Board

Board Members of the IKPS

Andreas Novy

President

Andreas Novy is a socioeconomist who has worked and published widely in the field of urban development, international political economy, social innovation and social-ecological transformation. He is associate professor and head of the Institute for Multi-Level Governance and Development at the Department of Socioeconomics at WU Vienna. In 2019 he received, together with Brigitte Aulenbacher, Richard Bärnthaler and Veronika Heimerl, the Kurt-Rothschild-Award for his work on Karl Polanyi.

He has been head of the Austrian Green Foundation, co-founder of the Viennese Paulo Freire Center and co-organizer of two Good Life for all-Congresses in Vienna. His most recent publications include Local social innovation to combat poverty and exclusion: a critical appraisal (co-eds. S. Oosterlynck and Y. Kazepov (2020, Polity Press), Kari Polanyi: Die Finanzialisierung der Welt. Karl Polanyi und die neoliberale Transformation der Weltwirtschaft (2020, Beltz Verlag; co-eds. M. Brie and C. Thomasberger; German translation of From the Great Transformation to the Great Financialisation), Karl Polanyi: Wiederentdeckung eines Jahrhundertdenkers (2019, Falter, co-eds. B. Aulenbacher, M. Marterbauer and A. Thurnher) and Zukunftsfähiges Wirtschaften (Future-fit Economics) (2020, Beltz Verlag, together with R. Bärnthaler and V. Heimerl).

Brigitte Aulenbacher

Vice President

Brigitte Aulenbacher is a Professor of Sociological Theory and Social Analysis, the Head of the Department for the Theory of Society and Social Analyses at the Institute of Sociology, Johannes Kepler University Linz/Austria. She is co-editor (with Klaus Dörre) of Global Dialogue – the Magazine of the International Sociological Association (ISA) and (with Birgit Riegraf) of the book series “Arbeitsgesellschaft im Wandel”. She co-chairs (with Helma Lutz and Karin Schwiter) the project “Decent care work? Transnational Home Care Arrangements” which analyzes 24-hour-care in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Her fields of research are the analysis of contemporary capitalism, sociology of work, sociology of care and gender studies. In 2019 she received, together with Andreas Novy, Richard Bärnthaler and Veronika Heimerl, the Kurt-Rothschild-Award for her work on Karl Polanyi. Among her publications are the following: Capitalism in Transformation. Movements and Countermovements in the 21st Century, 2019 (with Atzmüller, Brand, Décieux, Fischer, Sauer); Karl Polanyi. Wiederentdeckung eines Jahrhundertdenkers, 2019 (with Marterbauer, Novy, Thurnher); Karl Polanyi, “The Great Transformation” and Contemporary Capitalism, 2019 (Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie, Vol. 44, No. 2, with Bärnthaler and Novy). 

Kari Polanyi Levitt

Honorary President

Kari Polanyi Levitt was born in Vienna in 1923 as the daughter of Karl Polanyi and Ilona Duczynska. She is a Canadian economist and Emeritus professor of economics at McGill University in Montreal. In addition to her achievements for her father’s oeuvre, Professor Polanyi Levitt can look back on many years of independent research and publication on questions of economic development. In particular, her work on the role of multinationals and the problems of economic development in the Caribbean region is internationally known. After her retirement at McGill University, Prof. Polanyi Levitt taught at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica as a George Beckford professor until 1997. In 1998, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of the West Indies, as well as the prestigious John Keneth Galbraith Prize of the Progressive Economics Forum.

Maria Markantonatou

Board Member

Maria Markantonatou is an Assistant Professor in Political Sociology at the Department of Sociology at the University of the Aegean in Lesvos, Greece. She has been a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Social Sciences, Humboldt University, at the Kolleg Postwachstumsgesellschaften, Friedrich Schiller University and at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies. She has coedited the book Karl Polanyi’s Political and Economic thought: A critical guide (with G. Dale and C. Holmes), Agenda, London 2019. Among her publications are: Economy-Society Tensions in the Eurozone: The “anti-democratic virus” revived in Artzmüller R., Aulenbacher B. et.al (eds) Capitalism in transformation: Movements and countermovements in the 21st Century, Edward Elgar Publishing, Northampton, 2019, and The “Politics of Fulfillment” as Preliminary for the Making of a Precarious State in Greece in Fouskas, V., Dimoulas, C. (eds), Greece in the 21st Century. The Politics and Economics of a Crisis, Routledge, London, 2018.

