Te Velde serves as Professor of Practice to CGF.

Professor te Velde joined CGF as Professor of Practice in 2021. He is a Principal Research Fellow and Director for International Economic Development at ODI. He directs the Supporting Investment and Trade in Africa (SITA) and Supporting Economic Transformation (SET) Programmes and is Research Leader in the FCDO – ESRC Growth Research Programme. He has written and edited 20 books/monographs, 30 peer reviewed articles and 40 book chapters, related mainly to investment, trade and economic transformation. His research has featured in the BBC, China Daily, The Economist, the Financial Times, the Guardian, Asian and African newspapers and TV, with hundreds of media hits. In terms of pathways to research impact, he has advised donor agencies (incl. FCDO, SIDA, and Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs), both houses of UK parliament (including as a specialist advisor to development finance inquiries) and government ministers ranging from Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia to Bangladesh and Nepal, and multilateral bodies (incl. IFIs and UN agencies). He is a member of the UK Government Strategic Trade Advisory Group (advising the Secretary of State and Trade minister) and leads a Bangladesh trade capacity building project. He holds a degree from the University of Groningen and a PhD in economics from Birkbeck, University of London.

Harris serves as a senior strategic advisor to CGF.

Laurence Harris is Emeritus Professor of Financial Economics at School of Finance and Management, SOAS University of London and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. In 1999, he founded SOAS Centre for Financial and Management Studies (CeFiMS) and was founding Head of School of Finance and Management between 2002-2008. He is co-investigator on the ESRC-FCDO Project (ES/N013344/2) - Delivering Inclusive Financial Development and Growth.

He has taught at the London School of Economics, University of California Berkeley, Harvard University, Birkbeck University of London, the Open University, and University of Zimbabwe. He has been a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge, and the International Monetary Fund. He has held various advisory positions to international organisations including African Economic Research Consortium and South Africa National Treasury.

Xie manages CGF’s communications, events and strategic operations.

Meng Xie received her PhD in Finance and Management from SOAS School of Finance and Management. 

Jeffrey Ighedosa is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow in the CGF.

Ighedosa joined CGF as Post-doctoral Research Fellow in 2024 under the AXA Chair in Global Finance. He received his PhD in Finance from SOAS University of London. Before joining the CGF, he held a Senior Teaching Fellow position in Financial Accounting at the School of Finance and Management, SOAS. Ighedosa holds an MBA in Banking and Finance from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, a BSc in Accounting and Finance from Oxford Brookes University, and has fulfilled all examinations requirements for the award of ACCA qualification. His research interests include credit information sharing and bank behaviour, sustainable financial reporting, and competing financing models for SMEs in developing countries.

Athina Petropoulou is a Research Associate in the CGF.

Petropoulou joined CGF in 2020-2023 as Post-doctoral Research Fellow under the AXA Chair in Global Finance. She joined us from the University of Bath. Her core research interests lie in the areas of banking, where she investigates credit risk, liquidity risk, efficiency and competition across alternative banking models (e.g., community banks). Her other research interests also include finance and financial econometrics and she has been involved in research projects at the University of Bath and the University of Kent. Her research work has been presented at leading international academic conferences such as IFABS and INFINITI among others.

Yossi Shvimer is a Research Associate in the CGF.

Shvimer has joined CGF in 2019, under the AXA Chair in Global Finance. He holds a PhD. in finance from Bar-Ilan University (Israel). Yossi is also the CEO of MCM Alternative Investments, and also serves in key positions within Migdal Capital Markets, Ltd. His research focuses on finance and applied machine learning in finance. His ongoing work seeks to find advanced techniques for financial asset pricing. His work has been published in The North American Journal of Economics and Finance and Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination.

Efthymios Rizopoulos is a Research Associate in the CGF.

Rizopoulos joined CGF in 2020-2021 as a post-doctoral research fellow under the ESRC-DFID research project (ES/N013344/2) ‘Delivering Inclusive Financial Development and Growth’. He joined us from the University of Manchester. His research focuses on market microstructure, market quality and fragmentation, liquidity and asset-pricing. His research interests include but are not limited to financial technology, crypto currencies, banking, green finance, behavioural finance, algorithmic and high frequencies trading, capital and financial markets and FOREX. His work has been presented in major conferences such as the FMA 2018 European Conference, European Financial Management Association 2017 Annual Meeting, Financial Econometrics and Empirical Asset Pricing Conference, Kyle Conference: Market Mechanisms and their impact and others.