Steering Committee | Euro-Mediterranean Network for Economic Studies (EMNES)

The EMNES Steering Committee (SC) is composed of the members of the EMNES coordinating team, the administrative and scientific leaders of the partners’ (beneficiary) institutions and the scientific leaders of the EMNES research areas. The mandate of the SC is to ensure that the scientific program of EMNES is carried out according to agreed and signed work plan, approve the scientific and financial reports, evaluate outputs of the research areas, implement corrective measures and ensure communication between beneficiary members and associates.

EMNES Coordinating Team

Rym Ayadi

EMNES Scientific Coordinator

Founder and President, Euro-Mediterranean Economists Association, Director Euro-Mediterranean Network for Economic Studies and Professor CASS Business School.

Professor Rym Ayadi is the Founder and President of the Euro-Mediterranean Economists Association (EMEA) and Founder and Scientific Director of the Euro-Mediterranean Network for Economic Studies (EMNES). She is Honorary Professor at CASS Business School and Member of the Centre for Banking Research (CBR) at the City University in London, U.K., Senior Research Advisor at the Euro-Mediterranean University (EMUNI) in Piran, Slovenia and Associated Scholar at the Centre for Relationship Banking and Economics (CERBE) at LUMSA University in Rome.

She is Academic Member of several high-level expert groups including the European Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee (ESFRC), the European Banking Authority Banking Stakeholders Group (BSG), the European Commission’s Financial Services Users Group (FSUG), Finance Watch, the European Parliament – Economic and Financial Committee and Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean (PAM) and the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), and an invited expert in international organisations including OECD and IMF, among others.

Rym’s fields of expertise include international financial systems, financial markets and institutions, global financial regulation and governance, and socio-economic development and foresight in economies in transition.

Previously, Rym served as Professor of International Business and Finance at the Department of International Business, as Director and Board Member of the Alphonse and Dorimène Desjardins Institute for Cooperatives, and Founding Director of the International Research Centre on Cooperative Finance (IRCCF) at HEC Montreal, Canada, and as Senior Research Fellow and Head of Research of the Financial Institutions Unit at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), a policy think tank in Brussels.

She was an academic senior expert member of the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) Stakeholder Group (Between 2011 and 2013), the promoter and director of the Mediterranean Prospects Research Network (MEDPRO) an international research network for foresight analysis in the Euro-Mediterranean region (Between 2009 and 2013) funded by the Seventh Framework Program of the EU. She was also Vice President of the European Financial Inclusion Network (EFIN), a European network that promotes mutual learning on financial inclusion.

She authors several books and scholarly articles on her areas of expertise and is member of several editorial boards. Rym Ayadi holds a Ph.D. in Economics and Finance from University Paris Dauphine.

For more information on books and other publications: Rym Ayadi

Publications

Cinzia Alcidi

EMNES Administrative Coordinator

Dr. Cinzia Alcidi is Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Economic Policy Unit at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels and LUISS- School of European Political Economy- research fellow.

Prior to joining CEPS, she worked at International Labour Office in Geneva and she taught International Economics at University of Perugia (Italy). Her research activity includes international economics, macroeconomics, central banking and EU governance.

Since 2015 she is the coordinator of CEPS Academy Activities. She has experience in coordinating research projects and networks. She has published extensively on the economics and governance of the Euro area crisis and participates regularly in international conferences.

She holds a Ph.D. degree in International Economics from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva (Switzerland).

Publications

EMNES Partners’ Members

Nooh Alshyab

Dr. Nooh Alshyab is Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics of Yarmouk University (Jordan) since September 2012. Between 2013 and 2015 he served as Head of Economic Department. Before joining Yarmouk University, he worked at the Jordanian Foreign Ministry.

From 2004 to 2012, he was appointed Head of Economic and Investment Desk at the Jordan Embassy in Berlin. He obtained his Doctoral title (Dr. rer. pol.) in Economics at the University of Potsdam (Germany), School of Economics in 2011 and in 2003, a Master Degree in Economics at Dresden University of Technology (Germany). His fields of expertise are economic development, economic reform policies, and applied econometrics. In EMNES he serves as senior researcher and scientific coordinator for the Jordanian team. He contributes to several research areas of EMNES including institutions, institutional reforms and economic development, macro economic policies and employment, private sector development and trade policy and economic integration.

Publications

Ahmed Badawi

Ahmed Badawi is a senior researcher at the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Politics, Free University of Berlin, he holds a PhD in Political Science from Humboldt University and an MSc in Development Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University

of London. His current research interests include state theory and the dynamics of state failure in the Arab world, power relations, institutional change and distributional conflict and the political economy of development beyond the Washington and the post-Washington consensus. He is the Scientific Coordinator of the Research Area on institutions, institutional reforms, economic development and social justice.

Publications

Cilja Harders

Cilja Harders is the director of the “Center for Middle Eastern and North African Politics” at the Otto-Suhr Institute for Political Sciences at Freie Universität Berlin and has held this position since 2007. She has extensive research experience in the Middle East with a focus on Egypt

since 1992. She has published on local politics, transformations and politics “from below”, Arab-European Relations as well as gender relations. She co-edited a book on “Local Politics and Contemporary Transformations in the Arab World,” with Palgrave in 2013.
She is the speaker of “Europe in the Middle East – the Middle East in Europe”, a joint post-doc program of Wissenschaftkolleg, Thyssen-Foundation, Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie and serves at the board of this post-doc program. Cilja Harders is currently co-directing a project on “Political participation, emotion, affect, and transformation. The cases of “Tahrir” and “Taksim” in the framework of the German research Council (DFG)-funded research Centre “Affective Societies” (DFG, 2015-2019). She is co-directing a project “Challenges and Transformations in the Wake of the Arab Spring” with Cairo University funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD, 2012-2015). Cilja Harders served as an independent expert in the DG Research SSH Foresight activity on Euro-Mediterranean relations in 2010. In EMNES, she is co-leading the Research Area on institutions, institutional reforms, economic development and social justice.

