Visiting Professor Programme 2, 2014 - 2018

Visiting Professor of Environmental Law from Tilburg University, The Netherlands

"Many people appreciate nature but why is it so hard to protect wild species and ecosystems effectively?"

Professional biography
Kees Bastmeijer is professor of nature conservation and water law at the Tilburg University (The Netherlands). His research relates to international, European, and domestic environmental law, with a special emphasis on the role of law in protecting nature. His latest publication is the edited volume ‘Wilderness Protection in Europe. The Role of International, European and National Law’ (Cambridge University Press, in press). Kees has a particular interest in the Polar Regions. As an advisor to the Dutch government, he has participated in the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings since 1992. Kees has lectured environmental law in Akureyri (Iceland), Ottawa (Canada) and Tilburg (The Netherlands) and is program director of the Outreaching Honors Program of the Tilburg University.

What are your main research interests?
A large part of my research focuses on the role of law in protecting nature. It fascinates me that many people appreciate nature while at the same time the functioning of our society results in so many threats to nature. More than 150 years of nature protection law could not prevent that about 80% of Europe’s biodiversity is not in a favorable state of conservation. This stimulates me to relate my legal research to other research disciplines, for instance, knowledge on human behaviour, the functioning of different types of societies and philosophical concepts regarding human-nature relationships.

How does your research have influence beyond the academic world? Does this include any roles you have beyond the academy?
I don’t consider law as a goal in itself but as an instrument to solve societal problems, such as the loss of biodiversity and wilderness. Based on my academic work, I aim to inform and advise policy makers, companies and the general public, for instance through membership of advisory committees, contract research, parliament hearings and popular publications. I also provide advice to the Dutch government on legal policy developments with regard to the Polar Regions. I have been participating in the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings since 1992. I very much appreciate this combination of research and advisory work as it provides the best chances for contributing to a more effective protection of nature in the benefit of humans and nature itself.

Is teaching still a significant part of your working life? What particular method or approach would you say characterises your teaching?
Yes, and I hope this will not change. In fact, for the longer term good education may be the most promising path towards a sustainable society. Through my teaching I hope to provide students a good understanding of environmental law, but my aim is to get beyond ‘knowledge transfer’: I hope to stimulate students to think about the functioning of our society, the role of law and possibly even the role they want to play in their future careers, certainly not by telling them what to do, but by discussing developments in society and by asking questions.

What specific passions or concerns particularly inspire you in your work?
See my answer to the question "Research interests".

Which of your publications would you regard as the most significant and why?
I think I would select my latest edited book on the role of international, European and domestic law in protecting wilderness in Europe. In the first part, the book discusses the international history of the wilderness concept and the ecological, social and economic values of wilderness in Europe. In the following parts it discusses the extent to which the remaining wilderness areas in Europe receive legal protection under international conventions, EU directives and domestic law. The book is the result of a great collaboration project of 30 experts in nature conservation law, including Filippo Valguarnera from the Gothenburg University, and will be published by Cambridge University Press (end 2015/beginning 2016).

What are you particularly hoping to achieve during your time as a Visiting Professor in Gothenburg?
I hope I may stimulate students to think about the role of law in establishing a sustainable society for people, in which there is also space and good conditions for healthy natural ecosystems. I also see great opportunities to collaborate in research projects with staff members of the University of Gothenburg. I am confident that I will learn a lot myself through my visiting professorship, but it is important to me that students and the University of Gothenburg will be pleased with my involvement and activities.

Links
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kees_Bastmeijer
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=617336

Focus areas:

• Biodiversity and wilderness
• Polar Regions (Arctica and Antarctica)
• International environmental law
• Sustainability and law

Visiting Professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship from University of Kassel, Germany

"Entrepreneurs from incumbent firms drive industrial clustering and regional economic development."

Professional biography
I am a professor of economics at the University of Kassel (Germany) and executive vice director of INCHER-Kassel, an interdisciplinary center of research into higher education. Before coming to Kassel, I was a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Economics in Jena (Germany) and a visiting postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, USA).

What are your main research interests?
I have two main fields of interest: (i) the long-term evolution of industries, and (ii) the interrelationship between university research and private-sector innovation.

How does your research have influence beyond the academic world? Does this include any roles you have beyond the academy?
(i) My research on industry evolution has shown that entrepreneurial spin-offs, i.e. firms started by former employees of industry incumbents, tend to be exceptionally successful. They are often decisive for innovation and for where the respective industry ends up being concentrated. This finding raises questions regarding the nature of firm capabilities, regional development policies and also labor relations.

(ii) Universities and their researchers are increasingly engaged with partners from the private sector. Some observers fear that this may compromise the quality of research, as interests shift to short-term issues with immediate applicability. My research shows that, to the contrary, private-sector interaction and the commercialization of results tends to increase researchers’ academic performance. However, in other research we found that key policy measures adopted to strengthen university-industry links did not achieve their objectives.

Is teaching still a significant part of your working life? What particular method or approach would you say characterises your teaching?
It definitely is. In my introductory courses, I try to show students that basic concepts for economics help them to get a deeper understanding of what they see in the news on TV. My advanced classes are as close as possible to my own research. I try to convey to students what research is about – and that it is not only important but also fun.

What specific passions or concerns particularly inspire you in your work?
I want to understand how competitive market processes work and under what conditions competitive processes and market-based allocation of resources do – or do not – lead to socially desirable outcomes.

Which of your publications would you regard as the most significant and why?
My papers with Steven Klepper on why the U.S. tire industry historically clustered in and around Akron, Ohio, challenged conventional wisdom about agglomeration economies. They had a substantial impact on how regional economists and economic geographers think about industry clusters.

What are you particularly hoping to achieve during your time as a Visiting Professor in Gothenburg?
I want to revisit some of my research issues in the Swedish context to learn how general my prior findings are. In joint work with doctoral students from Gothenburg University I want explore micro-level data on Swedish firms and industries.

Focus areas:

• Industrial dynamics
• Entrepreneurship
• Economics of science and technology
• Regional economics

Visiting Professor of Logistics from University of Paris-East, France

"Freight transport is an essential part of our metropolitan lives."

Professional biography
Laetitia Dablanc is a Director of Research at the French Institute of Science and Technology for Transport, Development and Networks, University of Paris-Est), and a team leader for MetroFreight, the VREF Center of excellence in urban freight research led by the University of Southern California. Her areas of research are freight transportation, freight and the environment, urban freight and logistics, rail freight, freight policies, logistics sprawl. She received a PhD in transportation planning from Ecole des Ponts-ParisTech and a Master’s degree in city and regional planning from Cornell University. She was initially trained in policy analysis and economics at Science Po Paris.

What are your main research interests?
I have been trained as an urban planner, and I developed a strong interest for transportation, especially freight transportation. My research actually combines these two strong focuses, trying to answer the following question: what does freight mobility represent in the life of large metropolitan areas? Issues ranging from environmental impacts to economic developments to social concerns related to freight and big cities look fascinating to me. I am looking at all modes of freight transportation. Rail has been one of my main focuses in the past years, today I am looking at trucking for the most part. Innovations in city logistics are a strong part of my research, including architectural innovations for new types of warehouses in urban areas. New consumer trends such as e-commerce, which have enormous impacts on supply chains and freight transportation, are one of my main interests too.

How does your research have influence beyond the academic world? Does this include any roles you have beyond the academy?
Freight transport is a key facilitator for our global economies, and it also has a major impact on our societies. By identifying issues, collecting data and analyzing trends, our team has influenced the way cities in France manage and regulate freight mobility. We have close tights to the City of Paris as well as the Region of Paris (called Ile-de-France), and we participate in numerous forums, working groups and initiatives to help them identify a freight strategy. They see us as their external freight experts and it is always a great pleasure to work with local practitioners and business groups. This results in mutually increased knowledge and understanding from all stakeholders. I had the honor of signing the 2013 Paris Sustainable Logistics Charter in the name of IFSTTAR, together with 80 other organizations.

What specific passions or concerns particularly inspire you in your work?
Research is freedom of thought combined with the opportunity to test ideas. I have enjoyed the early part of my career, when I was working as a practitioner and a planner. However, entering the academic world became a necessity for me because I wanted to reflect and analyse on what I had seen in the “real world”, and go further and provide new ways of thinking and acting. Only research can provide the time, intellectual resources, and the interactions with colleagues and students to do so.

Which of your publications would you regard as the most significant and why?
I am quite happy about several recent publications on what I call “Logistics Sprawl”, looking at spatial patterns of warehousing developments in large metropolitan areas around the world. With the rise in global supply chains and new consumers’ demands such as e-commerce, logistics facilities have increased at a fantastic rate these past ten to twenty years, and a new logistics landscape has emerged in the outskirts of many major metropolitan areas. This previously undocumented phenomena is key to understand metropolisation, its benefits and impacts to people and companies.

What are you particularly hoping to achieve during your time as a Visiting Professor in Gothenburg?
The university of Gothenburg together with Chalmers have an extremely active network called the Urban Freight Platform. I am particularly happy to have theo opportunity to be part of that team, exchanging knowledge and ideas on urban freigt. I intend to participate in workshops, projects and PhD supervision. I will give some lectures. One of my research goals is to continue working on spatial patterns of warehouses and logistics facilities within the Gothenburg area, a work that has started a few months ago with some colleagues from the Urban Freight Platform (Ivan Sanchez, Jerry Olson, Johan Woxenius) and my PhD student Adeline Heitz. Another research objective is to assess the impacts (environmental and economic) of Gothenburg’s Low Emission Zone restricting access to old trucks in the city center. I have started this work (with colleagues Antoine Montenon and Cecilia Cruz) and I intend to examine it further while staying in Gothenburg.

Links
http://www.ifsttar.fr/en/menu-haut/annuaire/presentation/personne/dablanc_laetitia/
www.metrans.org/metrofreight

Focus areas:

• Urban freight
• Logistics sprawl
• Freight and the environment
• Freight planning and policy

Visiting Professor of International Business from Manchester Business School, UK

"Multinationals present threats and opportunities for local firms in host countries."

