Georgetown Environmental Justice Program
Georgetown Environmental Justice Program

Our People

Faculty & Staff

Gaël Giraud

Founder and Director of the Environmental Justice Program; Professor, McCourt School of Public Policy; Senior Researcher at CNRS

Fr. Gaël Giraud is an alumnus of the École Normale Supérieure (Ulm) and ENSAE. He received his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics at the École Polytechnique (Paris). He served two years in Chad as a teacher, where he also founded a center for street children (still running today). He is a senior researcher at the CNRS in economics, has published about 30 papers in peer-reviewed journals, written 4 books, and supervised around 20 Ph.D. students. From 1999-2004, he worked as a quantitative engineer and scientific advisor for investment banks (CPR, Calyon, Jean-Michel Lasry’s team). In 2004 he entered the Society of Jesus. In 2009, he was nominated as the best young French economist (Le Monde). In 2013 he was ordained as a priest. In 2015, he founded and directed the Energy and Prosperity Chair (ENS, X, ENSAE) and was appointed Chief Economist and Executive Director of the French Development Agency (AFD). Since 2017, he has been a permanent fellow at the Nantes Institute for Advanced Studies. Since 2018, he has been an Extraordinary Professor at Stellenbosch University (South Africa). Since 2020, he has been appointed as a professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy and Founder and Director of the Environmental Justice Program at Georgetown University.

Jennifer Eagleton

Associate Director

Jennifer Eagleton

Thriving within entrepreneurial ventures at research institutions, Jennifer has worked to accelerate transdisciplinary research, drive science-based conservation action, and strengthen science education.

Before joining GEJP, she was the Director of Interdisciplinary Initiatives at the Georgetown Environment Initiative, a cross-campus effort to advance the University’s contribution to global environmental and sustainability efforts.  Before Georgetown, Jennifer worked to launch the programs and partnerships of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, the new transdisciplinary institute at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, as its Associate Director for Partnership Programs.

In addition, Jennifer worked for seven years at the Field Museum in Chicago where she worked with the biologists, anthropologists, and educators of the Environmental and Conservation Programs to support science-based action in the creation and management of national parks and other protected areas in South America. Jennifer also directed online programs connecting the public to the behind-the-scenes science of the Museum, and she started the Museum’s Educational Media Division, where she led the team of scientists and educators who sent Museum scientists and collections into classrooms nationwide through television broadcasts, webcasts, online curricula, print educator guides, and portable exhibit cases. 

Jennifer began her career as an employment relations attorney at Winston & Strawn. She has an MBA from Georgetown University and a JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and she graduated with honors from Princeton University.

Brianna Butler

Program Associate

Brianna is a Washington, DC, native. She received her bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Delaware State University and is currently studying to receive her Master’s in Higher Education Administration at Georgetown University. Brianna strives to make higher education more affordable and accessible to marginalized communities. She loves hanging out with family and friends, cooking and baking, and binge-watching a series in her free time.

Hugo Bailly

Affiliate Fellow

Hugo Bailly

Hugo studies the interaction between climate, financial and economic risks. His work aims to understand how sector-specific climate or financial risks can spread in the economic fabric of a region via the interrelationships between sectors. This analysis relies on the inclusion of multi-sectoral dynamics within out-of-equilibrium macroeconomic models.

Clémence Démurger

Fellow

Clémence is a research fellow at the Environmental Justice Program, studying the material sustainability of the economy. Using an assessment model of the economy and resources, she tries to understand the interactions between economic dynamics and resource depletion, and to provide insight on most adapted policies and development scenarios.

Previously, her research was shared between environmental economics (aiming at assessing the impact of damage inequalities on optimal climate policy) and philosophy (drawing links between continental phenomenology and the lack of realism of the concept of homo economicus).

Keywords: Natural resources, Sustainability, Stock-flow consistent models, Ecological macroeconomics

Degrees: Master’s degree in Economics (Paris-1 Panthéon Sorbonne University), Master’s degree in Philosophy (Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris)

Loïc Giaccone

Fellow

Loic Giaccone

Loïc is preparing a Ph.D. on the interactions between climate change and economic inequality, supervised by Dr. Gaël Giraud. He analyzes how, in different transition scenarios, inequalities are changing, using integrated assessment models developed by the EJP. These models will simulate important feedback on societies: climate change impacts, economic impacts, and resource scarcities. The goal is to identify which trajectories, and the associated policies, that allow both low climate outcomes and inequality reduction.

Misgana Elias Kallore

Fellow

Misgana Kallore

Misgana works on a Project- EcoCampuses – that intends to study what takes for Campuses to transform themselves into an eco-campus. The project begins by proposing a unifying or common definition of what eco-campus means to set a standard by reviewing concepts, experiences, practices, and brainstorming. Curriculum transformation and pedagogical approach as a means to “just transition” for the societal and behavioral shifts are key points the study will look into. Cases of campuses in different countries will be assessed while demonstrating the practical transformation process with Jesuit Universities.

