Plenary Panelist

Lorenzo Fioramonti, Chamber of Deputies, Italy

Mihir Shah

Lorenzo Fioramonti is the former Minister of Education, Universities and Research and a member of the Chamber of Deputies in Italy, currently in the “FacciamoEco” ecologist parliamentary group. He is Full Professor of Political Economy at the University of Pretoria (South Africa), where he founded the Centre for the Study of Governance Innovation (www.governanceinnovation.org) and was Deputy Project Leader of the Future Africa initiative. He is also Extraordinary Professor at the School of Public Leadership of the University of Stellenbosch, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Social Investment of the University of Heidelberg and at the Hertie School of Governance (Germany) and Associate Fellow at the United Nations University. Lorenzo is the first and only Jean Monnet Chair in Africa, a prestigious recognition awarded by the European Commission to distinguished academics, and also holds the UNESCO-UNU Chair in Regional Integration, Migration and Free Movement of People. In 2012, he received the UP Exceptional Young Researcher Award and in 2014 he became the first president of the European Union Studies Association of Sub-Saharan Africa. Lorenzo is the Editor-in-Chief of Solutions, the leading popular scientific magazine, and Associate Editor of the Journal of Common Market Studies, the leading academic journal of European economic integration. He is the author of over 60 scientific articles and 10 books. His most recent books are Wellbeing Economy: Success in a World Without Growth (MacMillan 2017) and The World After GDP: Economics, Politics and International Relations in the Post-Growth Era (Polity 2017), which have been featured – among others -  by Bloomberg and the Financial Times. Lorenzo’s research interests range from alternative economic paradigms to the governance of the commons, global political innovations and new forms of supranational regionalism. His opinion pieces have been published, among others, by The New York Times, Financial Times, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Harvard Business Review, TruthOut, Die Presse, The Conversation, Das Parlament, Der Freitag, The Mail&Guardian and www.opendemocracy.net. Until 2018, we was a regular columnist of Business Day, South Africa’s foremost daily financial newspaper. He is the author of two film documentaries, The Age of Adaptation (http://lorenzofioramonti.org/videos/) and Presi per il PIL (in Italian, http://www.presiperilpil.org/ilfilm.html). He blogs at www.lorenzofioramonti.org and he is a sought-after public speaker on issues regarding new economic paradigms, rethinking development and responsible business. His work is endorsed by acclaimed authors such as Richard Wilkinson, Kate Pickett, Raj Patel, Vandana Shiva, Susan George, Richard Heinberg, Johan Galtung and leading economists like Robert Costanza, Enrico Giovannini and Tim Jackson. He is the founder of the Action Research Network for a Wellbeing Economy in Africa (WE-Africa, www.we-africa.org) and a member of the Alliance for Sustainability and Prosperity (www.asap4all.org).

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