10EMESconf - Plenary speakers

Sophie Bacq is Professor of Social Entrepreneurship and holds the Coca-Cola Foundation Chair in Sustainable Development at IMD. A globally recognised thought leader in social entrepreneurship, Sophie was named to the 2024 Thinkers50 Radar list and recognised among the top 2% of scientists worldwide by Stanford University. Her research, published in top-tier management and entrepreneurship journals, has received multiple best paper awards from AMP, JBV and JMS, and the 2019 Academy of Management Emerging Scholar Award. A member of several Editorial Review Boards (AMJ, ETP, JOM), Sophie is Editor-in-Chief at the Journal of Business Venturing. She co-directs The Annual Social Entrepreneurship Conference and teaches the Annual Social Entrepreneurship Doctoral Seminar.

Jean-Louis Laville sociologist and economist is director of the partner Chair Social and Solidarity Economy – Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers Foundation (CNAM, Paris).

Involved in many international research networks and founding member of the International network EMES and RILESS, he is a regular guest speaker at several universities and research laboratories (Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Quito, Louvain-la-Neuve, Porto Alegre, Salvador da Bahia…). He has published in different languages. Among the books in English :

The Social and Solidarity Economy, University of Minnesota Press, 2023 – Theory of Social Enterprise  and Pluralism, Routledge, 2019 (with P. Eynaud, L. Dos Santos, S. Banerjee, F. Avelino, L. Hulgard) – Civil Society, the Third Sector and Social Enterprise, Routledge, 2015 (with D. Young, P. Eynaud) – Human Economy, Polity, 2010 (with K. Hart, A. Cattani) – The Third sector, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2004 (with A. Evers) –

Swati Banerjee, PhD, is a Professor of Social Work and Social Innovation at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. She is working on people-centered social innovation, livelihoods, community-based social entrepreneurship and human-centered design thinking for social change. She specialises in participatory methodologies and is heavily involved in research and grassroots action. She is the Associate Editor of the Social Enterprise Journal by Emerald Publishing, UK. Some of her publications include the book on ‘People-Centered Social Innovation: An emerging paradigm with global potential’. She is involved in global discussions on social innovation and is simultaneously part of several grassroots innovations in India. She envisions working towards addressing marginalities through social innovation and grassroots social entrepreneurship, focusing on intersectional ‘knowledges’ and a southern epistemological perspective. The spotlight is on the repoliticisation of processes of participation and empowerment for marginalised groups and communities.

Fernanda Wanderley holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia University. She is currently the Director of the Institute for Socio-Economic Research (IISEC) at the Universidad Católica Boliviana “San Pablo.” Her research focuses on inclusive and sustainable development, care economy, social and solidarity economy, labor markets and social inequalities. She is a member of international networks such as Southern Voice, EMES and CLACSO, and currently participates in the EU-Latin America INSEAI project on informality under EU-MSCA program. Her recent publications include contributions to Water Policy (2025), the UN SSE Encyclopedia (2023), and the Journal of Agrarian Change (2022) and Social Enterprise in Latin America (2019).

Donatella Della Porta is Professor of Political Science, Dean of the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences and Director of the PhD Program in Political Science and Sociology at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, where she also manages the Center on Social Movement Studies (Cosmos).

Among her many research interests are social movements, political violence, terrorism, corruption, and police and protest policing. She has directed a major ERC project “Mobilizing for Democracy” on civil society participation in democratization processes in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. She holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of Lausanne, Bucharest, Goteborg, Jyvaskyla and the University of Peloponnese. In 2011, she was awarded the Mattei Dogan Prize  for distinguished achievements in the field of political sociology.