Simon Lebastard

Student Research Assistant

Environmental Economics, Energy Economics, Computational and Statistical Methods, Data Science

Simon is a Ph.D. student in Environmental Economics at Georgetown University, working on studying interactions of energy and environmental resources with macroeconomic variables. These building models put these physical constraints at their core and offer better insight into what policies would be best to tackle environmental emergencies through policies that put a prime consideration on social justice. My thesis is supervised by Dr. Gael Giraud, Director of the Environmental Justice Program.

Previously, his research focused on the intersection of machine-learning and neuroscience – more specifically in learning theory, continual learning, and Bayesian statistics, and thus aims to contribute to some empirical aspects of economics. He also studied the application of data science to challenges in the public sector: he worked as a “Common Good Entrepreneur” (Entrepreneur d’Intérêt Général) on applying data science for innovation and public policy evaluation.

Frédéric Mortier 

Associate Research Professor

Frédéric Mortier is a senior statistician working for the last 20 years on various aspects of applied statistics, with a focus on the development and the application of modern statistical tools in ecology, quantitative population genetics, and macroeconomy. His statistical expertise includes multivariate models taking into account spatial dependencies in large datasets, variable selection, mixture models, Bayesian inference and machine learning. In particular, he has used these models to understand the impact of global changes on tropical ecosystems.

Publications

Mlondi Ndovela

Affiliate Fellow

Mlondi Ndovela smiling.

Never get cold feet when the pressure comes.

Mlondi is working on his Ph.D. thesis entitled Macroeconomic implications of energy transition in South Africa: Results from an integrated non-equilibrium economy-climate model. The study is part of the joint project between the Centre for Sustainability Transition and the Environmental Justice Program. His Ph.D. study addresses the absence of an integrated non-equilibrium economy-climate model for South Africa. Furthermore, there is a conspicuous non-linkage between the energy transition and macro-economic factors from various models developed by Applied Development Research Solutions (ADRS), Meridian Economics, University of Cape Town (UCT), and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). To address this problem, the study aims to use an INEEC model developed in partnership with GTU in order to simulate BAU and alternative scenarios for South Africa’s energy transition within the wider macro-economic context.

Grégoire Noël

Fellow

Grégoire’s researches aim at providing a formal framework embedding macroeconomics within a thermodynamical realm. Economies are complex, open metabolisms perpetually trading energy and matter flows with the environment to sustain themselves and grow in mass and complexity. Crucially though, the environment is finite and endures the entropic pressure that the economies exert on it. Reconceptualizing economies as far-from-equilibrium dissipative structures shall help address the ecological sustainability of economic prosperity and development.

Peter Rožič

Associate Research Professor

Peter joins the Georgetown Environmental Justice Program (EJP) during the Spring 2023 semester before moving to Oxford as Director Designate of the Global Integral Ecology Research Network at the Laudato Si Research Institute (LSRI), Campion Hall, University of Oxford.

At Georgetown EJP, Peter embarks upon researching collaborative approaches to innovate and sustain global strategic partnerships to further enable ecological and societal change through the paradigm of “integral ecology” by bringing together academia, policy, and action.

He is passionate about forming leaders through innovative, impactful learning and networking processes. He has created programs that have helped hundreds of top talents secure positions in various institutions worldwide. He has a history of leading international teams and boards within fast-paced educational environments that include leadership, teaching, and innovation-in-education experience. He has published 17 peer-reviewed articles, 5 edited-volume chapters, and 180+ essays/pieces. Additionally, he has collaborated with EU-level policy and campaign leaders to deliver integrated advocacy.

Pauline Smith

Postdoctoral Researcher

Pauline Smith.

Pauline’s work aims to build a better understanding of our relationship to nature, and create policy recommendations for campuses that want to foster their students relationship with nature. Feeling connected with nature can be a powerful drive towards a more sustainable lifestyle as well as a source of happiness, but we are not sure how to foster this feeling in adults, or what the cognitive basis of this connectedness are. Pauline investigates these questions by exploring the role of attention built through habits, as well as drawing insights from subjective accounts of people’s relationship with the natural world.

Paul Valcke

Postdoctoral Researcher

Paul Valcke smiling in front of trees.

Paul’s work aims at the creation of economical models that can take into account the dynamics of inequalities in a society. This work is integrated in a larger approach of economical models that can take into account spatial effects, energy, resources, climate and biodiversity. His work is based on dynamical models from economy, but also from statistical physics, theoretical ecology, and morphogenesis.

