team

glasgow caledonian university

Mark
Anderson

director of research and innovation

Mark is Director of Research and Innovation at GCU and has helped to embed social innovation as a core part of its mission.  As well as overseeing GCU research and innovation portfolio, he leads several international cooperation projects around the world, in Latin America, Southeast Asia, Africa, Central Asia. One of his main focal areas is setting up community-facing ‘Social Innovation Support Units’, specifically dedicated to helping universities engage with their local stakeholders in order to confront societal challenges.

Natalia
Popielska

european union project manager

Natalia is responsible for monitoring and keeping a record of project activities. She works closely with researchers, stakeholders and consortium partners to ensure timely reporting, effective administration and robust compliance in line with EU programme guidelines.

Rose
Cawood

social innovation manager at research & innovation office

Rose is responsible for promoting Social Innovation throughout GCU. She does this by engaging with and showcasing internal SI activities, projects and research; showcasing the work of social enterprises; and brokering relationships with local & international stakeholders within GCU. She is involved in the management of a portfolio of international social innovation projects; as well as building a social innovation knowledge exchange strategy and ecosystem within and extending beyond the University.

Fiona
Henderson

research fellow in social innovation and social policy

Fiona is also the manager of Uhatch, GCU’s start-up incubator for students, staff and alumni. Her publications focus on social enterprise, entrepreneurship, social innovation and social policy. Fiona leads projects exploring social innovation as a solution to societal challenges, including through social enterprise, education, and social policies. Fiona teaches and supervises students in GCU’s Glasgow School for Business & Society (GSBS) and the School of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment (SCEBE).

Fiona
Carmichael

senior projects administrator

Fiona Carmichael has a background in student mobility as a coordinator for GCU facilitating outgoing student and staff exchanges and incoming student exchanges. Now working within the GCU Research and Innovation team so support the management of International projects and sustainable programmes with universities in various regions with a focus on social innovation.

Zarina
San Jose

EU
PROJECT
ADMINISTRATOR

Zarina is a support staff of the Research and Innovation Office at Glasgow Caledonian University. Particularly focused on EU-funded projects, her role is to ensure the compliance of GCU and its partners with the financial and technical requirements of the projects, ensuring that deadlines are met, and that coordination is done within the proper channels.

Rachel
Dohain-Lesueur

project
officer

Rachel joined the Research and Innovation Office at Glasgow Caledonian University as a project officer in early 2023. Recently graduated from the University of Nantes in European project management, she ensures smooth running of GCU’s portfolio of international projects and reporting in accordance with EU guidelines. 

team

university of aveiro

Teresa
Franqueira

associate professor

Teresa is a designer and Associate Professor. She is the Director and Scientific Coordinator of Design Factory Aveiro and is also the International Coordinator of the DESIS Network – Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability. She has been the local coordinator of Erasmus + projects for social innovation, circular economy and sustainability and is the national Delegate for the COST action SHIINE. She has been supervising students within the topics of Design for Social Innovation and for Sustainability, Product and Service Design.

Margarida
Fardilha

assistant professor with habilitation

Margarida is the coordinator of the Signal Transduction Lab at Institute for Biomedicine (iBiMED). She did her degree in Biochemistry in 1996 at the University of Porto and her PhD in Biology in 2004, at UA. Her main research interests are related to the role of Phosphoprotein Phosphatase 1 (PP1) in male-related disorders. She is trying to identify and characterize PP1 and PP1-interacting proteins interactomes in male reproductive-related tissues, to identify protein complexes that may be used as diagnostic/ therapeutic targets.

Álvaro
Sousa

auxiliar professor

With a PhD in Design at UA, Álvaro specialized in communication and strategic design, branding, posters and typography. In the design area, the intervention on the design of identities of financed projects in the area of social innovation is relevant among other works. He is a researcher at ID + Research Institute. He made his postdoc in the field of vernacular typography in Brazil. He is one of the editors of the Magazine of the international meetings of Portuguese-Brazilian studies in Design & Ergonomics – Ergotrip Design.

