Past Conferences - EDI 2016 Nicosia

Invited Keynote Speakers

Michàlle Mor Barak, PhD, is the Dean’s Endowed Professor of Social Work and Business at the University of Southern California School of Social Work with a joint appointment at the Marshall School of Business. She is the Department Chair, Community, Organization and Business Innovation and Director of the PhD Program.

A Principal Investigator on several large research projects, she has published extensively in the areas of global diversity, inclusion, and leadership. Her research was funded by national and international foundations and corporations, including Nike, TRW, Edison, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Wellness Foundation. Professor Mor Barak received awards of distinction, including a Fulbright award, the Lady Davis award, the University of California Regents Award, and the Franklin C. Sterlin Distinguished Faculty Award. She was invited to give keynote addresses at distinguished gatherings such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and received grants to lead prestigious international conferences including the Rockefeller Foundation’s award to lead an international conference on global workforce diversity in Bellagio, Italy, and the Borchard Foundation’s grant to lead a global think tank of scholars in France.

Her book, Managing Diversity: Toward a Globally Inclusive Workplace (Sage Publications, currently in its 3rd edition), received accolades in academic journals and won the Academy of Management’s Terry book award for “the most outstanding contribution to management knowledge”.

Dr Cynthia Forson- LLB, LLM, MBA, PHD (nee Sanni-Thomas) is Associate Professor and Deputy Provost at Lancaster University Ghana. Prior to her appointment to Lancaster Ghana, Dr Forson was Head of one of the three academic departments at the University of Hertfordshire Business School in the UK. She is an alumnus of the Universities of Ghana, Pennsylvania and Hertfordshire and holds a PhD from Queen Mary University of London.

Cynthia teaches Organisational Behaviour and Human Resource Management and her research centres on the work, leadership and management experiences of women in the labour market and organisations and has published several articles in this area. She focuses particularly on gender, ethnicity, class and migrant status and the intersectional influence of these structures in the lives and careers of women.

Dr Forson’s pays particular attention in her research on black and ethnic minority women in the labour market and organisations and has conducted several projects on the issues of equality and diversity in this regard, including projects for the UK Department of Constitutional Affairs (now Ministry of Justice), the UK Equal Opportunities Commission (now called Equality and Human Rights Commission), the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the Royal Academy of Engineering, UK. Cynthia’s research interests now extend to the work and labour market encounters of African women in Africa and the Diaspora and has a particular interest in the development of management theories that reflect the lived work experiences of women in different African contexts.

Anna Koukkides-Procopiou is affiliated with the Center of European and International Affairs, University of Nicosia, as Research Associate, Geopolitics Team coordinator and member of the Advisory Board. She holds First Class degrees (B.Sc.) in History and Economics from University College London, where she studied as the recipient of the UCL Cyprus Scholarship, while her postgraduate studies at the London School of Economics (M.Sc.) on International Relations focused on Foreign Policy Analysis and more specifically, on the influence of ethnic and religious factors on the foreign policy-making in Central Asia and Azerbaijan in the post-Soviet era. Her subsequent work at the University of Nicosia (Ph.D. candidate) focuses on International Relations/Foreign Policy Analysis. Her research interests include leadership, decision-making processes and crisis management in foreign policy-making. A commentator for the Huffington Post and a number of Cyprus media outlets, she mainly writes on Great Power relations, Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. She has recently completed a Political Risk Analysis certification with Teneo Intelligence, one of the largest providers of risk intelligence analysis in the world.

She is an alumnus of the Halki Seminars organized by ELIAMEP and the Future EU Leaders Programme run by the Foreign Ministry of the State of Israel. She was also a participant in the Greek Defence Review organized by the Greek Defence Ministry in 2000 and in her capacity as Project Manager for the Institute for Eurodemocracy (now known as the Glafkos Klerides Foundation), participated as an observer in programmes run by the Peres Centre for Peace and Cooperation in Israel. She has presented her work at academic conferences both in Cyprus and abroad, including the Maritime Cyprus conference held in London in 2013 and the Begin-Sadat Centre, Bar-Ilan University, conference on Strategic Challenges in the Eastern Mediterranean in 2014, while she has attended many others, including the Conference on the Protection of Cultural Heritage at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, organized by Tasoula Hadjitofi/Walk of Truth. In 2015, she was awarded a scholarship by the European International Studies Association to participate in a week-long ‘Religion and Politics’ research seminar, jointly organized with the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies-Yale University. Anna has also been frequently invited to participate in a number of hearings at the House of Commons on the Cyprus problem

She is also a recipient of the Executive Development Diploma for professionals from the Cyprus Institute of International Management and various other professional business training qualifications, (including the Engel&Volkers Academy in Hamburg, Germany), having in the past held a number of managerial positions in the corporate sector in the Lanitis Group of Companies. She has also acted as Project Manager for two EU-funded projects, Women Fit4Business and Gender Diversity in Decision-Making Positions. She currently serves as the President of AIPFE Cyprus- Women of Europe, which she also represents on the Board of the Cyprus Women's Lobby and the workings of the bi-communal Cyprus Dialogue Forum. She is a member of Business Professional Women-Cyprus and the Cyprus Literacy Board, as well as the facilitator of two Lean-In Nicosia Circles, affiliated with Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean-In Org.