Weiye Zhu

Student Research Assistant

Weiye is born and raised in Xi’an, China, a historic city that retains more of its ancient character and atmosphere than Beijing. He graduated from the University of Miami with a degree in B.S. in Mathematical Statistics and Economics in 2022, and he is currently a Master’s student in Data Science & Analytics at Georgetown University.

Weiye always had a passion for statistics and economics and hoped to utilize the knowledge and skills to help leaders in business or government organizations make better decisions. He is a Research Assistant at the Environmental Justice Program, studying how different variables and factors affect the equilibrium and their trajectories in the economic models.

Keywords: Mathematical Statistics, Economics, Data Science, Probability modeling,
NLP

Collaborators

Anne Alombert

Anne Alombert is a Teacher and Researcher in philosophy at Université Paris 8. She is the author of a thesis in philosophy that focuses on the relationships between life, technics and spirit in the work of Gilbert Simondon and Jacques Derrida. Her researches focus on the works of Simondon, Derrida and Stiegler, on the relationships between knowledge and technics, on the anthropological issues raised by digital technologies and on the question of the “Entropocene”. She participated in the development of a contributory research program that aimed at experimenting with a model of contributory economy. She is co-author of the book Bifurcate, written with Bernard Stiegler and the Internation collective.

Manuel Alejandro Cardenete

Professor Cardenete is Professor of Economics at University Loyola (Spain) and University Pablo de Olavide (Spain) (on leave). He was Vice-rectorof Postgraduate Studies at University Loyola. Recently he has been Regional Minister of Education and Sport (2022) previously Deputy Minister at Vicepresidence-Regional Ministry of Tourism, Regeneration, Justice and Local Administration at Regional Government of Junta de Andalucia (Spain) (2019-2022) and Member of the Committee of the Regions at European Union (2019-2022). 

Professor Cardenete obtained a B.S. in Economics and Business (1994) from the University of Seville (Spain), Ph. D. in Economics (2000) from the University of Huelva (Spain), and Diploma in Executive Management (2011) from San Telmo Business School (Spain). The topic of his dissertation was “Applied General Equilibrium Models for Andalusia”. Additionally, he is the Vice President of Sociedad Hispanoamericana Input-Output as well as an Academic in Academia Andaluza de Ciencia Regional. He is also the leader of research groups Applied & Computational Macroeconomics at University Loyola and CLIMAMODEL (Multisectoral Models and Climate Change) at Regional Government of Andalusia (Spain).

Elena De Nictolis

Elena De Nictolis

Elena De Nictolis is a postdoctoral fellow at GEJP and visiting researcher at Harry Radzyner Law School ICD Herzliya. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Theory, Political Science, and Political History from Luiss University (Rome, Italy). During her Ph.D., she was a visiting at the Urban Law Center of Fordham University. Before joining GEJP, she was a postdoctoral fellow (2019-2021) at the Luiss Department of Political Science where she conducted research within LabGov.city – an international applied research laboratory on the commons and urban commons created by Luiss University and then expanded and working in close partnership with LabGov Georgetown, LabGov Costa Rica, and LabGov Hong Kong. At Luiss she was also a teaching fellow/adjunct professor (regulatory innovation; governance of innovation and sustainability; urban law and policy). Her primary research interests are in urban public policies and law, collective action in cities and urban commons, urban climate justice, and quality of democracy at the local level.

She is currently conducting comparative analyses of urban laws and policies, particularly as they are shaped and implemented as a response to global crises (health; social, technological, environmental; energy); she is also investigating how multi-actor and multi-level partnerships can support collaborative governance arrangements to respond to the same global challenges, overcoming collective action problems.

Keywords: Urban public policies and laws, collective action in cities and urban commons, urban climate justice, quality of democracy at the local level

Degree: Ph.D. in Political Theory, Political Science and Political History (Luiss University Rome)

Email address: edenictolis@luiss.it

Publications:
Edited Volumes

Book Chapters

Journal Articles

Hugo Martin

Hugo Martin smiling in front of a snowy landscape.

Hugo’s research aims to integrate the impacts of human societies on the earth’s climate by linking macroeconomic models to climate models. This interaction is crucial for the understanding of global warming. Indeed, depending on economic scenarios, CO2 emissions can change dramatically, always increasing with global production. In the face of global warming, international economic policies must be carefully chosen. Their objective must be the perfect control of CO2 emissions as well as the improvement of social progress. Therefore, determining precisely what changes would be induced on the earth’s climate by CO2 emissions is definitely a cornerstone of any rigorous planning of economic policies. Numerical simulations provide a useful toolbox for testing any economic strategy and directly observing their consequences on our environment.

Timothée Nicolas

Timothée Nicolas.

Timothée works in close collaboration with Hugo Martin on macroeconomic simulations, considering macroeconomy as a dynamic system in interaction with climate, which is described by a simplified GCM model. The aim is to understand how climate change can affect the economy, first at a global level, and eventually at the regional level, and how cuts in CO2 emissions might preserve the economy.