Professional biography
Dr Axèle Giroud is Professor of International Business, and Director of the MSc in International Business and Management with the Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester. Her main research interests are multinational enterprises' economic and social impact in host countries, inter- and intra-firm linkages, technology and knowledge transfers, and international strategy. She was previously President of the Euro-Asia Management Studies Association, and worked as Senior Economic Affairs Officer for the Division on Investment and Enterprise at UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development). She has completed several research reports for major organizations such as the Japanese Bank for International Cooperation, the British Department for International Development, the ASEAN Secretariat, the World Bank and the United Nations. She sits on the editorial board of several academic journals and has published extensively in journals such as Journal of World Business, Journal of International Marketing, Asian Business and Management, International Business Review, Management International Review, and World Development.

What are your main research interests?
My field of interest is international business and more specifically multinational enterprises (MNEs) impact on host countries through inter-firm linkages. I initiated this stream of research in the late 1990s, studying Southeast Asia at a time when few researchers paid attention to this part of the world. Since, I have made key contributions by integrating international strategic considerations in the understanding of intra- and inter-firm knowledge flows, linkages and technology spillovers.

How does your research have influence beyond the academic world? Does this include any roles you have beyond the academy?
I am among very few scholars whose impact is measureable on practice and policy, as well as on the academic community. For example, I have worked for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, making major contributions to the World Investment Report, one of UNCTAD’s flagship publications; my early work on linkages underpinned background research that led to the development of a number of principles (on economic, social and environmental impact) formulated within the World Bank/FAO/UNCTAD project on investment in agriculture (PRAI).

Is teaching still a significant part of your working life? What particular method or approach would you say characterises your teaching?
Teaching is an essential part of my academic life, I enjoy sharing knowledge and expertise with students, whether I address myself to inexperienced UG students, experienced MSc or MBA students or very experienced managers or senior government officials within Executive programmes. I prefer teaching smaller groups in an interactive way, integrating case studies and results from my own research into classroom activities while encouraging participants to share their own knowledge on the topic.

What specific passions or concerns particularly inspire you in your work?
I am fascinated by the global activities conducted by firms, how innovative they are when operating across borders, what this means for host developing countries, and what the potential risks of interconnectivity are. This has an impact on us all. In many least developing countries, foreign investment represent the main source of external finance and a powerful engine for growth, but this entails a number of risks. I believe firms must invest responsibly and generate inclusive linkages to contribute to the sustainable development of their host economies.

Which of your publications would you regard as the most significant and why?
Over time, I have published widely on both the impact of multinationals through linkages, and on firms innovation and global strategy. One of my papers published in World Development in 2012 best illustrate this work inasmuch as I combine various streams of knowledge on the multinational firms to show that subsidiary heterogeneity is key to understanding impact on host countries. The paper makes a significant contribution because it challenges existing assumptions and points to the important role of individual subsidiaries.

What are you particularly hoping to achieve during your time as a Visiting Professor in Gothenburg?
There are excellent researchers in Gothenburg, as well as very good links with business practitioners, and the university actively promotes international collaboration. I am keen to bring in my own expertise in international business and multinational management, exchange knowledge and develop long term research projects. I have always favoured collaboration in research, it is stimulating, productive and leads to more innovative thinking. My expertise fits well with existing expertise of academics in Gothenburg, and I am really looking forward to spending time in Gothenburg in the coming year.

Link
https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/axele.giroud.html

Focus areas:

• Multinational firms strategy and structure
• Inter-firm linkages
• Technology transfer
• Knowledge networks

Visiting Professor of Law from University of Manchester, UK

"Laws which determine citizens’ social rights need to be placed under the microscope."

Professional biography
Neville Harris holds a Chair in the School of Law at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom and he is a member of ManReg (the Manchester Centre for Regulation and Governance). He is the editor of the Journal of Social Security Law and the Education Law Reports. He specialises in the field of public law, with a particular emphasis on the areas of social security, education and administrative justice. His work also engages closely with issues of children’s rights and human rights more broadly. Neville has held a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for work on complexity in the law and structure of welfare which fed into his most recent book, Law in a Complex State (Hart, 2013). Other books by him include Resolving Disputes about Educational Provision (co-authored) (Ashgate, 2011), Education, Law and Diversity (Hart, 2007), Challenges to School Exclusion (Routledge/Falmer, 2000) and Social Security Law in Context (Oxford University Press, 2000) – also published in a Mandarin edition by Peking University Press (2006). He is also on the editorial boards of a number of journals, including the international advisory board of Education, Citizenship and Social Justice.

What are your main research interests?
I am interested in the legal relationship between citizen and state, particularly in relation to the area of welfare. My research focuses on not only what entitlements the state provides but also how they are legally defined and how effectively citizens are able to gain access to them. This also includes research into the processes by which administrative decisions can be challenged. I am particularly concerned with the social impact of welfare legislation in the key areas of education and social security, such as how people with disabilities are affected.

How does your research have influence beyond the academic world? Does this include any roles you have beyond the academy?
My research into dispute resolution has led to an advisory role with the Department for Education in the UK in its development of a new legal and policy framework on the education of children with special educational needs. I have also been involved in a number of international projects seeking to inform or influence policy in specific areas, such as law and policy on school choice (a Brookings Institution project) and the governance of education (a European Commission project). At national level, my work has included research into social security and drug dependency, for the UK’s Drugs Policy Commission.

Is teaching still a significant part of your working life? What particular method or approach would you say characterises your teaching?
I enjoy teaching and have taught Education Law and Family Law for many years. I also have significant experience of teaching Administative Law, Welfare Law and Legal Skills. At my home university, teaching is based on lecture and small group seminar formats. I believe in guiding students towards the acquisition of a good framework of knowledge while also encouraging a critical perspective on the law and its underlying policy. My teaching covers a wide range of controversial subject areas, so it is important to channel debate effectively.

What specific passions or concerns particularly inspire you in your work?
I have always been drawn to areas of the law affecting the basic welfare rights of citizens. When I first embarked on my legal studies many years ago these areas were largely overlooked by lawyers and scholars. This has, thankfully, changed, but there is still a need to throw light on these areas to increase general awareness of the implications of legal changes for people affected. I am still committed to playing a part in this. More generally, I really enjoy venturing into unexplored knowledge areas with a view to making new discoveries.

Which of your publications would you regard as the most significant and why?
In the area of welfare law I would say that my book Social Security Law in Context, published by Oxford University Press, has had the greatest impact. For example, the Academy of Social Sciences at Beijing University commissioned a Chinese translation of the book, published by Peking Press in 2006, and the UK’s highest court cited the book in an important judgment in 2008. In the field of education, Education, Law and Diversity was the first book to assess the role of the law in responding to social diversity in the context of access to education.

What are you particularly hoping to achieve during your time as a Visiting Professor in Gothenburg?
As a Visiting Professor I greatly wish to make a useful contribution to the university. I hope to gain new perspectives on my areas of interest through exchanges of ideas with academic colleagues and research students in Gothenburg. To those who are interested, I will be able to provide a UK perspective on various legal and policy issues. Ultimately, an aim is that a lasting collaborative relationship with some of the colleagues will be established. I also hope to benefit from the cultural experience of spending time in Gothenburg.

Link
https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/neville-harris(eda18e72-e012-41c9-a671-7de862d44bc5).html

Focus areas:

• Regulation of education
• Social security law and policy
• Social rights
• Dispute resolution

Visiting Professor of Accounting from Warwick Business School, UK

"It's not what you know but who you know and more importantly who they know."

Professional biography
Professor of Accounting at the University of Warwick. Formerly a Professor at Exeter University, a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at the London School of Economics. Graduated with a PhD from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and went on to work for KPMG in London. Also I was a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. I specialized in accounting for banks and insurance companies and have worked for the OECD in training former Soviet countries (e.g. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) in the art of insurance reporting.

What are your main research interests?
My main current research interest is the effects of social networks on market participants. Specifically, I am fascinated by the potential impact of networks on corporate governance mechanisms (e.g. independent directors, auditors etc.) and the transmission of information between market participants (analysts, executives, fund managers, shareholders). A number of my recent publications and working papers have investigated, for instance, the impact of networks on executive pay, auditor performance and analysts' forecasting abilities.

Is teaching still a significant part of your working life? What particular method or approach would you say characterises your teaching?
Teaching is critical to my overall wellbeing as an academic. Before answering the question regarding method/approach I spoke to my students to see what they would say. The keywords that came back to me were humour, passion and debate. When teaching accounting, at any level from undergraduate to executive, it is important to include a good dose of humour and skepticism. I strongly believe that students like to be challenged and enjoy the opportunities to debate which is vital especially as there is rarely a single ‘correct answer’ in the field of accounting.

What specific passions or concerns particularly inspire you in your work?
My main passion is to understand how information, social norms and biases transfer or are created through different types of networks. This ultimately means understanding how individuals interact explicitly and implicitly. This is particularly important to understand when investigating the impact of connections on the efficacy of corporate governance mechanisms. Specifically, the financial crisis exposed gaps in our knowledge of corporate governance and motivates me to rethink the principles of corporate governance and aim to understand the underpinning social principles that motive corporate actors.

Which of your publications would you regard as the most significant and why?
I would argue that my current research projects are the most significant. These projects build on my past publications and provide an even deeper and richer understanding of the issues and implications of social networks on corporate actors’ motivations and actions.

What are you particularly hoping to achieve during your time as a Visiting Professor in Gothenburg?
I hope for a number of things during my time at Gothenburg. First I hope to develop my social network research using a unique Swedish dataset that will open up opportunities to see how different types of social networks improve the efficient allocation of scare resources within the capital markets. Second and more importantly I hope to collaborate with faculty in Gothenburg developing both my knowledge base and theirs. In addition, I also intend to strengthen my links with a number of private Swedish companies and thereby potentially create fruitful applications that can be beneficial for these businesses.