Publications

Salim Bounou

Bounou Salim is Professor at the Euro-Mediterranean University of Fes, in charge of Cooperation & International Relations. He graduated from Laval University (Canada) with a Master and Ph.D. of Science. He started as Professor-Researcher then as Technology Transfer Manager at

Sherbrooke and Laval Universities. He also served as Director at Gestion SOcPRA INC. (Sherbrooke University-Valorization and commercialization Society). Dr. Bounou has taught a number of courses including the management of the innovation and has been involved in every stage of innovation (project completion, evaluation and strategic patent protection, general counseling on technology transfer in engineering, medical science and related fields). With his experience in education, research management of applied research, Dr. Bounou joined MAScIR’s board of directors (Moroccan Foundation for Advanced Science Innovation and Research) where he served as Director of MASCIR VALOR – IP management and International Cooperation and Partnership. Dr. Bounou is member of the CGEM-Commission R&D and Relationship with the University. He is a Member Expert Panel at Euro Mediterranean Economists Association (EMEA) and President of the National commission of Cloud& Security at Morocco Numeric Cluster. He also acts as President of Moroccan Academy of Young Scientist.

Publications

Zouhair El Kadhi

DR. Zouhair El KADHI is the General Director of the Tunisian Institute of Competitiveness and Quantitative Studies (ITCEQ). He was economic advisor to the Tunisian Ministry of Finance in charge of fiscal and macroeconomic studies. Hi is ex-director of research and studies of the

Tunisian Institute of Strategic Studies and after having been chief economist in the Department of Policy Analysis at the Tunisian institute of Competitiveness and Quantitative Studies.
Mr.ElKadhi holds a PhD, on economics from the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis (2007), starting his career as a researcher in the Center for Studies in Macroeconomics and International Finance (CEMAFI-Nice) and has worked for five years as an economist at REXECODE – Economic Research Center in Paris.
He has led several economic studies and published in many forums on economics mainly macroeconomic policies for growth and development.

Publications

Olfa Benouda Sioud

Olfa Benouda Sioud is Vice-Rector of Carthage University. She is professor of Finance at IHEC Carthage and member of the Research Laboratory in Applied Economics and Finance. She is currently member of the board of directors of the STB acting as independent director.

She was member of the national council of economic analysis attached to the presidency of the government (until July 2013). In EMNES, she contributes to the research area on finance.

Publications

Rim Ben Ayed Mouelhi

Rim Mouelhi is full Professor of Economics and Statistics since 2007 at ISCAE la Manouba University of Tunis. She has a PhD in Economics from the University of Bourgogne, France (1994). She published many academic articles in international reviews (as Econometric Reviews,

the Journal of Productivity Analysis, Labour Economics, Economic modelling, Journal of African Economies, Economie et prévision…). She also contributed to chapters of books edited by Oxford University Press. She is member of the Laboratory of Applied Economics and Empirical Finance, IHEC Carthage, since 1997. She is Research fellow at ERF (Economic Research Forum, Cairo) since 2002. She is a Senior Fellow in a think tank NABES (North African Bureau of Economic Studies) since 2013. She was a Consultant with the Tunisian Institute of Strategic Studies, consultant with the Institute of Quantitative Economics, consultant with the PNUD and consultant with the World Bank and with the African Bank of development. Areas of expertise include Firm’s productivity, firm’s performance and firm’s dynamics (micro data analysis), Private sector and business environment and Labor markets.

In EMNES, as a senior researcher and team leader, she contributes to the research area on private sector development.

Publications

Chahir Zaki

Dr. Chahir Zaki is a citizen of Egypt. At present, Chahir is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University. In this position, Chahir teaches and conducts research on trade policy and macroeconomics. He is also the

Director of the French section at the faculty.

Chahir works also for the Economic Research Forum (Cairo, Egypt) as a part-time Senior Economist and as a consultant for several international organization (the World Bank and the International Trade Center (UNCTAD-WTO, Geneva) and ESCWA). He holds a B.A. in Economics from the Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University, an M.A. in Economics from Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, and a Ph.D. in Economics from Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne. His research interests include international trade, trade policy, trade in services, applied economics and macroeconomic modeling. He has published numerous studies in the International Trade Journal, the World Trade Review, Economic Modeling and Applied Economics.

Publications

Sanaa Zebakh

Sanaa Zebakh has an agronomist background. She acted for more than 10 years as responsible of UE –Moroccan S&T cooperation within the Moroccan Ministry of Higher Education and Research. She was in charge of implementing the first Moroccan National Contact Point (NCP) in

2005; and the thematic NCP’s in 2010. She participated in more than 22 projects (6FP and 7FP) related to food , agriculture and biotechnology, Health, ICT, ENV, mobility and international cooperation in S&T. In parallel, Mrs Zebakh was responsible of the Moroccan S&T Bilateral agreement with EU and neighboring policy for S&T and regional political S&T dialogue (GSO). Since 2010, she is the Director of International Cooperation at the Hassan II institute for agriculture and veterinary. She is in charge of negotiating and managing agreements and contracts at national and international level as well as monitoring capacity building programs and continuous training. She acted as an expert for FP7 proposals evaluation and expert of the “Evaluation of the Moroccan-UE cooperation in S&T ” in 2014. She has a particular interest of the knowledge economy and technology transfer in agriculture. In EMNES, she is the administrative leader of the IAV-Hassan II team.

Publications