William O’Neill

William O’Neill, S.J. is professor emeritus of social ethics at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University and a visiting professor of Hekima University College in Nairobi. He received his STL from the Jesuit School of Theology and his Ph.D. from Yale University. He received the Graduate Theological Union Sarlo Award for Teaching Excellence in 2014 and the Distinguished Faculty Lecture Award in 2015.

His writings include The Ethics of Our Climate: Hermeneutics and Ethical Theory (Georgetown Univ. Press), Reimagining Human Rights: Religion and the Common Good (Georgetown Univ. Press); Catholic Social Teaching: A User’s Guide (Orbis); and book chapters and journal articles addressing questions of human rights, social reconciliation, restorative justice, refugee and immigration policy, race and mass incarceration, and the Church and public reason.

He has worked with refugees in Tanzania and Malawi and done research on human rights in South Africa and Rwanda. Since 2019, he has been a member of the Mission and Identity team of the Jesuit Refugee Service while serving in the Kakuma refugee camp in northwestern Kenya.

Publication:
“The Ethics of Enchantment: Spirituality and Ecological Ethics,” chapter in Religion and Sustainability: Interreligious Resources, Interdisciplinary Responses: Intersection of Sustainability Studies and Religion, Theology, Philosophy (Sustainable Development Goals Series) 1st ed. 2022 Edition https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-79301-2_11

Maria Portugal

Maria Portugal.

Strength and Light

Maria’s work aims to create a space dedicated to young Economists who want to build on the work developed around the Economy of Francesco to build a World in Common. In this space, young economists will be able to discern how to reform the world’s economy and develop their projects and research in this field. This way, they will be able to become actors able to ensure the ecological and social reconstruction of our societies by overtaking the limits of conventional economics. It will be a place to exchange ideas for young economists, social organizations, and actors of civil society who want to fight climate change through this framework.

Daniel Presta

Daniel is a PhD student in the McMaster University School of Computational Science and Engineering, studying under the supervision of Dr. Matheus Grasselli, Professor and Deputy Provost at McMaster University. His research focuses on uncertainty and sensitivity analysis of macroeconomic and climate-economic models, and attempts to determine the economic parameters most responsible for convergence to various economic steady-states through stability analysis, statistical analysis, and machine learning techniques.

Furthermore, he has worked on extensions to the base Goodwin-Keen model, with most of his recent work centered on adding fiscal and monetary policy components to the original framework.  He aims to study a series of “green” fiscal and monetary policy measures, with the intention of investigating the effects of climate change and decarbonization on the stability of economic systems.

At Georgetown, Daniel is a member of the team dedicated to building a comprehensive climate-economic model for South Africa. He analyzes data to estimate key economic parameters, and will explore the stability and sensitivity of the model using statistical and machine learning methods.

Keywords: Macroeconomic modelling, Stock-Flow Consistent (SFC) models, dynamical systems, stability analysis, Jacobian analysis, uncertainty analysis, parameter sensitivity, machine learning

Degrees: M.Sc. in Mathematics, McMaster University; (Honours) B.Sc. in Mathematics and Statistics, McMaster University

Camille Souffron 

Student at the ENS Ulm (Paris), Camille’s research focuses on dynamic non-linear and non-equilibrium economic modeling in collaboration with Paul Valcke with the objective of integrating emergence, complexity and multisectorial in macroeconomic models, notably for the ecological transition and in dialogue with traditional economic models. Another part of his work deals more broadly with the epistemology of economics and the history of its thought under a critical and peirastic prism. Also trained in law, he is similarly interested in economic public policy, including proposals to cancel public debts on central banks’ balance sheets and the doctrine of odious debt. He teaches environmental economics at the ENS Ulm.

Keywords: complexity and non-equilibrium macroeconomics and modeling, ecological economics, law and public debt, epistemology

Studies: 

Mark Swilling

Mark Swilling smiling in a natural setting.

Mark’s research over the past three decades has addressed many issues, but the core focus has been transition. During the 1980s and early 1990s, his focus was on the transitions to democracy that swept across Latin America, Southern Europe, Eastern Europe and then Africa in the 1990s (including SA in 1994). During the 1990s his focus was urban transition, with special reference to the building of the Lynedoch EcoVillage from the late 1990s. From the early 2000s, his focus has been on sustainability transitions culminating in various publications including his co-authored book Just Transitions in an Unfair World (2012). Drawing on many different intellectual influences (Dutch transition theory, African philosophy, Roberto Unger’s theory of change, long-wave thinking, state theory (especially Jessop) and anticipatory thinking, Mark’s latest book (The Age of Sustainability) provides the basis for his work at GEJP. He intends to focus on energy transition and the collibratory governance of non-equilibrium economic dynamics.