Link
https://www.wbs.ac.uk/about/person/joanne-horton

Focus areas:

• Social networks
• Audit/ Corporate Governance
• Financial Reporting
• Analysts

Visiting Professor of Financial Economics from University of Rochester, USA

"Agency conflicts within financial intermediaries have significant impact on capital markets."

Professional biography
Professor Ron Kaniel is the Jay S. and Jeanne P. Benet Professor of Finance at the Simon School, University of Rochester. He has research interests in the areas of asset pricing, financial intermediation and investments. Prior to joining the Simon School in 2011, Ron was a faculty member at Duke University and the University of Texas at Austin, and was a visiting scholar at Stanford University. He has published articles in The Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Business, Operations research, and Mathematical Finance. His work has been cited multiple times in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

What are your main research interests?
I have research interests in the areas of asset pricing, financial intermediation and investments. My research is focused on understanding mutual funds investment decisions and how they impact security prices, the impact of endogenous community effects on investors’ investment decisions and equilibrium prices, and the predictive role of changes in trading volume and investors’ order flow on security returns.

How does your research have influence beyond the academic world? Does this include any roles you have beyond the academy?
Some hedge funds have implemented trading strategies based on my works on the predictive roles of extreme trading volume and individual investor order flow, for stock returns.

My work on end of quarter gaming behavior of equity mutual funds played an important role in publically exposing this shady paractice to the public at large and to regulators, leading to a significant decline in this price inflation practice.

Which of your publications would you regard as the most significant and why?
“Equilibrium Prices in the presence of Delegated Portfolio Management,” (with D. Cuoco), Journal of Financial Economics, 2011, 101, 264-269.

While the published version came out in 2011. The first draft was written long before the financial crisis. This is the first paper to analyse equilibrium asset pricing implications of portfolio delegation in a dynamic setting. Today, especially after the financial crisis, we all understand that financial intermediaries have an important role in financial markets and their actions can have a significant impact on asset prices. However, when we first wrote this paper agency problems were not incorporated into asset-pricing models and many still believed that financial institutions were irrelevant for determining prices.

Link
http://rkaniel.simon.rochester.edu/

Focus areas:

• Portfolio Delegation
• Asset Pricing
• Relative Wealth Considerations
• Capital Markets

Visiting Professor of Marketing from University of Southern Denmark, Denmark

"Understanding and theorizing how globalization is transforming marketplace cultures is pivotal for business and societal decision makers."

Professional biography
Dannie Kjeldgaard, Ph.D., is a Professor of Marketing in the Consumption, Culture and Commerce group at the University of Southern Denmark. He is also editor-in-chief of Consumption, Markets and Culture.

What are your main research interests?
Dannie’s work analyses change processes of market-based glocalization in domains such as place branding, branding, media and identity construction, global consumer segments, ethnicity and qualitative methodology. His research is published in Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Behaviour, Consumption, Markets and Culture, Marketing Theory, Journal of Macromarketing and in several anthologies.

Current research interests are glocalization and market formation in the context of food culture, Nordic marketplace cultures, consumer needs from a socio-cultural perspective and consumer cosmopolitanism and gender.

How does your research have influence beyond the academic world? Does this include any roles you have beyond the academy?
I have ongoing interaction with local industry through presentations and media communication. For the last 5 years I have been engaged in a project with the Danish brewing industry to explore the innovation potential of glocalization processes. I am co-initiator of the SDU Academy for Societal Change, a platform that brings together the strongest social science researchers to address big societal challenges.

Is teaching still a significant part of your working life? What particular method or approach would you say characterises your teaching?
I enjoy teaching and am currently teaching a BA course on global commodity chains in the Market and Management Anthropology programme at SDU. I have been involved in teaching at all levels of university education and have been active in developing relevant and successful international M.Sc. programmes in the domain of marketing, globalization, culture and branding. My teaching philosophy is to engage students as active participants and encourage peer-to-peer learning.

What specific passions or concerns particularly inspire you in your work?
My research generally attempts to see big changes in mundane or non-mainstream contexts. How are market change processes transforming everyday life and practices in terms of consumption, with a specific emphasis on globalization.

Which of your publications would you regard as the most significant and why?
My publication in 2006 on global youth culture (Kjeldgaard and Askegaard 2006) addresses how globalization affects youth culture in centres and peripheries. It challenges some of the predominant ideas in marketing about the emergence of global consumer segments. A more recent article addresses how consumers are not only affected by, but also embedded in, market transformations. In addition to the content it illustrates that engagement with external stakeholders is not counter-productive to research endeavors.

What are you particularly hoping to achieve during your time as a Visiting Professor in Gothenburg?
I am looking forward to engaging with some of the excellent consumer culture cultures in Gothenburg and to drawing inspiration from theoretical and empirical approaches that are less familiar to me. I will engage in dialogue with doctoral students on consumer culture and this will also hopefully lead to research collaborations.

Links
Google Scholar

Focus areas:

• Globalization
• Consumer culture
• Branding
• Food culture
• Market transformation
• Nordic marketplace cultures

Visiting Professor of Economics from University of Hamburg, Germany

"Understanding how people behave is a prerequisite for good policy design."

Professional biography
Andreas Lange is full professor at the University of Hamburg since 2010. He also is a Research Associate at the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) Mannheim, and Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department for Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Maryland. He received his PhD from the Department of Economics, University of Heidelberg. He currently serves as a co-editor for Environmental and Resource Economics as well as an Associate Editor for Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. He has published in leading economic journals such as American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, European Economic Review, and Journal of Public Economics. His research includes theoretical, experimental and applied work on issues in public and environmental as well as behavioral economics. His current research reach from work on the voluntary provision of public goods, behavioral motivations for giving under risk, to international environmental agreements and climate policy, all combining theoretical and experimental studies.

What are your main research interests?
My current research focusses on links between behavioral economics and environmental economics as well as public economics. I thereby try to better understand what drives individuals’ behavior and their reaction to incentives, in particular when actions have environmental or public consequences. By combining theory and experimental approaches, this understanding provides the basis for analyzing aspects of (endogenous) policy and institution formation as well as for reconsidering recommendations for policy choice. Current applications reach from work on the voluntary provision of public goods, behavioral motivations for giving under risk, to international environmental agreements and climate policy.

How does your research have influence beyond the academic world? Does this include any roles you have beyond the academy?
Measuring impact outside the academic world is complicated. However, economic insights as well as methods can be used to improve decision-making in both private and public sector. Studying charitable giving is one example. The recent literature on charitable giving has inspired at least some charities to rethink the way they approach donors. Importantly, based on thourough experimental design, charities can themselves improve their solicitation attempts.

Is teaching still a significant part of your working life? What particular method or approach would you say characterises your teaching?
Teaching is important and takes up a substantial part of my daily work. I particularly like to jointly explore different perspectives on issues, to encourage students to see the beauty but also the limitations of (theoretical) models, and to challenge them to use gained insights to explain or predict aspects of current policies or just of encounters in daily life.

What specific passions or concerns particularly inspire you in your work?
I always was intrigued by questions about determinants of the long-run success of a society. Starting with climate change, I like to see how decisions under uncertainty are made, how policy-induced behavioral changes interact with reactions to, potentially abrupt and unexpected, changes that are triggered triggered through the environment or through society. I enjoy having the privilege to freely address such questions and to engage in intellectual exchanges with researchers from different disciplines.

Which of your publications would you regard as the most significant and why?
It is hard to pick a particular paper, QJE 2006: “Toward an Understanding of the Economics of Charity: Evidence from a Field Experiment”. Not only is it widely cited, but it also opened my eyes to what research can achieve, and how careful one has to be when presenting new insights.

What are you particularly hoping to achieve during your time as a Visiting Professor in Gothenburg?
Together with excellent researchers in Gothenburg, I hope to generate and explore new ideas through intense interactions. I hope that working with PhD students and faculty, exciting new research projects will evolve and that these research collaborations will extend far into the future.

Focus areas:

• Experimental and Behavioral Economics, Public and Environmental Economics
• Prosocial behavior and preferences
• Risk and uncertainty
• Social norms and the environment

Visiting Professor of Business Administration from HEC Montréal, Canada

"Planned change fails when the actual process of changing is not part of the plan."

Professional biography
Ann Langley is professor of management at HEC Montréal and Canada research chair in strategic management in pluralistic settings. Her research focuses on strategic change, leadership, identity and the use of management tools in complex organizations with an emphasis on processual and qualitative research approaches. Her work has appeared in journals such as Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Human Relations, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Science, Organization Studies and Strategic Organization. She is coeditor of Strategic Organization, and on the editorial boards of Academy of Management Journal and Organization Science. She is also series editor with Haridimos Tsoukas of Perspectives on Process Organization Studies published by Oxford University Press and is currently preparing a Sage Handbook of Process Organization Studies. She is a member of the Board of the European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) and was chair of the 29th annual EGOS Colloquium held in Montreal in 2013. She is adjunct professor at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration and the Department of Health Administration at University of Montreal.

What are your main research interests?
I am interested in understanding the strategic management processes and practices that are appropriate to “pluralistic” settings, i.e., organizational contexts where objectives and values are multiple and ambiguous, where power and influence are shared among a variety of stakeholders, and where the knowledge required to make decisions is distributed among people at many levels and in different positions. This leads me to consider processes of strategic change, collective leadership and the use of managerial tools in such settings.

How does your research have influence beyond the academic world? Does this include any roles you have beyond the academy?
I have conducted qualitative research in health care organizations examining different approaches to change, and analyzing interventions such as mergers, restructuring and changing forms of governance that have important practical implications. I have served on the boards of a health care agency, and I teach a regular segment in the International Masters in Practicing Management (IMPM) at McGill University.

Is teaching still a significant part of your working life? What particular method or approach would you say characterises your teaching?
I teach seminars on research methods and publishing in strategy at the PhD level in the Montreal joint doctoral program. My approach to teaching is both practical and interactive. I believe in learning by doing, and learning by reflecting collectively on practice. Thus in my classes, students develop their own research or publication projects, and engage with each other to discuss and improve their work. My role is one of coach, and facilitator, creating occasions for mutual learning.

