds affiliations as a researcher with the National Observatory of Women in Politics at the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies and serves as a research assistant for the CEPR Media Plurality Research and Policy Network (RPN). He is a recipient of a Young Researcher grant from the Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Evaluation of Public Policies (LIEPP).
    His research focuses on electoral finance and representation policies, with a particular emphasis on empirical analysis within the context of Brazil. He is also engaged in investigations regarding media plurality, regulation, and their intricate connections with democracy in emerging economies. In these academic pursuits, he is supervised by Professor Julia Cagé.
    Besides this, Felipe has a policy career in international development organisations, comprising +6 years at OECD, UNESCO, UNDP, and AFD. In 2019, he co-founded the non-profit association Pour le Brésil, which advocates for economic, social, and environmental justice in Brazil.

  • Fatima-Ezzahrae Touilila is a doctoral candidate and a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University. Prior
    to this, she completed a dual degree in Law and Political Science at Sciences Po (Paris) and Columbia University and was a Research Fellow at the Institute of Religion, Culture and Public Life (New York). Her research interests include Critical Theory, the epistemological ruptures in the making of Modernity, tradition, and memory, Judeo-Islamic syncretism in Morocco.

    Her current project investigates the intellectual history and political theory that buttressed French colonization in Northwest Africa. 

  • Farah is a Ph.D. candidate in Public International Law at Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne under the supervision of Professor Paolo Palchetti. Farah is a graduate of Economics and Political Science from McGill University, a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Law in London, and a holder of two master’s degrees: a master’s in Public International & International Organizations’ Law from Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne and a master’s in International Studies and Diplomacy from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, University of London). She is also a New York State Attorney.

    Farah’s research focuses on the duty of non-recognition and attempts to understand its relevance in contemporary international law as a collective and solidary enforcement mechanism by States, its ever-growing place in the effectivity versus legality dichotomy as well as its application in other areas of international law beyond territorial acquisitions, such as within treaty law, immunity law and humanitarian law, in addition to its application to other actors such as international corporations.

    Between her undergraduate and graduate years, Farah worked as a management consultant for EY in Abu Dhabi, an Analyst for the United Nations Resident Coordinator Office in Bahrain and a Consultant for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris working closely with various sovereign states.

  • Evan Grégoire is a dual Ph.D. candidate specializing in political theory at Columbia University and Sciences Po, working with Nadia Urbinati (Columbia) and Bernard Reber (Sciences Po). His dissertation seeks to answer the question, “under what conditions can deliberation work?" paying particular attention to the collegial and deliberative governance of professional service firms.

    Evan Grégoire is a 2022-2023 Fulbright recipient. Prior to enrolling at Columbia, Mr. Grégoire received four master’s degrees with distinction from the École Normale Supérieure Ulm (in philosophy, with a concentration in contemporary philosophy), Paris Sciences et Lettres, Sciences Po (in political science, with a concentration in political theory) and HEC Paris (in management, with a concentration in sustainability and social innovation). He was a visiting student at Scuola Superiori Sant’Anna (Italy), Scuola di Studi Superiori "Ferdinando Rossi"(Italy), and Trinity College Dublin (Ireland). As part of his Ph.D., Mr. Grégoire taught courses in political science and management both at Sciences Po and Columbia University
    and participated in the grading of graduate-level exams (notably, at the School of Management and Impact, the Paris School of International Affairs and Columbia School of Professional Studies).

    Mr. Grégoire is a French citizen with fluency and international work experience in English and French. He also worked for leading companies including Mazars (the largest French consultancy) and Carrefour (the largest European food retailer), as well as top universities including the University of Bristol and ESCP Business School and international organisations (UNESCO). He speaks fluent French and Spanish which helped him conduct foresight analysis, write policy briefs and recommendations, as well as lead stakeholder engagement tasks.

  • Étienne Ollion is a professor of Sociology at the École Polytechnique and a researcher at CNRS. Specializing in politics, his works investigate the texture of power in modern societies. He uses qualitative and quantitative methods alike and is an enthusiastic promoter of computational social sciences.

