SKEMA Strengthens Its Faculty with 21 New Academic Talents

Grand Paris Campus

• Sylvie Matelly is a defence economist and geoeconomist, holding a PhD – The economic determinants of Military Spending – University Pierre Mendès France in Grenoble. Before joining SKEMA in Paris as Associate Professor, she had been director of the Jacques Delors Institute (2003-2026) and deputy director of IRIS – The French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs (2009-2016). 
  
  She is member of the Globalisation Academy and affiliated to the SKEMA Center for Global Risks. She published several books: “L’Europe peut-elle faire face à la mondialisation? » (Éditions La Découverte, 2015), “L’économie tout simplement” Assen Slim (Eyrolles, 2023), and “Géopolitique de l'économie“ (Eyrolles, 2026).
   
• Catherine McDonald is an Assistant Professor at SKEMA Business School, based in Grand Paris campus. She is member of the Globalisation Academy and affiliated to the SKEMA Center for Sustainability Studies. Her research explores responsible business conduct to address grand challenges in complex environments, and she has conducted fieldwork in Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa. Catherine received her PhD in Organization and Cultural Theory from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland in 2026. 
  
  Previously, she was a visiting fellow at Harvard University and worked with international organisations including the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross in Kosovo, New York and Geneva. Catherine was the co-recipient of the Academy of Management 2026 Social Issues in Management (SIM) Division’s Outstanding Business Ethics Paper Award, as well as the SIM Division's Best Paper Award in 2024 & 2026.
   
• Ghina Chammas is an Assistant Professor at SKEMA Business School, joining the Paris campus. She is member of the Innovation Academy and affiliated to the SKEMA Centre for Sustainability Studies. She is completing her PhD in Strategy and Business Policy at HEC Paris and holds an MSc in Environmental Engineering from Imperial College London. 
  
  Her research focuses on business leaders’ engagement with socio-political and environmental issues, particularly CEO sociopolitical activism, with her dissertation examining the personality traits driving such activism and its implications for firms and public policy. Ghina received the 2024 Strategic Management Society Best Doctoral Paper Award for the Strategic Leadership and Governance Interest Group and is a finalist in the 2026 INFORMS/Organization Science Best Dissertation Proposal Competition. 
   
• Xule Lin is Assistant Professor at SKEMA Business School, joining the Grand Paris campus. He is member of the Digitalisation Academy and affiliated to the SKEMA Centre for Artificial Intelligence. He earned his PhD in Management and Entrepreneurship from Imperial Business School; his doctoral research on token-enabled coordination in decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) received the Professor Mike Wright Memorial Prize for Best Doctoral Thesis and the 2024 Strategic Management Society PhD Paper Prize. 
  
  His current work focuses on the shift toward artificial organizing, where artificial actors actively compose organizations alongside humans. From token-based governance to interpretive orchestration (Strategic Organization, 2026), he returns to a single puzzle: organizations can now articulate more than they know how to verify.
   
• Constantin Prox, Assistant Professor of Strategy on the Grand Paris campus, earned his PhD from INSEAD. His research focuses on strategy, organizational design, firm growth, and startup scaling. His work has been recognized with the Strategic Management Society’s Best PhD Paper Prize and Best Corporate Strategy Proposal Prize, as well as INSEAD’s PhD Academic Excellence Award.

Lille campus

• Aziza Laguecir is a full Professor of Management Control at SKEMA Business School, Université Côte d’Azur, France. She is member of the Globalization Academy and affiliated to the SKEMA Centre for Sustainability Studies. Her research expertise lies in management accounting and control, with a particular specialisation in ethics and accountability, public sector accounting, and calculative practices in complex organisational settings. 
  
  She holds a PhD in Management Control from ESSEC Business School and BETA (Université Louis Pasteur Strasbourg). She is Program Director of the MS Expert en contrôle de gestion, audit et gestion des systèmes d'informations on SKEMA’s Lille campus. She is also Editor-in-Chief of Accounting Forum and Section Editor for Accounting & Business Ethics at the Journal of Business Ethics, with research published in leading international accounting journals. 
   
• Yuheng Wang is an Assistant Professor at SKEMA Business School, joining the Lille campus. He is member of the Globalization Academy and affiliated to the SKEMA Centre for Analytics and Operations. He received his PhD in Operations Research and Information Engineering from Cornell University. His research lies at the intersection of operations research, data-driven decision making, and revenue management, with a particular focus on customer choice modeling and assortment optimization.
   