What specific passions or concerns particularly inspire you in your work?
I am passionate about the importance of considering phenomena from a processual or temporal perspective. I believe that much organizational scholarship tends to dismiss considerations of time, and that this is a serious problem in terms of its potential value and usefulness. In all my own research, I am very conscious of fluidity, activity, temporality and flow and try to reflect this in my scholarly outputs.

Which of your publications would you regard as the most significant and why?
- LANGLEY, A: « Strategies for theorizing from process data, » Academy of Management Review, 24(4), 1999, (691-710).

This publication is my most highly-cited article. It is the publication in which I first articulated my thinking about the importance of a process perspective to organizational scholarship and provided some ideas about how to bring that to fruition in empirical studies.

What are you particularly hoping to achieve during your time as a Visiting Professor in Gothenburg?
I would like to work with like-minded colleagues on issues of interest to me relating to strategic processes and practices in pluralistic settings. For example, I am very interested in the work being done in health care organizations and would very much like to collaborate with colleagues at University of Gothenburg on these issues.

Focus areas:

• strategic change
• collective leadership
• managerial tools
• complex organizations

Visiting Professor of Innovation Management & Entrepreneurship from Aalborg University, Denmark

"Innovation requires strategic experimentation."

Professional biography
Dr. Astrid Heidemann Lassen is Associate Professor in Innovation Management at the Center for Industrial Production at Aalborg University, Denmark, where she has been employed since 2004. Since 2012 Astrid has also been adjunct research fellow at Stiftelsen IMIT in Gothenburg. She is the AAU Head of the Erasmus Mundus Global Innovation Management Master program, and was in 2012 awarded the Erasmus Mundus mobility scholarship. Astrid is co-founder of the Continuous Innovation Network Young Academics (CIYA) and was member of Board from 2007 to 2013. Currently Astrid is heading up the programme on Technology and Innovation Management at the Center for Industrial Production, AAU, Denmark.

What are your main research interests?
My research is in particular focused on user-centered innovation/open innovation, high-tech vs. low-tech innovation and knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship. I have conducted qualitative as well as quantitative studies in these areas, which provide me with both in-depth qualitative insights and generalizable quantitative results. Core to this is my passion for researching the process of developing organizational innovation capabilities based on a balanced approach to exploration and exploitation. I study this in the context of both established companies and entrepreneurial ventures.

How does your research have influence beyond the academic world? Does this include any roles you have beyond the academy?
I am a strong believer in the dual responsibility of academics to advance scientific knowledge as well as to demonstrate the empirical value of such knowledge. Therefore, my research often includes extensive work with industrial partners on developing organizational capabilities for innovation. I have worked on such matters with a range of globally leading companies as well as small entrepreneurial high-tech companies. Additionally, I have most recently been in charge of developing a Horizon 2020 funded training program on Open Innovation for managers in SME’s in the Food Industries.

Is teaching still a significant part of your working life? What particular method or approach would you say characterises your teaching?
Teaching is an important element of academic knowledge dissemination. I am responsible for several courses at Master and MBA level in the area of Entrepreneurship and Innovation & Change Management. I teach these courses as part of the Aalborg University master programmes ‘Operations and Innovation Management’ and ‘Entrepreneurial Engineering’; and in China for the Sino-Danish Center for Education and Research (SDC). Additionally, I am the Aalborg University Head of the Erasmus Mundus Master program Global Innovation Management. All programmes are taught fully in English and based on the PBL approach, which originated at Aalborg University.

What specific passions or concerns particularly inspire you in your work?
It is highly inspiring to me to be able to work with my field across several different settings; small vs. large company, high-tech vs. low-tech; national vs. global. I believe this continuously provides me with insights which inspire, challenge and push my understanding of innovation management.

Which of your publications would you regard as the most significant and why?
I have disseminated my research results extensively through several different types of outlets; international academic journals, academic books, and practitioner oriented articles – each with their respective type of contribution. I am particularly fond of the book ”Managing Knowledge-Intensive Entrepreneurship” which I recently co-authored with Maureen McKelvey from University of Gothenburg, and enjoy seeing it making impact on students’ knowledge of the domain.

What are you particularly hoping to achieve during your time as a Visiting Professor in Gothenburg?
During my time with the Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship I am looking forward to playing an active role in both research and teaching. In particular working in close collaboration with talented PhD students will be very rewarding. My hopes are that this will create the foundations for significant future research collaboration and joint projects.

Links
Linkedin
https://vbn.aau.dk/en/persons/110687

Focus areas:

• Innovation management
• Knowledge-intensive Entrepreneurship
• Global technology management

Visiting Professor of Law from University of London, UK

"The loss of the concept of the public is one of the greatest catastrophes of the neoliberal period."

Professional biography
I joined the Birkbeck School of Law, University of London, in September 2000. From 2003 to 2009 I was Birkbeck's Pro-Vice Master for Research. I have previously been a Visiting Professor of Law at the Sydney University of Technology and the University of Melbourne. Since 2009 I have been a Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Roma Tre; and in 2014 I became the Co-Director of ISHTIP (International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property).

What are your main research interests?
I have intersecting research interests across the areas of intellectual property law, cultural property/heritage, international economic law, and the political economy of law. At present my two primary research projects are focussed on: first, the relationship between between intellectual property and cultural property/heritage; and, secondly, the question of work/labour in the neo-liberal period, with a particular focus on the way in which the regulation of intangibles impacts on this question.

How does your research have influence beyond the academic world? Does this include any roles you have beyond the academy?
I have a commitment to making the ideas explored in university-based research accessible for people outside academia. As a result of this, I have developed a particular interest in documentary film making as a vehicle for public communication. I am currently working on two projects that will involve the production a documentary intended to communicate the ideas of the projects in an accessible way.

Is teaching still a significant part of your working life? What particular method or approach would you say characterises your teaching?
Teaching is a central part of my working life because the class room is a critically important laboratory of ideas. For me, teaching has always had two very important roles: first, it requires the development of a coherent structure for the presentation of the relevant material that allows for the communication of ideas; and, secondly, I use it as a way of testing my ideas.

What specific passions or concerns particularly inspire you in your work?
A central concern of my work is the way in which the concepts of the public and of community have been diminished and tarnished in the neo-liberal period, which has largely been concerned with the perfecting the overwhelming dominance of private interests. The underlying theme of all my research is to explore how law and political economy have interacted in order to achieve this result.

Which of your publications would you regard as the most significant and why?
This is a very difficult question to answer. The best way that I can think of to measure the significance to me of my publications is to reflect on the extent to which I have managed to realise and communicate the underlying ideas. Since all academic work reflects the most recent moment in a trajectory of intellectual development (in the sense that we hope to “fail better”, as Samuel Beckett famously said, each time), I probably think my most significant publication at any given time is the one I wrote most recently.

What are you particularly hoping to achieve during your time as a Visiting Professor in Gothenburg?
Simply, I hope to be able to discuss and test my research with colleagues and students, and from these encounters to develop durable networks in which ideas that help us to live better and more equitably with one another, locally and globally, have a chance to take flight and enter into academic and public dialogue.

Focus areas:

• Intellectual property
• Cultural property/heritage
• International economic law
• Law and political economy

Visiting Professor of Economics from Institute for Economic Analysis (CSIC) & Barcelona GSE, Spain

"Civil conflict is becoming the primary cause of poverty in the world."

Professional biography
Visiting Professor Laura Mayoral has worked at the Institute for Economic Analysis (Spanish National Research Council) in Barcelona since 2006. Before joining that institute she was Assistant Professor and Ramón y Cajal Felow at Universitat Pompeu Fabra and Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. She has also been visiting professor at New York University (Abu Dhabi), and at the Paris School of Economics.

What are your main research interests?
I am interested in understanding the causes of conflict. In particular, I investigate the connections between economic conditions (such as poverty or inequality), non economic markers (like ethnicity or religiosity) and conflict. I am also interested in analyzing the long term effects of violence as well as conflict prevention and recovery. Finally, I’m also studying how cultural factors, such as religiosity, shape economic decisions.

Is teaching still a significant part of your working life? What particular method or approach would you say characterises your teaching?
I teach regularly in different master and PhD programs at the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics. I have also taught in several institutions around the wold such as the Paris School of Economics or New York University.

What specific passions or concerns particularly inspire you in your work?
1.5 billion people live in areas affected by conflict or large-scale organized criminal crime. These people are more than twice as likely to be undernourished and to see their children die before the age of five as those in other developing countries and more than three times as likely to not be able to send their kids to school. No conflict-affected country has yet to achieve a single United Nations Millennium Development Goal. Thus, beyond violence being just one more cause of poverty, it's safe to say that it's rapidly becoming its primary cause. Understanding what drives conflict is key to pull these countries out of the conflict trap.

Which of your publications would you regard as the most significant and why?
I’d like to highlight my paper “Ethnicity and conflict: Theory and Facts” (joint with Debraj Ray and Joan Esteban), published in Science (2012). This paper investigates, both theoretically and empirically, the causes of civil conflict around the World. In particular, it focuses on the connections between ethnic distribution and conflict and shows that ethnicity matters, not intrinsically as primodialists would claim, but rather instrumentally, when ethnic markers are used as a means of restricting political power of economic benefits to a subset of the population.

What are you particularly hoping to achieve during your time as a Visiting Professor in Gothenburg?
There is a very active group of researchers in development and conflict in Scandinavia in general and in the University of Gothenburg in particular and during my stay here I hope to be able to strengthen my links with this community, to get to know their research better and to start joint projects. I am also very interested in collaborating in the PhD program advising students interested in these topics.

Links
http://mayoral.iae-csic.org/
http://www.barcelonagse.eu/people/mayoral-laura

Focus areas:

• Analysis of conflict
• Development economics
• Cultural economics
• Applied econometrics

Visiting Professor of Econometrics from NYU Shanghai, China

"Analyzing panel data is the key to understanding the dynamics of our economy."