  • Erica Ceola is from Italy. She began her studies in 2013 at Trento’s University, in Italy, where she obtained a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations in 2016. Then she majored in History with a Master’s degree at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, in Italy, with the final grade of 110/110 with honors (4.0 G.P.A.). After studying for one year at the University of Paris Sorbonne as an Erasmus student, Erica decided to pursue an academic path at the Panthéon Sorbonne Graduate School of History, in Paris. She started her Ph. D. during the academic year 2019-2020 with a doctoral thesis on Italian Migration history concerning mass emigration from the north of Italy to Arkansas, between the 1880s and the 1950s. Despite the sanitary situation, during the first year of her Ph.D., Erica conducted primary source research in Italy, especially through the scholarship that the École Française de Rome attributed to her in September 2020. Since May 2020, Erica has had the honor of being accepted as a fellow at the Institut Convergences Migrations, a partner institution of College de France and Sorbonne Universities, which are associated through common researches topics, such as international migrations. 

  • Emmanuel Kattan is Director of the Alliance Program. He was previously Director of the British Council in New York, where he oversaw academic collaboration programs. He created partnerships with the Henry Luce Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation to launch initiatives connecting higher education institutions across the Atlantic. Before joining the British Council, Emmanuel was Senior Adviser at the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, where he managed strategic communications and engagement with academic communities. He also held senior positions at the Commonwealth Secretariat and at the Quebec Delegation in London, where he was in charge of academic relations programs. A native of Montreal, Emmanuel studied politics at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar and earned a PhD from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is the author of four books: an essay on the politics of memory and three novels.

  • Specializing in the intersection of law and environmental issues, Emma Bursztejn is a
    doctoral candidate in law at the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne under the
    supervision of Professor Sophie Robin Olivier. She is also the director of the Law and
    Economics Seminar at the College de France. Her research focuses on the impact of climate
    change on European competition law. In the spring of 2023, Emma expanded her
    interdisciplinary expertise as a visiting scholar at Princeton University's Center for Policy
    Research on Energy and the Environment. Highly motivated and bilingual in English and
    French, Emma thrives in dynamic, research-intensive environments.

  • Elya Assayag is a history PhD student at Columbia University. Elya studies the seams between legal systems and society during the colonial period in Morocco (1912-1956), in addition to studying physical seams in the history of Moroccan embroidery. Through diverse methodologies, she tries to follow the day-to-day lives of women in colonial Morocco, that are absent from textual archives. Besides trying to figure out her academic path, she volunteers with refugees and asylum seekers, and tries to do something useful with the law degree she obtained a few years ago.

  • Ekaterina Oger Grivnova is currently a lawyer with Allen & Overy Paris office. She has experience advising on commercial and investment arbitration cases from a broad spectrum of sectors conducted under various arbitration rules.

    Ekaterina holds a Master’s degree in Arbitration and International Business Law from the University of Versailles and pursues her PhD degree at Sorbonne Law School. Her thesis is focused on Inadmissibility of Claims in International Arbitration.

    She also teaches International Arbitration at Paris Bar School, intervenes as a guest lecturer in other institutions and coaches student teams for various moot courts.

    Ekaterina is an Editorial Board Member of Arbitration.ru, arbitration journal in English and Russian by Russian Arbitration Association, Co-chair of Paris Very Young Arbitration Practitioners (PVYAP) and administrator of MetaverseLegal, decentralised community dedicated to legal implications of the Metaverse and Web3.

  • Dominique Rossin (X1994) has been appointed Provost of École Polytechnique. Since 2015, Dominique Rossin was Vice-Provost for Education at the School. Since 2019, he has been in charge of the Teaching Committee for the Institut Polytechnique de Paris. Since 2020, he has been the French Dean of the European University EuroteQ.

    Dominique Rossin holds a PhD in Computer Science from the École Polytechnique and is a specialist in algorithmics and combinatorics. He led a team at the University of Paris Diderot for seven years before joining the École Polytechnique's Computer Science Laboratory (LIX) in 2010.

    He was recruited as a lecturer at l’X in 2003, in the computer science department and has been accredited to supervise research since 2007. Between 2012 and 2014, he joined the Ministry of Higher Education and Research as Deputy Delegate for Research and Technology in charge of the Paris region.