Ana
Afonso

researcher

Ana is a Designer and Researcher. She finished her PHD in 2019 at the University of Aveiro. She worked as Manager for Science and Technology at the Research Institute for Design Media and Culture (ID+), developing work in international projects in areas such as Education for Circular Economy or Social Innovation. Currently she is the Strategic Partnerships Manager at the Design Factory Aveiro, being in charge of interaction with national and international networks.

Catarina
Ramos

student - master degree in design

Catarina is finishing her Master degree in Design at the University of Aveiro. She is part of the Master of European Design program (MEDes) and studied abroad at The Glasgow School of Art and the Köln International School of Design. She has worked as a communication and graphic designer for a start-up company in Köln, Germany. Nowadays, she works as a freelance designer and collaborates, as a result of a scholarship, with the Department of Communication and Arts at UA.

team

dublin city university

Peter
Robbins

assistant professor of innovation

Peter is one of Ireland’s foremost experts in innovation and new product and service development. Peter’s PhD is in Innovation. His area of research is how firms organise for innovation. He is a member of the Government’s National Design Forum and has developed and run courses and workshops in innovation. He has published in R&D Management, the Irish Journal of Management: IJIM; London Strategy Review and regularly speaks at international conferences on the subject of managing creativity and innovation.

team

montpellier business school

Elsa
Kassardjian

head of research valorization

Elsa defended her PhD in Education Science in 2002. After being a consumer scientist, working on people’s perception of food, she gathered more than 15 years’ experience in research management, in New Zealand and France, involving (but not limited to): applying for funding opportunities, managing parts of the funded projects, training research managers, developing science communication strategies. Elsa joined MBS in 2017 where she is promoting and supporting the research undertaken by the Faculty.

Anastasia
Cozarenco

associate professor
of economics

She holds a PhD in economics from Aix-Marseille School of Economics and a postdoctoral fellowship at the CERMi – Université libre de Bruxelles. Her research is focused on microfinance with focus on regulation, non-financial services, subsidization, discrimination and gender. She is a member of the EMN Research Committee and Director of the Yunus-MBS Centre for Social Business. She published articles in Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Banking and Finance, Small Business Economics, and Economics Letters.

Samuel
Nyarko

postdoctoral researcher

Samuel holds a Ph.D. in International Business from the University of Agder in Norway, and a Ph.D. in Economics and Management from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. Since 2016, he has been working on research projects that focus on social enterprises, hybrid organizations, and gender issues in financial inclusion. In 2020, he joined MBS as a postdoctoral researcher where he works on microfinance institutions. Previously, Samuel worked as deputy coordinator of Educational Pathways International, Ghana.

Walid
Nakara

associate professor

He is also Head of the Department “Management – Strategy – Entrepreneurship” at MBS. His research interests include social entrepreneurship, innovation strategy, and new forms on management. His work has been published in journals such as Small Business Economics, European Management Rev., Production Planning Control, IJ of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, IJ of Entrepreneurship and Small Business. He is chairholder of the ‘Social Entrepreneurship & Inclusion’ chair and Deputy Director of the Yunus-MBS Centre for Social Business.

Annabelle
Jaouen

full professor of entrepreneurship

She is also Head of MBS Entrepreneurship Center and certified coach at MBS. She is the author/co-author of six books on entrepreneurship and small business management and regularly advises entrepreneurs on their projects. Her research concerns types of entrepreneurs, alliances and networks, incubation and entrepreneurial support, territorialized cooperative strategies, family firms, human resources management, and information systems in micro and small firms; and has been regularly published in international peer-reviewed journals.

