The Grand Challenges Blog @ HEC Lausanne disseminates research findings and promotes informed public debate with the aim of anchoring science in the best service to planet and society. The Blog is hosted as part of the inter-departmental HEC Research Centre for Grand Challenges and run by a team of dedicated and keen researchers. We invite all members – including students – of HEC Lausanne to submit relevant content and seek to expand authorship from other faculties and/or universities via guest posts.

Co-Founders and Editorial Team

Philipp Censkowsky

Co-founder and editor
philipp.censkowsky@unil.ch

Philipp is a Graduate Assistant and PhD candidate at the Department of Strategy, Globalization and Society at HEC Lausanne. Using mixed-methods, his research focusses on the notion of legitimacy in the Anthropocene. Philipp has a passion for making the family of economic disciplines fit for the challenges of the 21st century and is a member of the Network for Pluralist Economics and Rethinking Economics Switzerland. Prior to joining UNIL, he worked three years on the role of finance in the energy transition and broader social-ecological transformations including at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the German Development Corporation, and the research and advisory firm Perspectives Climate Group.

Robin Schimmelpfennig

Co-founder and editor
robin.schimmelpfennig@unil.ch

Robin Schimmelpfennig is a PhD Candidate at the University of Lausanne and affiliated researcher at the London School of Economics. His research focuses on how cultural evolution, the changes in socially transmitted beliefs, knowledge, skills, attitudes, languages shapes our behaviour and societies at large. He draws on methods ranging from experiments, computational modelling, and qualitative approaches to understand how behavioral science can help solving the world’s Grand Challenges. In his professional career, he has lived and worked in Germany, Mexico, South Africa, Jordan, Uganda, the UK and Switzerland.

Lilly Felber

Editor
lilly.felber@unil.ch

Lilly Felber is a PhD Candidate at the University of Lausanne in the organizational behavior department. Her research focuses on diversity and inclusion practices and policies, social discrimination, identity theories and on social phenomena in computer transmitted and face-to-face interactions. She is interested in examining organizational practices that affect social inequity outside the reality of firms and companies. Coming from psychology, she uses regression models in experimental and meta-analytical contexts to draw interference. Before she came to the University of Lausanne, she had worked in different research institutes such as at the Leibniz Institute in Frankfurt (Main), the University of Bern and the University of Zurich working on the social-emotional development of bilingual children, the influence of media on discrimination, and the impact of intergroup contact on support for social change.

Laurence Jeangros

Editor
laurence.jeangros@unil.ch

Laurence Jeangros is a PhD student at the University of Lausanne in the project “True Cost Accounting for Food in Switzerland”. Her research explores the hidden costs and public policies of the Swiss food system. Prior to her doctoral studies, she worked three years on topics related to food at Enterprise for Society (E4S) in Lausanne and the Federal Office for Foreign Affairs in Rome. She holds a MSc in Environmental Systems and Policy from ETH Zurich.

Past Members of the Editorial Team

Arianna Pisciella

Co-founder and editor
arianna.pisciella@unil.ch

Arianna is a PhD Candidate in Management at HEC Lausanne, Department of Accounting and Control. Her research is focusing on the role of corporate sustainability disclosures in shaping corporate behavior with respect to Environmental, Governance and Social dimensions. In particular, she is interested in analyzing how corporations disclose about the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in their annual and sustainability reports and see how different reporting strategies are linked with firms’ non-financial (ESG) performance.

Katja Bergonzoli

Editor
Katja.Bergonzoli@unil.ch

Katja Bergonzoli is a PhD Candidate at the University of Lausanne. Her research focuses on political and development economics with a particular interest in gender and inequalities issues, as well as decision-making. Through her research, Katja hopes to find solutions for a more equal society. Katja is a member of the association Rare Voices in Economics, an association whose prior goals are to promote more inclusivity and diversity within the economics.