    Dominique Rossin has led several major projects for the School: the creation of the Bachelor's program, the creation of the eight Masters of Science and Technology, the development of continuing education and the creation of the Executive Master's program, as well as leading the project to reform the Ingénieur Polytechnicien Program. Dominique Rossin has also played a key role in the evolution of teaching practices and the development of e-learning and MOOCs.

  • Coline Saintherant is a Ph.D. candidate at the History department at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University in France. Her thesis is on the Russian women authors exiled in France after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and she works under the supervision of Professor Marie-Pierre Rey. She is also studying Russian language at Inalco (Paris). Her research aims to offer a fresh outlook on the intellectual history of Russian emigration by taking a nuanced perspective through the lens of gender history and women's experiences. Specifically, she embarks on a prosopography exploration of these women, seeking to document their place and role within the intellectual networks of Russian exile. Her project delves into the lives and contributions of these Russian female authors, shedding light on their literary activities, intellectual pursuits, and the challenges they faced, as women, within the diasporic context. By examining their roles in intellectual networks, she seeks to illuminate the broader historical context of Russian emigration, demonstrating how these women played integral roles in shaping the intellectual landscape of their time. Beyond her role as a researcher, she is also a teacher in secondary education. This dual perspective allows her to witness firsthand the transformative power of historical knowledge in shaping young minds. She believes in the importance of integrating her research findings into educational practices. She believes that a nuanced understanding of history is crucial for cultivating critical thinking skills and promoting a more inclusive and informed society.

  • Clélia Lacam is a second-year Ph.D. candidate in African History at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University. Her research, under the supervision of Anne Hugon, focuses on women and missions in colonial Gabon (1842-1961), through a connected study of Catholic nuns, Protestant missionary women and converted African women. By considering religious archives, “propaganda” literature and iconographic collections, she examines how the missionary experience reshaped gender relations and paved the way to a new female agency.

    Clélia Lacam received her M.Phil. in African History from the same university, and she was awarded the 2021 Mnémosyne Prize for the best French masters dissertation on women’s and gender history. Thanks to this prize, she published her first book in 2023 (Le Bleu et le Noir. Jeux de pouvoirs dans une mission catholique féminine, Gabon, 1911-1955). In addition to her research, she teaches Modern European History at Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne University. She plans to visit Columbia University to conduct documentary research in Protestant missionary archives in New York City and Philadelphia.

  • Carlos J. Alonso is the Morris A. and Alma Schapiro Professor in the Humanities. He came to the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures at Columbia in fall 2005 from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was the Edwin B. and Leonore R. Williams Professor of Romance Languages. He specializes in 19th- and 20th-century Latin American intellectual history and cultural production, and in contemporary literary and cultural theory. He is the author of Modernity and Autochthony: The Spanish American Regional Novel (Cambridge UP), and The Burden of Modernity: The Rhetoric of Cultural Discourse in Spanish America (Oxford UP), and editor of Julio Cortázar: New Readings (Cambridge UP). He was also Editor of PMLA—arguably the premier journal of literary criticism and theory—during 2000-03, and edited the Hispanic Review in 2003-06, a period that ushered in changes that led to an award in 2005 for best journal design by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals. While at Penn, Prof. Alonso was the recipient of a Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, the university's highest award for pedagogical excellence.

    At Columbia he was chair of the department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures from 2005-10, and was Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society for four years. He has taught recently the required graduate seminar on "Literary and Cultural Theory" and the course "Theories of Culture in Latin America." Under his editorship the department's Revista Hispánica Moderna received the 2009 Council of Editors of Learned Journals Phoenix Award for Significant Editorial Achievement.
    Prof. Alonso became Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in July 2011.

  • Camille Toussaint is a Ph.D. student from the Interdisciplinary Institute for Innovation and the Management Research Center (École Polytechnique, France) since 2019. She is also an assistant professor at the Management of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Department of the École Polytechnique. Her Ph.D. research focuses on global collective action problems, and more specifically on the management of space debris. She is interested as well in commons theory, public-private partnerships, standardization, and market creation processes.