Professional biography
Ryo Okui is an economist who has worked as an Associate Professor at Kyoto University, Japan, since 2009, and also at VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands, since 2015. Prior to joining Kyoto University, he worked at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong SAR. He received a Bachelor in economics from Kyoto University, Japan, in 1998 and a PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, USA, in 2005. His main research area is Econometrics. He also does research in Experimental Economics.

What are your main research interests?
My main research area is Econometrics which is about how to analyse economic data. In particular, I am interested in panel data analysis. Panel data contain observations on many units such as individuals and firms over several time periods. By using panel data, we can understand various interesting economics phenomena, such as income dynamics and firm dynamics. I am also interested in Experimental Economics. In particular, I am interested in how we (or our brains) process statistical information and how we can elicit statistical information from people.

How does your research have influence beyond the academic world? Does this include any roles you have beyond the academy?
Understanding the reality of economic situations using data is the key to providing better policies and, ultimately, building a better society. For example, consider the problem of income inequality. We need to understand to what extend income inequality is persistent before we implement any policy. We thus need to analyse data, and to do so we need to know how to analyse data. This is what econometrics is about.

Is teaching still a significant part of your working life? What particular method or approach would you say characterises your teaching?
Teaching is an important part of my job. I believe that what students learn in the class room should have a long term impact. Teaching should not end in the class room, rather it should be an important yet interdemiate step toward their developing skills and knowledge. My approach is to prepare teaching materials thoroughly, provide a clear guidance about useful references an future studies and always put topics in a big picture. By doing so, students can review what they learnt even years after they took the course and also can progress their studies easily afterward.

What specific passions or concerns particularly inspire you in your work?
I love the power of statistical analysis and am very excited about developing new methods to analyse data. For example, when we just look at the income distribution, we cannot say much about income inequality even if we find that the income distribution is very diverse. It is because we cannot distinguish two sources of the diversity of income: The income distribution is diverse because of some permanent income inequality or it is because incomes are very fluctuating so people face different incomes over years. If we have panel data on income, we observe the incomes of the same set of individuals for several years and we can distinguish these two sources. This is the power of statistical reasoning and I am in love with it.

Which of your publications would you regard as the most significant and why?
My best publication would be Kuersteiner, Guido & Ryo Okui: “Constructing Optimal Instruments by First Stage Prediction Averaging,” Econometrica (2010), 78(2):697-718. This research shows that model averaging techniques is not only useful for traditional purpose of prediction or forcasting, but also for causal analysis.

What are you particularly hoping to achieve during your time as a Visiting Professor in Gothenburg?
I am very excited in this opportunity of visiting Gothenburg. The University of Gothenburg has a brilliant group of applied economists and I look forward to working with them and contribute by combining my econometric skills and their empirical skills. Moreover, Sweden is known to have great data sets, and I am looking forward to seeing them. I also find that the economics department has a very active group of PhD students who are doing some empirical researches. I look forward to interacting them and participating in the process of creating a new generation of active empirical researchers.

Link
https://sites.google.com/site/okuiryoeconomics/

Focus areas:

• Econometrics
• Dynamic panel data analysis
• Model averaging
• Experimental economics
• Decision theory

Visiting Professor of Economic History from University of Oxford, UK

"The human body is a new tool for understanding dynamics in economic history."

Professional biography
I trained in economic history and sociology at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, Australia, and then began my career in economic history at the University of Melbourne before returning to UNSW. In 2007, I emigrated and I am now Professor of Social Science History at the University of Oxford, and Fellow of All Souls College. I am a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and the Academy of Social Sciences. Currently, I am a Leverhulme Major Research Fellow working on a new book, Weighty Matters: A somatic history of Britain’s Industrial Revolution.

What are your main research interests?
(1) Weighty Matters exploits new data on historical body mass to examine how local labour markets contributed to shaping household distribution, and the long-term consequences for health (Meredith & Oxley 2015). This had intergenerational effects, transmitted via mothers (Oxley 2015). Gender discrimination against girls has recently been found when examining stature of 19^th century factory children (Horrell and Oxley, 2016). I’m interested in how children grew, especially in Britain, Australia and South Africa. (2) Collaborative project on 19^th century criminal justice, The Digital Panopticon, linking London court records with convict transportees and prison data, exploring the long-term consequences of different modes of punishment.

How does your research have influence beyond the academic world? Does this include any roles you have beyond the academy?
My current work on measuring gender differences in human growth will have influence on how medics interpret height-for-age z-scores based on the World Health Organisation growth standards.

Work on convicts always gains public interest. Most recently, we wrote a popular piece on ’10 myths of convict Australia’ for the BBC History Magazine (Meredith & Oxley, 2016).

Is teaching still a significant part of your working life? What particular method or approach would you say characterises your teaching?
Although currently a research fellow, I still supervise and recently taught a paper on Crime and Punishment in Britain at Masters level. Previously, I ran the M.Sc. and M.Phil. programmes in Economic and Social History – the most enjoyable teaching I have ever done. The programmes featured practical training in quantitative and qualitative research methods, around a core paper What happened, and Why? This examined social science epistemology and the implications for historical research. We covered history, economics (experimental, institutional, etc.), psychology, political science, anthropology, sociology etc. My approach is interdisciplinary and interactive, and I always have the desire to push students to be the best they can.

What specific passions or concerns particularly inspire you in your work?
Understanding the dynamics of history, how they play out in the present, and the implications for social justice and human welfare.

Which of your publications would you regard as the most significant and why?
Horrell, Meredith and Oxley, ‘Measuring misery: Body mass, ageing and gender inequality in Victorian London’, Explorations in Economic History, 46 (2009) – because it pioneered the use of body mass as a tool for understanding distribution in household consumption.

Also related to that earlier work, my 2015 co-authored article, ‘Blood and Bone’, in the journal History of the Family (2015) teases apart the connections between economic opportunity and bargaining power in shaping consumption, and links outcomes to Waaler mortality surfaces.

Meredith and Oxley, ‘Food and fodder: Feeding Britain, 1700-1900’, Past and Present 222.1 (2014) – because it helps resolve the 19th century food puzzle, identifying a fall of 1000 kcal/day per adult male equivalent. It demonstrated what human needs were, how available calories fell below these needs, and what the consequences were for hunger, work effort, maternal health and infant welfare.

What are you particularly hoping to achieve during your time as a Visiting Professor in Gothenburg?
I am excited to be working with Gothenburg’s excellent team of economic historians on their new project examining ‘Socioeconomic dimensions of diet and health during the 20th century: A longitudinal study’. Christer Lund and Stefan Öberg are both making original contributions in their respective fields of labour markets and households, and demographics, families and anthropometrics. The Visiting Professorship will enable me to develop my ideas in an internationally comparative framework, return to my earlier interest in household budget data, as well as accessing the exceptional wealth of longitudinal data available in Sweden. I am also looking forward to engaging with graduate students interested in fostering interdisciplinary approaches to the past.

Links
https://www.asc.ox.ac.uk/person/47?m1=3&m2=0
The Digital Panopticon
Founders & Survivors

Focus areas:

• Gender and health inequality
• Households and labour markets
• Nutrition history
• Colonial economic development

Visiting Professor of Law from University of Copenhagen, Denmark

"Empires wax and wane; states cleave asunder and coalesce (Chinese Saying)."

Professional biography
Professor Hanne Petersen is professor of legal culture at the University of Copenhagen, where she has worked with intermissions since 1983. She was a Jean Monnet Scholar at the European University Institute in Florence from 1993-94, a professor of jurisprudence and sociology of law at the University of Greenland, Nuuk from 1995-99. After having returned to Copenhagen, she received a professorship in Greenlandic sociology of law from 2001-2006, requiring her to teach in both Nuuk and Copenhagen. From 2007-10 she was appointed Professor II at the University of Tromsø, Norway. In 2009 she was appointed professor of legal culture at the University of Copenhagen, and from 2011-12 she was Hedda Andersson guest professor at Lund University. She has participated in numerous Nordic and European international and interdisciplinary research projects.

What are your main research interests?
I dealt with legal pluralism very early as a way to understand the role of women in a labour market organized along male norms and traditions. Since the expansion of the EU and the collapse of the Soviet Union, interest has been growing in legal pluralism and legal culture. Western, national, and legal culture under historical masculine domination will increasingly be influenced by the challenges from a reconstituted world. I am recently very interested in how Asia takes up a new role, and global interdependence and interconnectedness is becoming a norm.

How does your research have influence beyond the academic world? Does this include any roles you have beyond the academy?
I had a grant at the European University Institute and years of cooperation with interdisciplinary colleagues there. I have facilitated research in Africa and taught interdisciplinary courses in the Arctic for a decade (lived in Nuuk and was professor II in Tromsø). I have evaluated hundreds and hundreds of research applications for the European Research Council (as well as earlier for the Danish Council). I have been a member of the Danish Equality Board for six years, deciding on cases which gave rise to considerable public debate. I have worked with women in the Middle East since 2008 and on China since 2009. And I have been Hedda Andersson professor at Lund University recently.

Is teaching still a significant part of your working life? What particular method or approach would you say characterises your teaching?
I have always loved teaching – especially the possibility of teaching in new fields and developing new courses. Recently I co-taught a course together with a much younger Chinese lawyer on Chinese legal culture and business law. That was a great learning experience and inspiration, which we both as well as the students enjoyed a lot. I also have enjoyed teaching international and interdisciplinary classes, where comparisons and discussions of diverse legal cultures come very naturally.

What specific passions or concerns particularly inspire you in your work?
Besides loving to teach, I also enjoy research a lot, and I have recently taken up research, which links China and the Arctic. The collisions between and combinations of welfare and market economies and values and their normative consequences are crucial for the world today. The challenges of creating sustainable balances in the future should concern all coming generations. I think we need to combine competition with contributions to the common goal of all. “Even if a sparrow is small it still has all organs” is another Chinese saying. What is the contribution of small Arctic and Nordic communities – the small sparrows of the world – to the world.

Which of your publications would you regard as the most significant and why?
I have written on labour law, women’s law, legal pluralism, legal culture, law and music, law and love, law and religion and recently on law and art. I feel privileged that I have lived during a period where it was possible to combine fields of knowledge and venture into new field of legal research. Because of this diverse profile of publications, I cannot point to any specifically significant publication. Perhaps the last one linking the situation of Chinese and Greenlandic women and their creative assimilation.