• Jason Kang is an Assistant Professor of Finance at SKEMA Business School, on the Lille campus. He is member of the Digitalization Academy and affiliated to the Finance & Accounting Insights on Risk and Regulation Research Centre. He received his PhD in Finance from INSEAD. Jason’s research focuses on corporate investment, capital budgeting and capital structure. 
   
• Federico Bobbio is an Assistant Professor at SKEMA Business School, joining in Lille. He is member of the Globalization Academy and affiliated to the SKEMA Centre for Analytics and Operations. His research focuses on Mixed Integer Optimization, Matching Markets, and Algorithmic Mechanism Design, with applications to satellite markets and school choice from an optimization and economics perspective. 
  
  He received his PhD in 2024 from the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research at the University of Montreal, during which he received the Runner-up Award in the Student Paper Competition of the Canadian Operational Research Society (2023). He also holds a Master's in Theoretical Mathematics from the University of Pisa. Prior to joining SKEMA, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University, where he received the Best Paper Award at IEEE DySPAN 2025 (Policy Track). 
   
• Tom van Laer is full Professor of Persuasive Language and Storytelling at SKEMA, having joined the Lille campus. He is member of the Transformation Academy and affiliated to the Marketing Interactions (MINT) research centre. His expertise lies in storytelling, persuasion, and messaging. He holds a PhD in Marketing from Maastricht University and has previously held academic positions at ESCP Europe, Bayes Business School, and the University of Sydney.
  
  His research has been published in top level journals, including the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, and International Journal of Research in Marketing, where he serves as Area Editor. His work has also attracted extensive international media coverage across Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and the US.
   
• Sherrie Xue is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at SKEMA Business School in Lille. She is member of the Transformation Academy and affiliated to the Marketing Interaction Research Center (MINT). She received her PhD in Marketing from INSEAD in 2026. Her research focuses on consumer psychology and decision making, with the goal of improving consumer welfare through better decision architectures. 
  
  Her work examines nudges for consumer welfare, dyadic consumption, and romanticized consumption experiences. Sherrie’s work has been published in journals such as Psychological Science and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. 
   
• Pelin Geyik is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at SKEMA Business School, joining the Lille campus. She earned her PhD in Marketing from Aalto University School of Business in Helsinki, Finland. At SKEMA, she is member of the Transformation Academy and affiliated to the Market Interactions Research Center. 
  
  Her research examines how consumers’ experiences and relationships with markets are shaped by broader cultural and social forces, with a particular focus on marketplace inclusion and digital consumer culture. Her work primarily draws on qualitative methods, including ethnography and art-based research. Her work has been published in the International Journal of Research in Marketing. Prior to her academic career, Pelin worked in marketing and consumer research roles at global firms. 

Sophia Antipolis Campus 

• David Angenendt is an Assistant Professor at SKEMA Business School (Sophia Antipolis). He is member of the Transformation Academy and affiliated to the Knowledge, Technology and Organization (KTO) research centre. An applied economist, he specializes in innovation, intellectual property and industrial organization, studying how legal institutions and firm strategy shape the creation and diffusion of knowledge. 
  
  He earned his PhD in Economics at the University of Bologna in 2019 and previously held positions at the University of Cambridge and the Technical University of Munich. His research has appeared in the Journal of the European Economic Association, Research Policy and Economic Inquiry. 
   
• Lucie Brouwer is Assistant Professor in Business Law at SKEMA Business School. She is member of the Transformation Academy and affiliated to the SKEMA Centre for Global Risks. She specialises in maritime law, international environmental law and maritime arbitration, and is completing a PhD in Maritime Law at Nantes Université within the Centre for Maritime and Ocean Law (CDMO). 
  
  Her research focuses on the resolution of environmental and climate-related disputes arising from international maritime transport. Prior to joining SKEMA, she spent four years at CMA CGM working on international maritime regulation, environmental policy and regulatory affairs. She is also a member and expert of the International Centre of Comparative Environmental Law (CIDCE) and contributes to international initiatives on ocean governance and marine environmental protection. 
   
• Tong Zhao is an Assistant Professor of Finance at SKEMA Business School, joining the Sophia Antipolis campus. She is member of the Digitalization Academy and affiliated to the Finance & Accounting Insights on Risk and Regulation Research Centre. 
  
