Anton is Principal and Vice Chancellor, University of Glasgow. He was educated at The High School of Glasgow and the University of Glasgow, where he graduated M.A. (Hons) in Political Economy (1984) and took a Ph.D. in Economics (1989). He was a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at the University of Glasgow from 1984 to 1992, and Daniel Jack Professor of Political Economy from 1992 until 2007. He was Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, 2000 to 2004, and Vice-Principal (Strategy, Budgeting and Advancement) from 2004 until 2007. After two years as Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Heriot Watt University, he returned to University of Glasgow to take up his present post in 2009. Professor Muscatelli has been a consultant to the World Bank and the European Commission, and was a member of the Panel of Economic Advisers of the Secretary of State for Scotland from 1998 to 2000. Since 2007, he has been an adviser to the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee on monetary policy, and in 2008 he was appointed to chair an independent expert group for the Calman Commission on Devolution, set up by the Scottish Parliament and led by the Chancellor of the University of Glasgow, Sir Kenneth Calman. He chaired the Research and Commercialisation Committee of Universities Scotland in 2007-08 and from 2008 to 2010 was Convener of Universities Scotland and Vice-President of Universities UK. He was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2001, and of the CESifo Economics Research Institute in Munich in 1999 In 2009 he was appointed Knight Commander (Commendatore) of the Republic of Italy for services to Economics and Higher Education. In 2012 he was awarded an honorary doctorate (Ll.D) from McGill University, Montreal, Canada. In April 2012 he was appointed to the Board of the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) which provides funding and oversight of all of Scotland's Colleges and Universities. From 2014 he is Honorary President of the David Hume Institute, succeeding Lord Steel. He has held visiting appointments in many universities, including in 2014, Guest Professor of Nankai University, Tianjin, China.
I am a qualitative researcher, interested in how people relate to each other in contemporary society and the impact of present/future design choices. A fascination with digital mediation led me to make studies of websites and online discussion as early as 1995, and I now focus on mobile and ubiquitous contexts of use. An important element of my work has been looking at design globally - with projects in Ghana, India, Chile and Uganda, workshops on six continents, and a role advising the European Union on the future of the Internet. I was a member of the Culture, Communication and Computing Research Institute at Sheffield Hallam University for several years, working closely with the four councils of South Yorkshire to research digital engagement strategies, and also holding an appointment in Drama at Queen Mary, University of London, where I devised methodology for communities to participate in designing future digital tools. More recently I held a post at Northumbria's Design School. I have been multiply funded under the interdisciplinary RCUK calls of Designing for the 21st Century and Connected Communities. In my research, I work extensively with arts organisations, grass-roots community groups, older people and marginalised communities, focusing on meaning-making, identity, inclusion and experience of technology. I bring broad experience of interaction design practices including long-term consultancy in design companies (Flow Interactive http://www.flow-interactive.com, Fjord www.fjordnet.com), as well as projects with the likes of The Guardian, the BBC and the transport arm of Amey Technology. I publish on social innovation, human-computer interaction and cross-cultural methodology, having helped design and evaluate websites, mobile phones, social networks and technologies of augmented reality, automatic identity capture (AIDC), ubiquitous computing and the Internet of Things.
Alex Nikolsko-Rzhevskyy earned his doctorate in Economics from the University of Houston and a masters degree in Physics from Odessa National University in Ukraine. Prior to joining Lehigh's faculty, Nikolsko-Rzhevskyy served as an assistant professor at the University of Memphis, where he taught graduate Macroeconomics and Econometrics, and conducted research on monetary policy analysis. Nikolsko-Rzhevskyy's papers have been published in the Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Macroeconomic Dynamics, and others. He has been the recipient of several research grants and his research has been referred to at the U.S. Congress.
Dr Antonio Malfense Fierro completed his PhD at Edinburgh University Business School in 2012 and joined Hull University Business School in May 2013. In May 2010 he was selected as one of the 100 global ‘Young Leaders of Tomorrow’ for the St Gallen Symposium in St Gallen, Switzerland. During 2010-2011 he was the first ‘Chazen Visiting Scholar’ at the Lang Entrepreneurship Center at Columbia University Business School, in the city of New York. He has also more recently (2013) been a visiting researcher at Makerere University Business School in Uganda, investigating large scale successful portfolio entrepreneurs in addition to work with the STEP family business consortium. In 2014 he was invited to the London School of Economics (LSE) Africa summit as an academic advisory panel member. During his PhD Antonio worked for a year with Edinburgh Universities Student business Incubator. He has also conducted consultancy projects in Southern Africa and has worked at a prominent New York, Venture Capital Fund. Antonio was an accomplished amateur water polo player before injury put an end to his playing career in 2011/2012. He is a qualified water polo coach and represented the Scottish Universities Team (national selection) as a player for three seasons (2006, 2008, 2009), receiving a half blue and colours for this and other achievements, from the Edinburgh University Sports Union. He is a keen golfer, angler and a live sports enthusiast Dr Malfense Fierro is particularly interested in the role of large scale (or portfolio entrepreneurship) in economic development in Africa and elsewhere. This underlines a broad interest in African business and entrepreneurship which he teaches at undergraduate and postgraduate level. More specifically, he is fascinated by the relationship between risk and entrepreneurship and how risk is managed over time by entrepreneurs in different environments. Antonio is currently assessing existing measures of ‘entrepreneurial environments’ and their practical applicability and relevance to entrepreneurs and policy-makers. He is also investigating the role of portfolio entrepreneurship in African economic growth and development. Other interests, include the growth processes of entrepreneurial business groups in rapidly, developing and growing markets and other interests in family business and venture capital. His interests and capabilities also extend to undertaking business opportunity assessments and information gathering that is focused on different industries and markets within African countries, or in environments where the gathering or accessing such information is severely challenging.