  • Camille Braune is currently in the second year of her Ph.D thesis at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, under the joint supervision of Professor Sandra Laugier and Professor Isabelle Alfandary, which is titled: “For a new ethics of attention to language. From the work of the British novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch (1919-1999)”.

    Her research is part of the continuity, renewal and improvement of Franco-British studies on Iris Murdoch to date, in a common literary, philosophical, and ethical movement. My thesis intends to propound a new ethics of attention to language as a singular moral project, which Iris Murdoch intuited in her first writings, based on the one hand on a very specific idea of what it is to be attentive to language and on the other hand on the new form of attention to
    ordinary life defined by literature, as an authentic experience which change moral thought and enrich our different forms of life.

    In Fall 2022, Camille has been the recipient of two British fellowships: the Barbara Stevens Heusel Research Fund for Early-Career Scholars awarded by the Iris Murdoch Society, and the “Monthly Scholarship” awarded by the Maison Française of Oxford.

    In addition to her doctoral dissertation, Camille has worked for two French publishing houses, Esprit magazine and CNRS Éditions, as she is very passionate about editing.

  • Bartholomew Konechni is a PhD candidate at Sciences Po based within the Centre de Recherche sur les Inégalités Sociales (CRIS). His main work revolves around the adoption of new health behaviours during crises, with a particular focus on the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • After a bachelor degree in political sciences specialized in transition studies in Central and Eastern Europe, Aude-Cécile Monnot spent a year in Prague at Charles University. There, she nurtured her curiosity for Post-Soviet studies and the history of the Soviet Union. After studying Russian during her first academic years, she graduated from the National Institute of Language and Oriental Civilization in Paris, with a major in Farsi.

    In 2013 Aude-Cécile started a Ph.D. on the history of Soviet Central Asia, focusing on issues of justice and legal practices at the local level. This everyday history of justice lies at the cross-road of different specialties such as state building, practices of power, legal history and colonial studies. Therefore Aude-Cécile uses a research framework that borrows from other disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, and political sciences. 

  • Arnaud Maurel is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University. He specializes in comparative politics, political economy, and political methodology, with a regional focus on Western Europe. His research primarily investigates the micro and institutional foundations of public debt crises. His dissertation explores how voters’ preferences, politicians’ strategies, and fiscal institutions shape the routine use of public debt. Other projects include a formal model of strategic sovereign default and an empirical study of the impact of tax evasion scandals on preferences for redistribution.

    Arnaud Maurel received his B.A. (Cum Laude) and his M.A. in Political Science (Summa Cum Laude) from Sciences Po Paris. Prior to coming to Columbia, he worked as a Postgraduate Fellow at New York University, and as a statistical analyst at the O.E.C.D.

  • Antoine Guibal is Assistant Professor of French and Chair of the Department of Languages and Cultures at the École polytechnique in Paris, France. He completed his PhD at the University of Virginia in 2017, where he wrote his dissertation on Stendhal's lives of great men. His book Stendhal biographe was published by UGA Editions in 2020. His fields of research include French Romantic literature, biography, and autobiography. He is also very much interested in the American literature of the 1920s, particularly the works of expatriate writers living in Paris.

  • Anna Safronova is a Ph.D. candidate at the History department at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University in France. Her thesis is on the history of the cooperative movement in Russia: actors, practices, and institutions, 1861-1932, and she works under the supervision of Professor Marie-Pierre Rey. Anna specializes in the social, political, and economic history of the late Russian Empire and early Soviet period. Although Anna hasn't finished her thesis yet, she already has experience organizing scientific conferences and research seminars with the researchers from her home institution as well as professors from other institutions as well. Anna believes that working with specialists from different institutions, the cooperation between scholars of different universities is a rich source of insights that are fruitful for research. Anna is the author of several articles in French journals. Her most recent publication is a book chapter in an edited collection on the history of cooperatives.

    In addition to her research subject on cooperatives, she is particularly interested in the research of material history, the way the ordinary objects conserve traces of their usage, the biography of objects. In the future, she would like to organize a research seminar on the material history of soviet objects and to strengthen the connections that she hopes to build during her doctoral mobility.