Alexandra
Gaidos

associate
professor

She is Assistant professor in Entrepreneurship, member of the ‘Social Entrepreneurship & Inclusion’ chair at Montpellier Business School. She has a PhD in social entrepreneurship and her research focuses on social incubators from the perspective of change organisations. She studies the entrepreneurial forms taken by social innovation initiatives in different European national contexts.

team

pin s.c.r.l. university of florence

Enrico
Testi

adjunct professor of social economy and sustainable development university of florence

Adjunct Professor of Social Economy and Sustainable Development University of Florence. In 2011 Enrico co-founded and started managing, as Director of International Relations, the Yunus Social Business Centre at UF, in partnership with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus. In 2017 Enrico got his PhD in Economics and Management of Enterprises and Local Systems at the University of Florence. With 10 years of experience in research and consulting, both in Italy and abroad, his areas of expertise include social business, social responsibility, monitoring & evaluation, impact evaluation and local development.

Silvia
Sordi

project manager

Silvia is project manager for Yunus Social Business Center University of Florence and for ARCO – Action Research for CO-Development. She specializes in: drafting social reports, social business design and measuring and evaluating the social impact generated by organizations. Together with the YSBCUF team she manages the Pistoia Social Business City program, which provides for the development of training courses for students and accompaniment for the creation of social enterprises.

Carmela
Nitti

project manager at yunus social business centre university of florence

Carmela has managed several projects funded by several organizations, both at national and international level. She is a trainer on social business design and specialized in market analysis for social enterprises as well as in measurement of the social impact produced by organizations. She has a master’s degree in Development Economics and a Degree Specialization in multidimensional measurement of wellbeing. Moreover, she has been Project Manager at ARCO since 2014 where in 2020 she became Coordinator of the Social Economy Unit.

Camilla
Guasti

research assistant in arco social economy unit

Camilla mainly deals with Social Economy, Social Innovation, Social Business design, measurement and assessment of social impact and market analysis for social enterprises. Her research interests also include participatory processes, urban regeneration, social innovation, corporate social responsibility and sustainable development processes. Camilla holds a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from the Cesare Alfieri School of Political Sciences, in Florence. After a six-month internship at the United Nations, in New York, she also obtained a master’s degree in Economics and Development from the School of Economics and Management, University of Florence. As a member of the Social Economy Unit she also works for the Yunus Social Business Center University of Florence.

Vittoria
Vineis

research assistant in arco social economy unit

As a member of the Social Economy Unit Vittoria also works for the Yunus Social Business Center University of Florence. She has a specific background on international cooperation, having mainly worked with NGOs in the past few years. She has recently carried out a political economy field research on “Enabling Social Enterprise Ecosystem” in Palestine, in cooperation with the Yunus Social Business Centre of Bethlehem.

Barbara
Palla

communication
coordinator


She is in charge of ARCO and of Yunus Social Business Center University of Florence online and offline communication and dissemination of both research centres work.

Her main interest is the dissemination of academic research through digital media and innovative communication channels. She has been working on social, cultural and religious integration in urban contexts. 

She graduated in African and Asian Studies at the University of Pavia with a particular interest in the history of Political Islam in Western Africa.

 

team

pompeu fabra university

Teresa
Monllau

deputy dean in economic and business faculty

Teresa is currently the internship coordinator at the Economics and Business Faculty in PFU. She has a PHD on Internal Financial Control in Spanish companies. She has mentored and developed projects of social innovation using Service Learning Methodology. She participated as a writer and coordinator on publications related to social entrepreneurship. Concerned about the current economic and social situation, she likes to promote, foster and develop social innovation projects and believes it is important to consider technological and digital aspects.

Maria
McCrea

student and assistant

Currently she is a student in the degree in Tourism and Hospitality at the University of Ramon Llull in Barcelona.

She contributed to the development of new businesses for international students. Her main task was to focus on the implementation of digitization aspects of the business activity.

She has participated in different aspects of social integration with immigrants. She has also worked and coordinated several international teams throughout her professional activity.

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