  Her research lies at the intersection of financial intermediation, corporate finance, and macro-finance. She has presented her research at major conferences, including the AFA, EFA, CICF, and NFA. She has been a visiting scholar at The Wharton School, HEC Paris, the University of Zurich, Tilburg University, and the National Bank of Belgium. Tong earned her PhD from KU Leuven in 2026. 

International campuses

• Camille Desjardins is an Assistant Professor of Management, specializing in Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management at SKEMA Business School in China. She is member of the Transformation Academy and affiliated to the SKEMA Centre for Sustainability Studies. She earned her Ph.D. from Toulouse Capitole University and has previously held positions at the American University of Beirut and Renmin University of China. 
  
  Her research has been published in academic journals such as the Journal of Organizational Behavior and Group & Organization Management. Her latest research examines the gig economy through a gender and care lens. 
   
• Julie Ferrand is an Associate Professor of Economics at SKEMA Business School, joining the Dubaï campus. She is member of the Globalization Academy and affiliated to the SKEMA Center for Global Risks.  She holds a PhD in Economics from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and specializes in the history of economic thought. 
  
  Her research explores the intersections between economics, politics and philosophy, particularly through the works of French Enlightenment thinkers. Her teaching expertise includes Economics, International Economics and Quantitative Methods for Business.  
   
• Sumingyue Wang is an Associate Professor of Finance at SKEMA Business School, in China. She is member of the Digitalization Academy and affiliated to the Finance & Accounting Insights on Risk and Regulation Research Centre. Her research focuses on empirical corporate finance, with particular interests in the digital economy, corporate disclosure, and corporate governance. She holds a PhD in Finance from ESSEC Business School. Prior to joining SKEMA, she was an Associate Professor at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. 
   
• Xiyang Li is an Assistant Professor in Accounting at SKEMA Business School in China campuses, specializing in corporate finance and capital market. She is member of the Globalization Academy and affiliated to the Finance & Accounting Insights on Risk and Regulation Research Centre. 
  
  Her research focuses on corporate finance and financial markets. She holds a PhD in Finance from Griffith University, Australia, and has published in international journals including the Journal of Business Ethics and Global Finance Journal. Prior to joining SKEMA, she was a Lecturer in Accounting at Soochow University and has professional experience in the financial services industry. 
   
• Svetlana Petrova is the Financial Markets & Investments Program Director in Raleigh, USA, and an Associate Professor of Finance at SKEMA Business School. She is member of the Innovation Academy and affiliated to the Research Center for Global Risks. She holds Ph.D. degrees in Finance from the University of Florida and Economics from Middle Tennessee State University and has held faculty positions at the University of New Hampshire and the University of Cincinnati. Her academic work focuses on artificial intelligence and cybersecurity in finance, behavioral decision-making, and the relationship between professional performance and well-being. 
  
  Before entering academia, Svetlana spent nearly a decade in international business development and consulting, working across markets and business environments. Alongside her academic and applied work, she is a certified executive coach and National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach, helping individuals and organizations align professional growth and high performance with sustainable well-being and work–life harmony. 
   
• Dexter Purnell is an Associate Professor of Marketing at SKEMA Business School, joining the Raleigh campus (US). He is member of the Digitalisation Academy and affiliated to the Market Interactions (MINT) research centre. He earned his Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA) from Wilmington University, and specializes in consumer behavior, marketing strategy, entrepreneurship, and the entertainment industry. 
  
  A 3x Billboard #1 recording engineer/producer and entrepreneur, he has worked with prominent clients including Sony, Walt Disney Entertainment, and ESPN. His academic research has been published in outlets, including the Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice and the Journal of Marketing Analytics.

An Increasingly International Academic Communtiy

From Cornell University and INSEAD to Imperial Business School, HEC Paris, the University of St. Gallen, KU Leuven, and the University of Montreal, SKEMA’s new faculty members have trained and conducted research at some of the world’s most prestigious institutions. Spread across campuses in Lille, Paris, Sophia Antipolis, Dubai, Raleigh, and China, they embody the School’s international dimension and the diversity of disciplinary perspectives that define SKEMA’s academic model.

Through their outstanding academic records, internationally recognized research, prestigious distinctions, and global experience, these scholars further strengthen SKEMA’s ability to address the major economic, technological, geopolitical, and societal challenges of the 21st century.