  • Professor Olinto is a pioneer of astroparticle physics. Her research has made seminal contributions to our understanding of the inflationary origins of the universe, the cosmological effects of magnetic fields, the structure of neutron stars, and the highest energy cosmic rays, gamma-rays, and neutrinos. The implications of her work touch on everything from the workings of the universe to the evolution of life on this planet.

    Professor Olinto comes to Columbia with an extensive background in academic administration and leadership. In her role as Dean of the Division of the Physical Sciences, which she has held since 2018, she oversees the departments of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Chemistry, Computer Science, Geophysical Sciences, Mathematics, Physics, and Statistics, as well as a number of research institutes and centers at the University of Chicago. Twice, she served as Chair of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

     

  • Amy Hungerford, a longtime Yale professor and academic administrator, has been appointed executive vice president for Arts and Sciences and dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Her appointment begins January 1.

    A scholar of twentieth- and twenty-first-century American literature, Hungerford comes to Columbia after leading Yale’s humanities division since 2016. In that role, she oversaw a major capital project to create a central hub for humanities on Yale’s campus and efforts to increase cross-school collaborations. 

    As head of Columbia’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Hungerford will oversee the twenty-eight departments whose members teach students at Columbia College, the School of General Studies, the School of the Arts, the School of Professional Studies, and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

    “Amy’s career has combined notable scholarship and tireless mentoring with a wealth of experience in administering core academic programs,” said President Lee C. Bollinger. “Her oversight of twenty-three humanities departments and programs at Yale has demonstrated a talent for effective stewardship of resources and for the recruitment, hiring, and advancement of the highest-caliber faculty.”

    Hungerford succeeds Maya Tolstoy, a marine geophysicist who has served as interim executive vice president for Arts and Sciences since September 2018, when statistics professor David Madigan stepped down after five years in the position.

  • Alice Lasvergnas is a Ph.D. candidate in political theory at Sciences Po Paris. She specializes in democratic theory, the history of ideas, the philosophy of social science and the sociology of quantification. Her main topic of interest is the redefinition of democratic participation in mass societies.

    Her research currently investigates the influence of methodological debates in American political science in the 1940s on the redefinition of democratic ideals in the 1960s. Her goal is to contrast different approaches of individual action based on scientific practices to then confront early definitions of participatory democracy.

    Ms Lasvergnas holds a Master’s degree in political theory from Sciences Po Paris and a Bachelor’s degree in philosophy and history.

  • Julie Louws holds a Master’s degree in International private Law and international Business (Paris 1
    University) and two Bachelor's degrees in Philosophy and law.

    Julie is a Ph.D. candidate in International Private Law at Sorbonne Law School, entering her third year under the supervision of Professor Pascal de Vareilles-Sommières. Julie's thesis is about the power of the judge concerning foreign law enforcement in France. She is trying to understand how foreign law is researched, interpreted, and analyzed by the judge. In the French legal system, the judge is conceived as being passive, he is not an actor. This representation of the judge is incrementally changing due to the new prevailing role of international jurisdiction which tends to give more power to national judges. This « realistic » approach needs to be compared with
    the American legal system. Julie also is a teaching assistant, she has taught International Private Law and International Arbitration. This year she will teach Contract Law and Civil Procedure. 

  • Christine Neau-Leduc est désormais la nouvelle présidente de l’université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Elle est la deuxième femme à occuper ce poste après Hélène Ahrweiler en 1976. Elle succède ainsi à Georges Haddad et à l’administration provisoire qui assurait la gestion de l’établissement depuis le 2 septembre  2020 sur mandat du recteur de la région académique Île-de-France.

  • Ash is a platform on which each actor is able to sell its digital creations without any intermediary. For instance, it is possible to directly publish an ebook and send it to readers, raise funds for a new episode of a web series or share the development costs of a software plug-in between interested customers.

    In practice, encrypted offers transit freely without any entity to control or influence the user. The peer-to-peer encryption protocol used by Ash ensures the privacy of personal data thanks to cutting-edge technology.

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