Faculty
Anastasia Cozarenco
Anastasia Cozarenco is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Montpellier Business School. She holds a PhD in economics from Aix-Marseille School of Economics and benefited from the « Interuniversity Attraction Pole » postdoctoral fellowship at the Centre for European Research in Microfinance (CERMi) at Université libre de Bruxelles. Her current research is focused on microfinance in developed countries with a particular interest in regulation, entrepreneurship, non-financial services, subsidization, discrimination and gender from theoretical and empirical perspectives. Anastasia Cozarenco founded in 2018 a Chair in Microfinance in Developed Countries in partnership with Créa-Sol (French microfinance institution) and Caisse d’Epargne Languedoc Roussillon. She published articles in Small Business Economics, Journal of Business Ethics, and Economics Letters. She is a member of the European Microfinance Network Research Committee.
E-mail: a.cozarenco@montpellier-bs.com
Marek Hudon
Marek Hudon holds a Ph.D. in Economics and Management Sciences and a Master in Philosophy. He is currently Professor at the Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management (ULB). He has initiated the European Microfinance Programme (EMP), and is still scientific coordinator of this Master. He is also co-director of the Centre for European Research in Microfinance (CERMi) and the Centre d’Etudes Economiques et Sociales de l’Environnement (CEESE).
He has conducted research in India, Kenya, Mali, Morocco, Vietnam and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Prof. Hudon was a visiting fellow at Harvard University where he worked on ethical issues in microfinance under the supervision of Professor Amartya Sen.Current research interests also include public policy issues in microfinance, social entrepreneurship and complementary currencies.
E-mail: mhudon@ulb.ac.be
Marc Labie
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Marc Labie is a Full Professor in the Department of Management of the Warocqué School of Business and Economics. Dr. Labie teaches organizational studies, specialising in microfinance institutions. He holds a Bachelor degree in Economics and Social Science, and a Ph.D. in Business Administration. Dr. Labie has also studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science and at the Universidad de Salamanca. He is an alumnus of the FIPED program at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US. His field experience includes case studies in Colombia, Bolivia, DR Congo, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Morocco, Mexico and Peru. Dr. Labie’s current research is focused on corporate governance issues in microfinance.
E-mail: marc.labie@umons.ac.be
Cécile Lapenu
Cécile Lapenu is the executive secretary of CERISE (Comité d’Echange, de Réflexion et d’Information sur les Systèmes d’Epargne). CERISE is a platform of France-based, leading MicroFinance support organizations (CIDR, CIRAD, GRET, IRAM and IRC-SupAgro). Started in 1998, CERISE has organized various studies and seminars on the themes financing of agriculture, governance, social performances and impact, MFIs in remote rural areas, etc. Before joining CERISE in January 2001, Cécile Lapenu was a post-doctoral fellow at IFPRI (Washington DC, USA), working on the Rural Finance Team in the Food Consumption and Nutrition Division. From 1993 to 1997, she worked on the development of rural financial systems as a researcher at the CIRAD. Cécile obtained a Ph.D in Agricultural Economics from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure Agronomique de Montpellier.
Further information: https://cerise-spm.org/
E-mail: c.lapenu@cerise-spm.org
Roy Mersland
Roy Mersland has extensive international management, consulting, and research experience working with international and cross cultural teams from Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. He combines a microfinance consultancy practice with a research engagement at the University of Agder in Norway. As a consultant he works on donor effectiveness, MFI efficiency, strategic planning, corporate governance, self-help microfinance systems and microfinance and disability. As a researcher his main topics is related to microfinance management and governance, but he has also written articles on self help microfinance groups as well as microfinance and disability. Roy Mersland was a wide international network both in the microfinance practitioner community as well as in the academic community. He was the main organizer of the content of the European Microfinance Week in 2007 and 2008.
Further information: http://www.uia.no/kk/profil/roym
E-mail: roy.mersland@uia.no
Kurt Moors
Kurt Moors holds a master in applied Biosciences and Engineering (Agricultural Engineer). After a postgraduate course in tropical engineering he joined the NGO IVA of the Belgian Farmers Union (1992). Memberbased organizations, co-operatives, agricultural production and commercialization were the main pillars of the development programmes that he managed. In 1997 he worked in South Africa for the Agricultural Resource Centre, a joined initiative to support emerging farmers. Three years later he returned to Belgium to take on the position of programme co-ordinator of BRS (Belgian Raiffeisen Foundation). This not-for-profit organization is specialized in supporting microfinance and microinsurance organizations in Africa and Latin-America. This support consists of financing, guarantees, technical assistance and training. The training offered for the master in microfinance on financial performance indicators is based on a concept designed for managers of MFIs.
Further information: http://www.brs.coop
E-mail: kurt.moors@brs.coop
Jonathan Morduch
Jonathan Morduch is Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University. His research focuses on poverty and finance.
Morduch is the author with Rachel Schneider of The Financial Diaries: How American Families Cope in a World of Uncertainty (Princeton 2017), and co-author of Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day (Princeton 2009); The Economics of Microfinance (MIT Press 2010); and Economics (McGraw-Hill 2017, 2nd ed.), an introductory text. He is coeditor of Banking the World: Empirical Foundations of Financial Inclusion (MIT Press).