What are you particularly hoping to achieve during your time as a Visiting Professor in Gothenburg?
I hope to give and receive inspiration to students, researchers and colleagues. Gothenburg is a harbor city, which has historically been oriented towards the world, and it is a big industrial city, which is experiencing globalization and its contributions and tensions close at hand. I look forward to learn more about that and to hopefully share whatever experience I have that may be useful in this context.

Link
https://jura.ku.dk/cecs/staff/?pure=en/persons/97321

Focus areas:

• Legal culture
• Asian and Arctic perspectives
• Gender issues
• Sustainability

Visiting Professor of Business Administration from Babson College, USA

"Pricing is becoming increasingly important for business success."

Professional biography
Lidija Polutnik is a Professor of Economics at Babson College in Wellesley, USA, where she has served as Chair of the Economics Division since January 2005. She teaches mostly in the MBA program and in the area of managerial economics, competitiveness and pricing analysis. She lectures regularly in the Executive MBA Program at the University of Bologna, Italy.​​​​ Her work has been published in numerous academic journals and books including: The European Accounting Review, Advances in Management Accounting, Journal of Cost Management, Journal of Corporate Accounting and Finance, Industrial Relations Journal, and Comparative Economic Studies Journal.

What are your main research interests?
One of my fields of interest is strategic cost management, and it is based on analysis of the relationship between the firm’s costs and customers’ value and the influence of this relationship on the firm’s profit. I also do research within public finance, which is focused on the role institutions play in market economies and specifically in countries in transition.

How does your research have influence beyond the academic world? Does this include any roles you have beyond the academy?
I have extensive consulting and executive teaching experience for U.S. and international companies. I received several grants and awards for my work; most recently I received The Davis Educational Foundation grant for the project entitled “Containing Costs While Enhancing the Educational Mission: A Study of Best Practices for Small Private Colleges”. My research and field work led to the development of a value-creation model that aligns qualities and attributes valued by customers with costs of producing these attributes and thereby impacts allocation of resources and overall profitability of the firm.

What specific passions or concerns particularly inspire you in your work?
I have the spirit of an entrepreneur. I like researching new ideas, learning new things and challenging myself. I’m driven to find success factors for businesses. How to work strategically with the creation of value is my passion. Take strategic pricing for example - if you instead of leaving it entirely to the sales department, gather a team with experts from strategy, financial analysis and sales, and make them responsible for formulating and following up on pricing structures and instruct the sales force, you’ll create a lot more value for the company.

What are you particularly hoping to achieve during your time as a Visiting Professor in Gothenburg?
The School of Business, Economics and Law's contacts provide opportunities to initiate research projects for companies like Volvo and Ericsson. I also find that companies here in Sweden are very open to new knowledge and inquisitive about how they can improve their activities. And that is something I really value highly.

Link
https://www.babson.edu/academics/faculty/faculty-profiles/lidija-polutnik.php#

Focus areas:

• Pricing
• Strategic cost management
• Public finance

Visiting Professor of Economic History from Liverpool University Management School, UK

"I strive to understand how society and business evolve together over time."

Professional biography
Andrew Popp is Professor of Business History at the University of Liverpool Management School. He has previously held posts at Royal Holloway, University of London and Manchester Metropolitan University. He has published two monographs, one edited collection and more than 30 articles. He is Co-director of the Centre for Port and Maritime History, based in Liverpool, and co-edits the book series Studies in Port and Maritime History for Liverpool University Press. Currently Associate Editor at Enterprise and Society: The International Journal of Business History he will from January 2015 serve as Editor-in-Chief at the same journal. He is on the editorial board of Business History, where he has also previously served as reviews editor. In 2012 he was Toft Visiting Professor at Jonkoping International Business School.

What are your main research interests?
First and foremost I am an historian; this means I am concerned with understanding both change and continuity as processes that unfold through time. I happen to study these processes at those points of interaction between business, the economy, and society. So, for example, recent work has explored the intimate relationship between family life and the life of family firms. Or, in another example, I have explored how people have accommodated themselves to and made sense of their entrepreneurial careers. For the most part my work focuses on Britain in the nineteenth-century but more recently I have begun to look at the 1980s as well.

How does your research have influence beyond the academic world? Does this include any roles you have beyond the academy?
History perhaps has less immediate and obvious application to today’s problems than some other disciplines: it should never be mistaken as a source of easy lessons. Still, increasing numbers of companies are recognizing that a better understanding of history can be a source of considerable value. Some of the work I am doing on corporate archives with a colleague in Gothenburg is directed at better understanding how history can be used to create meaning and value today. At the same time I have contributed a number of times to various different types of media production, hopefully casting an illuminating historical perspective on a range issues.

Is teaching still a significant part of your working life? What particular method or approach would you say characterises your teaching?
Yes, teaching is still a significant – and enjoyable – part of my working life. My philosophy and approach are simple; my task is not simply to impart knowledge (though that can still be important) but to challenge students to ask the difficult questions and to think again about what they think they know. It might be worth noting that although I’m an historian I teach in a management school. It’s important that management students know a little history!

What specific passions or concerns particularly inspire you in your work?
In the first instance I am driven by curiosity. If the past is a foreign country, as one famous line has it, then I would like to travel there and discover what it holds. More concretely, I find history to be an incredibly powerful tool for thinking about our own world, the one in which we live today. Obviously, history can help us to better understand how we got to where we are today. But reflecting on past lives forces us also to reflect on our own lives. The gaps, and connections, between then and now are fascinating.

Which of your publications would you regard as the most significant and why?
Perhaps a book on family business in the nineteenth-century that I published in 2012. I think this book did really push the boundaries of business history, even if only a little. I took a well-established topic and examined it from a new angle and with new sources and methods. I was committed to the project for a long time and it was very satisfying to complete. And for the most part, other people seem to enjoy it as well.

What are you particularly hoping to achieve during your time as a Visiting Professor in Gothenburg?
Dialogue and collaboration! In fact, I already have good links and collaborations with colleagues in Gothenburg and I am looking forward to continuing and strengthening those as well as finding new ones. But we also have plans to forge links with others outside the University, local archivists for example and, hopefully, local companies as well. Of course, I am also looking forward to spending some time in the classroom with students.

Focus areas:

• History
• Society
• Enterprise
• Cultures

Visiting Professor of International Law from University of New South Wales, Australia

"Healthy oceans are critical to humankind’s continued existence - blue is beautiful, let’s keep it that way."

Professional Biography
Rosemary Rayfuse is a Professor of International Law in the Faculty of Law, UNSW Australia (The University of New South Wales). She holds the degrees of LLB from Queen's University, LLM from the University of Cambridge, where she was awarded the Clive Parry Prize for International Law, PhD from the University of Utrecht, and a Doctor of Laws honoris causa from Lund University.

Since 2010 she has held an appointment as Conjoint Professor in the Faculty of Law at Lund University, Sweden and she is also an Associated Senior Fellow at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Oslo, and an Associated Researcher in the Centre for Water, Oceans and Sustainability Law at the University of Utrecht. Prior to joining UNSW she was a Research Fellow at the Lauterpacht Research Centre for International Law and taught international law at the University of Cambridge. She practiced law in Vancouver, Canada and worked as a law clerk (judges associate) at the British Columbia Court of Appeal. Formerly of the Bar of British Columbia, she is currently on the rolls of the Law Society of England and Wales.

Research interests 
Within the broad area of public international law my main research interests are situated at the confluence of the law of the sea and international environmental law. In particular, my research focuses on: oceans governance, including emerging issues relating to polar oceans and deep seabed mining; high seas fisheries and the role of regional fisheries management organisations in their conservation and management; protection of the marine environment with a particular emphasis on the protection of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction; and climate change and the oceans, focusing on the legal aspects of sea level rise, ocean acidification and marine geoengineering.

Influence beyond the academy
Beyond the academy I am a member of the IUCN Commission on Environmental Law, Co-Chair of its Sub-Working Group on High Seas Governance and a member of its Arctic Task Force. I am the Chair’s nominee on the International Law Association’s Committee on Sea Level Rise and International Law and am on the editorial or advisory boards of a number of international law journals. I regularly advise governments, inter-governmental and non-governmental organisations and have held visiting appointments at research and academic institutions around the world.

Teaching
A former recipient of the UNSW Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, throughout my career I have made significant contributions to teaching and learning, developing and delivering innovative programs and courses in the international and environmental law areas that aim to inspire intellectual interest and ethical commitment to some of the important issues of our times. Since joining UNSW Law in 1994 I have developed the model of the specialist streams within in the LLM program, introduced and developed the international law and environmental law streams and the courses within those streams, created the interdisciplinary Masters of International Law and International Relations, and started the International Law Competitive Moot Program and the Public Interest Internship Program. My commitment to these programs was vividly demonstrated in 2006 when I became the first Australian woman to attempt to ski from the North Pole to Canada, using my North Pole Challenge 2006 to raise money for the Law School's Mooting and Internship programs.

I have held the positions of Director of International Law Programs, Director of the International Law Competitive Moot Program, Co-Director of the International Law and Policy Group and Co-Director of the Climate Change Law and Policy Initiative. I am currently Chair of the Environmental Law Group and Director of Environmental Law Programs. I continue to teach across a range of public international law courses at both the undergraduate and the postgraduate level, including law of the sea and international environmental law, focusing on providing high quality student-centered, context-based and experiential learning. My aim is to develop in students their own vision of how the world is and how they would like it to be, and to provide them with the tools to pursue their vision.

