Francesca Petrella is the president of EMES since November 2023. She is currently a lecturer at Aix-Marseille University and a researcher in economics at the LEST. She is co-responsible for the second year of the Master’s Degree, specialised in the management of third-sector organisations of the Aix-Marseille University.

Nicole Göler von Ravensburg is tenured Professor of Socio-economics at Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences. She holds a PhD in Economics (Marburg University/Germany, 1998). Nicole joined EMES in 2013 and is cooperating in the ICSEM project. Her postdoc-research centered mainly on coop start-ups, social and educational coops in Germany, her graduate research on coops in developing countries and in Europe.

Kerryn Krige is a lecturer at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has contributed to various social entrepreneurship initiatives, including the SSE strategy for the African Union, two mapping studies of social entrepreneurship in South Africa, and the development of South Africa’s USD70 Social Employment Fund.

I am professor in learning, social innovation and evaluation at the Department for People and Technology at Roskilde University and co-director of the Center for Social Entrepreneurship (CSE). I also engage very much with PhD student and head the Doctoral School for People and Technology at RUC.

Taco Brandsen was the president of EMES from October 2021 to November 2023. He has been a member of the EMES Board of Directors since 2013. He is currently Professor of Public Administration at Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands; Secretary-General of the European Association for Public Administration Accreditation (EAPAA); and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations.

I participated in multiple EMES activities and, as a young researcher, greatly benefitted from the network and the expertise and benevolence of its members. For the anecdote, as a PhD candidate, my very first conference was the EMES conference that we were hosting in Liège in 2013. My strongest memory of that conference is that I got invited to join some senior scholars I looked up to for lunch. I felt that I had become part of the community, part of the EMES family.

The network has evolved and grown since then and I would like to contribute to its consolidation, thereby pursuing the long-standing involvement of the University of Liège in EMES.

I consider the network to play a crucial role in research on social economy, and I am very attached to its warm spirit. As a board member, in terms of teaching and being in charge of our Masters in Social Economy (CIRTES and CES), I would like to contribute to the development of a network of EMES Master’s programs to enable students to discover the realities of the social economy in other European countries (which is essential today, given the social and ecological challenges that go far beyond national borders). I would also like to contribute to broadening the community working on social finance and ecological transition within the EMES network.

Holds a PhD in Sociology from Lancaster University (UK), degree and masters in Sociology from the Faculty of Economics of University of Coimbra (FEUC). Currently assistant professor in Sociology at FEUC, where she works since 2002. Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies (in the research group on Social Policy, Work and Inequalities) and at the Center for Cooperative and Social Economy Studies of the Faculty of Economics. From 1996 to 2001 she worked as research Assistant at the Center for Social Studies, namely in the project Reinventing Social Emancipation among others.

I have found in EMES a research community providing great support and inspiration, hence my willingness to contribute to it in these exciting times for the SSE. I believe my research-professional skills, track record and passion prepare me well to make a substantial contribution to the EMES board. Besides being an active member of the PhD community, I am currently involved in (co)developing an EMES Early-Career Research community. My ambition is for this nascent community to be formally established and for topics such as ECRs cooperative work/research, career transition, alternative paths to academia, mentorship and peer-support in research, mental health, and wellbeing to be further developed.

Giulia is a senior researcher at the European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises (Euricse), one of the two Italian institutional members of EMES, since 2008.

Her research activities are focused on the role and on the potentialities of social enterprises in transition contexts, on the concept of social enterprise and its normative evolution, and on the impact of social enterprises on local development.

Malin has been actively involved since 2009 and thereby seen the important steps taken through different projects such as ICSEM, EU mapping, COST (in which Malin has been Swedish partner), and the anthology of Nordic Perspectives on Social Entrepreneurship and Social Enterprises (Routlege 2017) as well as the growth and democratization of the network governance. She is happy to take on the task of serving on the EMES board – to contribute to coming steps to strengthen a continued vivid academic dialogue on crucial aspects of our society.

Throughout my professional journey, EMES was instrumental in my personal and professional growth and served as an intellectual home to me. I have “grown” together with EMES, starting from the early stages of my career and collaboration with EMES in EU research projects, COST Action EMPOWER SE (in which I co-lead one WG), as well as involvement in several EMES International PhD Summer Schools, EMES conferences and other events.

I want to support EMES’s transformation into a vibrant centre for academics and practitioners. I’ve worked in the oil industry, in children’s theatre, and now as an SE academic… so I try to offer a “bit of everything” to fellow Early Career Researchers who seek to express their work to different audiences!

Sergio is a lecturer in Social Entrepreneurship at Maastricht University, and his research specialises in the transformative potential of social enterprises and social innovation. With a PhD from the University of York UK, his research focused on understanding social enterprises in different contexts and analysing their perspectives through a decolonial lens in Latin America and Europe.

As a Latin American woman researcher, one of my strong commitments is to engage in a meaningful dialogue between Global South and North perspectives towards sustainability transitions and in connection with the practices on the ground.