Morduch is a founder and Executive Director of the NYU Financial Access Initiative. He has taught on the Economics faculty at Harvard, and has held visiting positions at Stanford, Princeton, Hitotsubashi University and the University of Tokyo. Morduch received a BA from Brown and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Free University of Brussels for his work on microfinance.
E-mail: jonathan.morduch@nyu.edu
Samuel Anokye Nyarko
Samuel Anokye Nyarko is currently Postdoctoral researcher at Montpellier Business School in France. He successfully defended his PhD on 23rd April 2020. He worked under the joint supervision of Professor Ariane Szafarz (Université Libre de Bruxelles) and Professor Roy Mersland (University of Agder). He worked on the hybridity of microfinance institutions by focusing on performance, subsidization, and internationalization perspectives. He is also interested in corporate governance, institutional logics, and gender issues in microfinance. Samuel holds a master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Agder, Norway, and a bachelor’s degree in Accounting from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana. He is also an Associate of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, Ghana. In the prior years, he has served as a teaching assistant for several bachelor and master courses at the University of Agder, and at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. Previously, Samuel worked as a Deputy Coordinator of Educational Pathways International (EPI), Ghana.
E-mail: samuel.nyarko@uia.no
Patrick Reichert
Patrick Reichert is currently Postdoctoral Research Fellow for the elea Chair for Social Innovation at IMD Business School in Switzerland. He successfully defended, on July 3, 2018, his PhD at the Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management (ULB, Brussels) under the supervision of Professors Ariane Szafarz and Marek Hudon. He worked on the commercialization of microfinance. He also has a keen interest in impact investing, the capital structure of microfinance institutions and subsidy design. He carries out his research within the framework of an Interuniversity Attraction Pole funded by the Belgian Science Policy Office under the title « If not for Profit, for What and How?”. Previously, he worked as the financial analyst at Simpa Networks in Bangalore, India where he helped the company raise its Series B and Series C equity rounds and establish a robust set of credit risk policies, procedures and reports. Prior to Simpa, Patrick worked in various finance positions for State Street Corporation, Merrill Lynch and World Education, Inc. He holds a degree in finance from Boston University’s School of Management and a Master Complémentaire conjoint en Microfinance from the Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management for the completion of the European Microfinance Programme (EMP).
E-mail: patrick.j.reichert@gmail.com
Ariane Szafarz
Ariane Szafarz, PhD in Mathematics, is a finance professor at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), specialising in international financial markets, interest rates and speculation. She co-directs the doctoral programme in management sciences organised jointly by the Solvay Business School (ULB), the Faculté Warocqué (UMH) and HEC Management School (ULg). She is also the director of the Centre Emile Bernheim and the president of the Marie-Christine Adam Fund.
E-mail: aszafarz@ulb.ac.be
Mathias Schmit
Mathias Schmit is the founder of SAGORA Lease & Risk Management, a network of senior risk professionals merging extensive leasing and banking experience with strong analytical skills and innovation. Mathias holds a Phd in finance and has published numerous scientific papers on the impact of Basel II on the financial industry. He is also a professor of Finance at the Solvay Business School, Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium).
Mathias Schmit’s page on the Université Libre de Bruxelles
E-mail: Mathias.Schmit@ulb.be
Annabel Vanroose
Annabel Vanroose is currently working as an Associate Professor in Development Finance at the University of Stellenbosch-Business School in Cape Town, South Africa. She holds a PhD in Applied Economics and Management Sciences from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). She holds a Degree in Advanced Business Management (ULB) and is a graduate of the European Microfinance Programme (EMP). She worked as a professor at the Universidad de Piura (UDEP) in Peru, where she also engaged in research on impact evaluation. She has been lecturing on a part-time basis at the ULB in the framework of the EMP. During 2015-2016, Annabel benefited from a one-year postdoctoral scholarship at Cermi.
Her research focuses especially on the uneven development of the microfinance sector in developing countries and aims at identifying factors and processes that explain the development path of the sector. Her broader research interests lay in creating sustainable access to finance, impact and evaluation of development programs and aspects of socio-economic development more generally. Annabel has ample field experience in Latin America, India and South Africa.
Email: avroose@ulb.ac.be
Laurent Weill
Laurent Weill is Full Professor of Economics at University of Strasbourg. He has been regularly visiting researcher at Bank of Finland, and has completed several research projects for the Czech National Bank. He has been visiting researcher at Université Libre de Bruxelles. His research focuses on banking, corporate finance and institutions with a particular interest for emerging markets (Russia, China, Islamic finance). He has published more than 60 papers in journals and books, including World Development, Journal of Comparative Economics, European Financial Management, Economics of Transition, and Journal of Financial Services Research.
E-mail: laurent.weill@unistra.fr
Université Paris Dauphine
Baptiste Venet
Baptiste Venet has been senior lecturer in Economics in University Paris Dauphine for 10 years. He has some lectures in development finance, macroeconomics, microeconomics and econometrics. Baptiste also has a lecture of microfinance at IEP Paris (“Sciences Po” Paris). He works on informal finance, microcredit and microfinance and more generally on financial system in developing countries. Recently, He focuses on the specific borrowers’ incentives to repay at time in individual microcredit and more precisely on the role of guarantors in individual microloans.
Baptiste Venet’s page on the Université of Paris-Dauphine
E-mail: baptiste.venet@dauphine.psl.eu