Inspiring passions and concerns 
The oceans cover more than 70% of the Earth’s surface. They are primary avenues for communication and transport, sources of food and other resources, and providers of critical ecosystem services on which all of humanity depends. However, despite legal advances of the 20th century, including the adoption of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the ‘constitution of the oceans’, the oceans are still subject to contestation over who ‘owns’ what and to increasing threats from both traditional and emerging human activities and uses such as shipping, fishing, oil and gas exploration, construction of artificial islands and pipelines, seabed mining, bioprospecting, CO2 sequestration, and marine scientific research that perturbs the marine environment. Developing and implementing equitable, effective, and enforceable international frameworks for the use of the oceans and the conservation and sustainable use of its resources is of importance to both international peace and security and to the continued existence of humans on the Earth. Save the oceans and we save ourselves. What more inspiration could one need?

Most significant publications
My work has been described by others as being ‘at the cutting edge of issues in the law of the sea’ and ‘innovative and forward thinking’. In a traditional sense, my most important work is probably my monograph, Non-Flag State Enforcement in High Seas Fisheries, (Martinus Nijhoff, 2004) which served as a catalyst for developments within international fisheries law aimed at ensuring that flag states take responsibility for the activities of their fishing vessels. In a similar vein my co-edited book International Law in the Era of Climate Change (Edward Elgar 2012, with Shirley Scott) laid bare the implications, now being addressed within the various substantive legal areas, for the entire body of international law of the physical fact of climate change. My edited Research Handbook on International Marine Environmental Law (Edward Elgar October 2015) sets the agenda for marine environmental law research across it many domains – from shipping to seabed mining – for the foreseeable future. However, in a stunning illustration of the power of the internet, perhaps my most significant and influential publication has been a ‘thought piece’ published online dealing with the legal effects of sea level rise on small island states. My piece, ‘W(h)ither Tuvalu? International Law and Disappearing States’, published in 2009 on the SSRN, sparked global interest in the issue of ‘deterritorialised states’ which continues to be studied by scholars, states and international organisations and has now been taken up by the International Law Association’s Committee on Sea Level Rise and International Law.

Hopes for the Visiting Professor Programme
I look forward to engaging with colleagues, students and the wider community to explore, in both general and fine grained detail, issues relating to the protection and preservation of the marine environment and broader oceans governance. I hope to learn more about the ‘private’ side of ‘maritime law’ to develop a broader, more holistic view of ocean issues, and to inspire research and other efforts towards ensuring the environmentally sustainable use of the oceans. I also hope to improve my Swedish.

Link
https://www.law.unsw.edu.au/staff/rosemary-rayfuse

Focus areas:

• Public international law
• Global oceans governance
• International fisheries law
• Protection of the marine environment
• Climate change & the oceans

Visiting Professor of Economics from University of Augsburg, Germany

"I love the economics of the family because it is part of our every day life."

Professional biography
I have been a full Professor of Applied Microeconomics at the University of Augsburg (Germany) since March 2015. Between 2011 and 2015 I was an Assistant Professor of Public Economics at the University of Munich. During this time, I also held several visiting scholar positions at the Toulouse School of Economics and at Boston University. In 2011, I completed my PhD at the University of Augsburg.

What are your main research interests?
My primary interest is in the political economy aspects of welfare schemes. All these schemes have in common that individuals are differentially affected depending on their age, income, or health risk through the costs they incur and the benefits they receive. This redistributive dimension renders some schemes more or less politically attractive and can explain why a particular design has been chosen for a specific welfare scheme in the political process. My second main interest is in intra-family relationships and their implications for public policy. For instance, for different aspects of family assistance I analyse how informal aid will react to the emergence of private or public schemes of long-term care insurance.

How does your research have influence beyond the academic world? Does this include any roles you have beyond the academy?
That my research has a stronger impact beyond the academic world is one of the things on which I’m still working to improve.

Is teaching still a significant part of your working life? What particular method or approach would you say characterises your teaching?
Oh yes it is. I think teaching is an important part of our profession that I would not want to miss. I’m not sure if I have a particular teaching method. Perhaps that I always try to have as much discussion as possible in the classroom.

What specific passions or concerns particularly inspire you in your work?
I simply love to observe and analyse individual decision behavior.

Which of your publications would you regard as the most significant and why?
I have the impression that my most significant publications are still part of my work in progress or are in the publication process. These papers analyse the optimal tax treatment of couples. So far the literature has concentrated on a unitary views of the couple. In reality, however, household decision making is likely to result from some bargaining process between spouses. We show that taking into consideration this bargaining between spouses may reverse the traditional results concerning the optimal income tax schedule for the female and male spouse, namely that the marginal income tax rate for the female spouse should be lower than for the male spouse.

What are you particularly hoping to achieve during your time as a Visiting Professor in Gothenburg?
I hope to have plenty of interesting and inspiring discussions here with the students and my colleagues and to set up some new research collaborations especially with the Center for Health Economics and the Environmental Economics Unit.

Link
https://sites.google.com/site/cvkerstinroeder/home

Focus areas:

• Political Economy
• Family Economics
• Health Economics
• Redistribution

Visiting Professor of Human Geography from Massey University, New Zealand

"Sustainable development is a responsibility of every business, government and citizen on this planet."

Professional biography
Regina Scheyvens is Professor of Development Studies at Massey University, where she has led this programme since 2007. She is also co-Director of the Pacific Research and Policy Centre. She is currently conducting collaborative research which critically examines claims of corporate social responsibility in the tourism and resource extraction fields, based on case studies in Fiji and Papua New Guinea. This research will extend conceptualisation of the private sector's roles in community development. Regina serves on the editorial board of 3 journals; and has been invited to give keynote addresses in the UK, Asia, Australasia and Latin America.

What are your main research interests?
My core research explores the potential for tourism to bring greater benefits to developing countries. Broadly, my research extends across socially and environmentally responsible tourism and pro-poor tourism. This research is advanced by theory and discourse on sustainable livelihoods, international development and empowerment. I am currently conducting collaborative research which critically examines claims of corporate social responsibility in the tourism and resource extraction fields, based on case studies in Fiji and Papua New Guinea.

How does your research have influence beyond the academic world? Does this include any roles you have beyond the academy?
I am actively involved in DevNet, the International Development Studies Network of Aotearoa New Zealand – we hold a biennial conference in which academic research is shared with development policy makers and practitioners. I am also on the Development and Relief Committee of Caritas NZ, having input into the policy and programme funding decisions of this NGO.

Is teaching still a significant part of your working life? What particular method or approach would you say characterises your teaching?
I still do a lot of teaching, especially at postgraduate level. I am an advocate of active learning, finding ways to really engage students in the learning process whether face-to-face or using an online environment.

What specific passions or concerns particularly inspire you in your work?
I’m passionate about overcoming injustice, and about identifying strategies by which aid organisations, businesses and communities can make this world a better place. I’m constantly inspired by my students who are now working for various non-governmental agencies or donors and advocating for the human rights and well-being of all people.

Which of your publications would you regard as the most significant and why?
My book, ‘Tourism and Poverty’ (Routledge, 2011) because it shows the multifaceted ways in which the tourism industry can both cause poverty, and help to alleviate poverty. Also my edited book, ‘Development Fieldwork: A Practical Guide’ (2014) because it provides useful practical and philosophical advice to postgraduate students planning cross-cultural field research, and helps them to conduct this in an ethical and responsible manner.

What are you particularly hoping to achieve during your time as a Visiting Professor in Gothenburg?
I’m hoping to be able to share my knowledge with colleagues and with students via seminars, teaching opportunities, and casual conversations; I’m also hoping to learn about Swedish approaches to social enterprise and responsible business.

Link
https://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/expertise/profile.cfm?stref=700330

Focus areas:

• International development
• Sustainable tourism
• Corporate social responsibility
• Small island states

Visiting Professor of Human Geography from University of Oxford, UK

"We need to do better in making transport sustainable."

Professional biography
Tim is at the School of Geography at the University of Oxford, UK. He has worked at Oxford’s Transport Studies Unit (TSU) since March 2009 becoming its Director in September 2015. Prior to this he worked as a lecturer in urban geography at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. At that university he also completed his PhD thesis (2003, cum laude) and MSc thesis (1999, cum laude).

Tim is one of the Deputy Directors of the Research Centre on Innovation and Energy Demand (2013-2018) in which the University of Sussex collaborates with the Universities of Manchester and Oxford.

What are your main research interests?
My current research primarily revolves around the question of how the everyday mobility of people can be durably reconfigured in a socially just manner so that greenhouse gas emissions are radically reduced and transport makes a positive contribution to the wellbeing of people and communities. The social sciences – and human geography in particular – are critically important to addressing this question, and I seek to make my contribution through theoretical and empirical studies of recent innovations in urban transport and of how people’s mobility practices and experiences in both Europe and the global South.

How does your research have influence beyond the academic world? Does this include any roles you have beyond the academy?
Within my UK research projects I interact intensively with policy makers, providers of transport services and other stakeholders in various ways. I have for instance interviewed them as research participants and regularly give seminars and presentations about my research and thinking. In Oxford I also teach on intensive courses and a MSc programme for professionals who come from all over the world to learn about sustainable urbanism and transport.

Is teaching still a significant part of your working life? What particular method or approach would you say characterises your teaching?
In addition to the above, I teach an undergraduate geography course on transport and mobility and MSc modules on decision making and on cities, mobility and climate change in Oxford. I also supervise undergraduate, MSc and PhD students and in one of Oxford’s colleges I teach tutorials across all of the undergraduate curriculum in human geography. My approach to teaching revolves around offering students different perspectives on a given issue and expecting them to form their own views and opinions on those perspectives. I also have a preference for small group teaching that is more conversational in style and based on active participation by students.

What specific passions or concerns particularly inspire you in your work?
Anthropogenic climate change and forms of social injustice based on gender, age, capacity to move through geographical space, and so forth. I am particularly concerned about the lack of priority accorded to emissions and climate change in many policy and governance processes. And when these are considered there are often inflated expectations about the role of technology and economic instruments in addressing the issues. Such expectations can be found in many domains of society but is particularly prevalent in the transport sector. Much more comprehensive changes are required in how mobility is practiced, thought about and governed.

