Taco Brandsen (President)

Taco Brandsen is the president of EMES since October 2021. 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.

His research has focused on the co-production and co-creation, social innovation, the interplay of third sector and the state, and the governance of public services in areas such as education, housing and health care.

Marthe Nyssens (Vice-President)

Founding member of EMES, she is president of the Centre de Recherches Interdisciplinaires Travail, Etat, Société (CIRTES, Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium), one of the two Belgian institutional members of EMES.

She is full professor at the Department of Economics of the same University.

She holds a Masters in Economics (University of California at San Diego) and a Ph.D. in Economics (University of Louvain).

Her work focuses on conceptual approaches to the third sector (both in developed and developing countries), on the links between third sector organisations and public policies and on the emergence of different social enterprise models in an international comparative perspective.

Nicole Göler von Ravensburg (Treasurer)

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.

Francesca Petrella (Secretary)

Francesca Petrella is a lecturer at the Aix-Marseille University and a researcher in economics at the LEST since 2006. She is co-responsible of the second year of the Master Degree specialised in the management of third sector organisations of the Aix-Marseille University. She is member of research networks at national and international levels (e.g. CIRIEC International, CIRIEC France, RIUESS).

She has developed research works on social economy organisations, their evolution and interactions with public policies, social innovation, quality of work in social economy and on new forms of governance of social welfare services. In particular, she studied childcare and personal home care services. She participated in the European research programme on « Third system and Employment » (CRIDA, Paris, 2000) and in the European Programme on « Transformation des structures familiales et des politiques sociales » (CRIDA, Paris, 2001-2004). She is currently part of the TSI project (European research project aimed at identifying the scope and size of the third sector in Europe and at measuring its impact for society) in which EMES is involved and member of the french team of the ICSEM Project.

Linda Lundgaard Andersen

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.

I have a strong interest in the micro-processes of social enterprise, social entrepreneurship, social economy and social innovation like entrepreneuring, innovating and coproducing, intersectionality, gender and generation, learning, culture and hybridity as well as macro-processes like how the welfare state hinders, facilitates and is being transformed be the SE’s.
I am a nominee from CSE and am very pleased to state, that our engagement in EMES will continue and be strengthened by the dedicated full academic staff at CSE. For the past decades, CSE has been involved in almost all the variety of EMES activities: planning and executing research networks, conferences, summer schools, strategic policy works as well as research proposals and other carry outs. I – and CSE colleagues – value the strengths of EMES so far: research-based networks including early-stage and longtime experienced researchers, engaging scholars from many places in the world, providing insights in cutting-edge research and facilitating research funding.

Ellen Bennett

I’m particularly keen to ensure Sheffield Hallam plays an active role in supporting programmes of work in the future. Many organisations I work with in the UK are having a challenging time. Wherever our collective and coordinated research efforts can support and enhance frontline work, I feel strongly this is what we should be doing.

Ellen is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Regional, Economic and Social Research at Sheffield Hallam University, with research expertise in the voluntary sector, public services and state-voluntary sector relationships. She has extensive experience in a range of qualitative research techniques, such as in-depth interviewing, focus groups, and discursive documentary analysis. Ellen has particular expertise in researching organisations within the voluntary sector.

Philippe Eynaud

As an academic researcher, I am strongly involved in the social enterprise research area. I have published many works related to this topic and I have coordinated two books about social enterprise with Routledge.

The first one “Civil society, the Third sector, Social enterprise: governance and democracy” co-edited in 2015 with Laville J.L. and Young D. explored the possibility of a solidarity type of social enterprise.

The second one, just published in 2019, “Theory of social enterprise and pluralism: Social Movements, Solidarity Economy, and Global South” co-edited with Laville J.L., Dos Santos L.L., Banerjee S., Hulgård H., Avelino F. aiming to engage a multicontinental and pluridisciplinary discussion in order to provide a pluralist theory of social enterprise.

Since the beginning of my research work, I have been a regular member of EMES Network. The EMES conference has been for me a place for meeting outstanding international researchers and for increasing my knowledge thanks to the quality of academic debates inside the network.

Sílvia Ferreira

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.

Luiz Inácio Gaiger

I have been continuously participating in EMES Network activities for over ten years, like its international conferences and other events promoted in partnership with other organizations (e.g. EMES-Polanyi seminars), publications, research projects and also as a faculty member in some summer schools.

Giulia Galera

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.

She graduated in International and diplomatic sciences and she obtained a PhD in International Studies from the School of International Studies of the University of Trento. She started collaborating with the institute for the Study of Nonprofit Enterprises in 2000, being engaged in research activities and in European projects.

Mary O’Shaughnessy

Founding member of EMES, Dr Mary O’Shaughnessy is a Senior Lecturer at Cork University Business School, University College Cork. Her research and teaching interests include community social entrepreneurship, social enterprise and sustainable regional and rural development.

She is a member of a number of international and national research consortia, contributes to national and international policy on social enterprise, a Director of Micro Finance Ireland and a member of the national Social Enterprise Task Force.

Simone Poledrini

I am an Italian researcher that has been part of the EMES network since 2015. From that time, I joined all our EMES conferences presenting my research and being part of the formal and informal life of our network.
Indeed, I think that EMES is not just a research network but a sort of big family involved in social enterprise studies from different background and disciplines.

Kerryn Krige (PhD representative)

Kerryn Krige is a PhD candidate for a joint PhD at KU Leuven and the University of Pretoria.

Her dissertation focuses on legitimation approaches for social organisations in institutionally void environments characterised by poverty and inequality.

She is an Associate Editor for Emerald Emerging Markets Case Collection. In addition, she is a technical advisor to the South African government on the Social and Solidarity Economy Policy. Currently, Kerryn is a part of the team developing the African Union Strategy on the Social and Solidarity Economy. She has led several initiatives to strengthen teaching and study in social entrepreneurship.

Board of directors

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Elections of directors 2019

Election of directors 2015