Which of your publications would you regard as the most significant and why?
One of the more interesting papers is a piece on how we can understand habits and what this means for how we think about policy interventions seeking to make people’s everyday mobility more sustainable. I am also pleased with recent work on the relationship between mobility and individuals’ wellbeing because it brings out the complex and multifaceted nature of the latter concept and explains why studies of wellbeing cannot be reduced to relatively straightforward measures of satisfaction with one’s life. Finally, I am honoured to have been asked to write a series of articles on the latest developments in geographical research on transport for geography’s most well-known review journal, the first of which is now available.

What are you particularly hoping to achieve during your time as a Visiting Professor in Gothenburg?
I look forward to the opportunity to conduct collaborative research with members of the Mobility Research Group led by Prof Vilhelmson and elsewhere in the University of Gothenburg on questions around physical mobility and the use of contemporary information and communication technologies. Sweden is known for the availability of extensive and high quality data on mobility and other aspects of everyday life, and it would be great to develop innovation research projects utilising these. I am also keen to interact with students to discuss approaches for making everyday mobility more sustainable and to establish new coontacts and productive working relationships with academic staff at Gothenburg University.

Links
http://www.tsu.ox.ac.uk/people/tschwanen.html
http://www.cied.ac.uk/
http://timschwanen.com

Focus areas:

• Mobility
• Cities
• Wellbeing
• Energy

Visiting Professor of Management from University of Glasgow, UK

"Revealing organizational secrets may be not the obvious, yet the most promising way to re-establish trust in organizations."

Professional biography
My undergraduate education was in linguistics, literature and cultural studies. Prior to joining Glasgow University, I held academic posts at the University of Lodz and Glasgow Caledonian University. At present I am Professor of Management in the Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow, researching and teaching in the areas of human resource management, organizational change, organizational creativity and innovation. Since 2015 I have been the Editor-in-Chief of the European Management Journal.

What are your main research interests?
My most recent research project focuses on the mutually constitutive relationship between organizations and secrecy (I have been exploring how secrecy maintains organizations and how organizations maintain secrecy). I have also undertaken extensive research into trust relations in the workplace, specifically the interplay between trust and distrust in industrial relations. Finally, I have a strong interest in professions, studying how people become socialized into elite professions and how they differentiate themselves from other professional groups.

How does your research have influence beyond the academic world? Does this include any roles you have beyond the academy?
I constantly seek to ensure that my research has an impact beyond the academy. For example, I explored the changing nature of professional learning in the Faculty of Advocates in Scotland, and the study resulted in an evaluation of the training programme delivered by the Faculty. I have also conducted research into deprofessionalization of senior hospital doctors commissioned by the British Medical Association (BMA). This work has had an impact on the BMA and the National Health Service policy in that it led to creation of new communications structures meant to facilitate dialogue between senior doctors and managers. Finally, I designed bespoke continuous development programmes in management for local authority councils, British railway organizations, and Scottish police.

Is teaching still a significant part of your working life? What particular method or approach would you say characterises your teaching?
My teaching is to a large degree informed by my research and underpinned by the principle of interdisciplinarity. I use my research results to illustrate key theoretical points and also to encourage students to engage in research. I also urge my students to reach out to other disciplines when attempting to explain complex organizational phenomena. By drawing on concepts and theories from sociology, anthropology, history, geography and cultural studies, I help my students develop a broader intellectual base on which to build their learning, and future professional careers.

What specific passions or concerns particularly inspire you in your work?
I am interested in researching organizations which have been for a number of reasons out of bounds for researchers (elite professions such as barristers or advocates are one example). I believe that studying such professions can provide fascinating insights into professional socialization and institutional maintenance. Another example is secret organizations. Access to these organizations is usually difficult, but I believe that through the use of non-traditional research methods, one can gain valuable lessons for management of non-secret organizations.

Which of your publications would you regard as the most significant and why?
My 2015 article published in Organization Studies best encapsulated my approach to the study of organizational trust. In this article I used the metaphor of ‘looking beyond the factory gates’ to argue that taking cognizance of broader societal and institutional forces affecting organizations will help the researchers and a broader audience better understand trust relations in the workplace.

What are you particularly hoping to achieve during your time as a Visiting Professor in Gothenburg?
I have always been impressed with the quality of publications by staff from Gothenburg Research Institute. I would like to collaborate with colleagues who are interested in non-traditional methodological approaches such as organizational ethnography, the study of narratives and discourse analysis.

I would also like to learn more about the research programmes at the University. Specifically, I am interested in the work carried out within the research programme on managing overflow. I believe that I can contribute to the work of the research team with my work on managing overflow in science (see my paper written in collaboration with two biomedical researchers Laura Machesky and Robert Insall).

Link
https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/business/staff/sabinasiebert/

Focus areas:

• Organizational trust and distrust
• Organizational secrecy
• Professions and organizations

Visiting Professor of Economics from Delhi School of Economics, India

"The quality of development in the world’s emerging economics will be driven by the ability of their leaders to solve major urban and environmental problems and in their willingness to debate questions of inequality and social identity."

Professional biography
Rohini Somanathan is Professor of Economics at the Delhi School of Economics. She received her Ph.D in 1996 from Boston University and held faculty positions at Emory University, the University of Michigan and the Indian Statistical Institute before joining the Delhi School of Economics in 2005. Her research focuses on how social institutions interact with public policies to shape patterns of economic and social inequality. She is particularly interested in exploring the intellectual and ideological environment within which state policy is created and justified. Within the broad area of development economics, she has worked on group identity and public goods, access to microfinance, child nutrition programs and environmental health. As part of her professional and other activities, she is on the Executive Committee of the International Economic Association and on the board of directors of the grassroots NGO, SRIJAN.

What are your main research interests?
I work on a variety of questions within the broad area of development economics. I have done both theoretical and empirical research on the political economy of public goods, micro finance, poverty measurement, the determinants of schooling and more recently on environmental change. I am especially interested the intellectual and ideological environment within which state policy is created and justified.

How does your research have influence beyond the academic world? Does this include any roles you have beyond the academy?
For the past three years, I have been on the board of directors for Oxfam India. I have also recently joined the board of a promising grassroots NGO in India called SRIJAN whose mission is help foster community organizations that can generate their livelihoods based on local resources. As part of my engagement with these organizations, I have tried to help them create the infrastructure to evaluate their programs and, by involving my graduate students, I have tried to better link academia with activism. I have also been part of the annual consultations on the Budget in the Ministry of Finance in India.

Is teaching still a significant part of your working life? What particular method or approach would you say characterises your teaching?
I regularly teach at the Delhi School of Economics in India. For masters’ students, my main objectives are to teach them how to think critically about policy and to use and interpret numbers carefully. Developing the Ph.D program at the Delhi School of Economics has been an important goal for me because it is these students that can actively question and inform economic policy and can also help improve the quality of higher education in India after they graduate.

What specific passions or concerns particularly inspire you in your work?
Open and vibrant intellectual debates are central to academic and civic life and passion as an academic is to create more space in which these can occur and develop.

What are you particularly hoping to achieve during your time as a Visiting Professor in Gothenburg?
Gothenburg has had a very active group of researchers working on environmental issues in developing countries. I hope to engage actively with them and also to build links between the two universities (Delhi and Gothenburg) and more broadly between the two countries.

Link
http://econdse.org/rohini/

Focus areas:

• Inequality
• Environmental policy
• Politics of redistribution
• Poverty measurement

Visiting Professor of Law from Heidelberg University, Germany

"Increased mobility bears a high potential for choice of law systems."

Professional biography
Marc-Philippe Weller is a professor of Private Law, Commercial Law, Private International Law and Comparative Law at Heidelberg University since 2014. He is also a Director at the Institute for Comparative Law, Conflict of Laws and International Business Law.

Following his Post-doctoral dissertation, published in 2009 on the "Sanctity of contracts" and honoured by the German Notary Institute’s Helmut Schippel award, he held his first professorship at the University of Mannheim (2008-2011). From 2011-2014 he held a chair for Commercial Law at the University of Freiburg. As of 2014, he has a professorship at Heidelberg University.

Professor Weller is a member of numerous associations and committees, including the Society of Civil Law (Zivilrechtsvereinigung), the German Council on Private International Law, and the Société de Législation Comparée in Paris. He is on the editorial board of two renowned German Law Reviews, Zeitschrift für Unternehmens- und Gesellschaftsrecht (ZGR) and Zeitschrift für Europäisches Privatrecht (ZEuP).

What are your main research interests?
Within the broad area of private international law, my main research focuses on methodological changes in reaction to increased mobility and migration, regulatory and gender equality aspects of private international law, and corporate mobility and private international law.

My research further includes the international criminal liability of companies; gender equality in German corporations, contractual fidelity and general contractual theory.

How does your research have influence beyond the academic world? Does this include any roles you have beyond the academy?
My research on gender equality is a strong factor in guiding and raising young scholars at my chair and my capacity as a teacher. In crossing the internal boundaries of my discipline, I hope to improve the knowledge on migratory aspects on choice of law and the co-operation of different branches of the law on this challenge.

Is teaching still a significant part of your working life? What particular method or approach would you say characterises your teaching?
Teaching has been my primary motivation for choosing the academic path, and is still as fulfilling as it used to be on the first day of my career.

What specific passions or concerns particularly inspire you in your work?
Concerns over narrow-mindedness of corporate legal scholarship against societal change and social and economic inequalities, be they through gender discrimination or negative effects of globalization, are the driving factors for my current scholarship.

Which of your publications would you regard as the most significant and why?
Notwithstanding my ongoing projects, I still consider my postdoctoral thesis the benchmark of my research. Not only has it inspired a subsequent book project (Die Grenzen der Vertragstreue von Krisenstaaten), but it is also the foundation for much of my subsequent research.

What are you particularly hoping to achieve during your time as a Visiting Professor in Gothenburg?
As a passionate teacher, I am looking forward to a vivid and enriching interaction with the student body; as a researcher, I am excited to discuss my projects with Gothenburg faculty.

Link
https://www.ipr.uni-heidelberg.de/personen/weller/index_en.html

Focus areas:

• Private International Law
• European and International Commercial Law
• Comparative Law
• Contract Law
• Corporate Law in interaction with other systems