Claus Thomasberger

Board Member

Claus Thomasberger is a sociologist and economist whose main fields of research are political philosophy, history of economic thought, international political economy, European integration and social ecological transformation. Until 2017, he was Professor of Economics and Foreign Economic Policy at the Berlin University of Applied Sciences. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the Karl Polanyi Institute of Political Economy, Montreal. Among his publications are: Chronik der großen Transformation, Artikel und Aufsätze von Karl Polanyi 1920-1947 (3 vol.) (with M. Cangiani and K. Polanyi Levitt), 2002-2005; Der neoliberale Marktdiskurs (with W. Ötsch), 2009; Das neoliberale Credo, 2012; Auf der Suche nach dem Ökonomischen – Karl Marx zum 200. Geburtstag (with R. Lucas and R. Pfriem), 2018; Karl Polanyi’s Vision of a Socialist Transformation (with M. Brie), 2018; Karl Polanyi. Economy and Society. Selected Writings (with M. Cangiani), 2018.

Fabienne Décieux

Board Member & Financial Referent

Fabienne Décieux is a research assistent at the Institute of Sociology of the University of Vienna within the FWF research project “NorM – Norms around Motherhood” and a PhD student at the Department of Social Theory and Social Analyses at the Institute of Sociology of the Johannes Kepler University Linz.

Her main research areas are social theory, sociology of work and care, social policies, and gender studies. Among her publications are: Capitalism in Transformation. Movements and Countermovements in the 21st Century, 2019 (with Atzmüller, Aulenbacherm Brand, Fischer, Sauer), Gespannte Arbeits- und Geschlechterverhältnisse im Marktkapitalismus (with Becker and Binner) and “The origins of our time” Articulations between neoliberal social-policy reforms and the shift to the far-right through the light of Polanyi’s theory of fascism (with Atzmüller).

Marguerite Mendell

Board Member

Margie Mendell is an economist and Distinguished Professor Emerita, School of Community and Public Affairs, Concordia University. She is also Director, Karl Polanyi Institute of Political Economy, Concordia University which she co-founded with Professor Kari Polanyi Levitt in 1988. The Institute hosts the Karl Polanyi Archive. She has published on Karl Polanyi, the social economy in Quebec and internationally, on democratizing capital and solidarity finance in Quebec and on the evolution of “social finance” internationally. She is a member of the Board of Advisors of the Chantier de l’économie sociale, the social economy network of networks in Quebec, the Advisory Committee of the Social Economy Partnership for Community-based Sustainable Development for the City of Montreal and was a member the Advisory Policy Committee for the development of the social economy, Government of Quebec that worked on the draft legislation on the social economy, adopted in 2013. She has collaborated with the OECD, ILO, the European Union and the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. Also she co-founded the Global Social Economy Forum, in which she is a member of the Advisory Council and Honorary Member. In 2012 she was awarded the inaugural Prix Pierre-Dansereau from the Association francophone pour le savoir (ACFAS), a Prix du Québec (2013) and was named Officer of the Order of Quebec (2014) and Member of the Order of Canada (2017) in recognition of her contribution to the development of the social economy and to engaged scholarship.

Julia Fankhauser

Coordinator

Julia Fankhauser is a socioeconomist with degrees in International Business and Socio-Ecological Economics and Policy. She is working as a research assistant in the area of socio-ecological transformation at the Vienna University of Economics and Business at the Institute for Multilevel Governance and Development and is responsible for office management, administration, member communication, public relations, board support and research.

Roland Atzmüller

Board Member

Roland Atzmüller is Associate Professor at the Institute of Sociology at the  Department of social theory and social analyses at Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria. Before, he was a researcher at the Working Lives Center Vienna (FORBA). He has co-edited ‘Capitalism in transformation: Movements and Countermovements in the 21st Century, Edward Elgar Publishing, Northampton, 2019’ together with Brigitte Aulenbacher. In this book he published with Fabienne Décieux “Freedom’s utter frustration . . .: Neoliberal social-policy reforms and the shift to the far-right through Polanyi’s theory of fascism”. Roland Atzmüller works on (critical) theories of capitalist societies, welfare states and social policies with an emphasis on labour market policies.

Colleen Schneider

Board Member

Colleen Schneider is a PhD student and research assistant in the Institute for Ecological Economics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. She has a BA in Physics from UC Berkeley and MSc in Socio-Ecological Economics and Policy from WU.  Her research focuses on the political economy of monetary and fiscal policy in a social-ecological transformation. Her current work focuses on the distributional consequences of the European Central Bank’s policy responses to the COVID pandemic. She teaches courses in social ecological economics, and the intersection of money, society and environment. Colleen co-authored a chapter focusing on money and finance in the book ‘Strategies for Degrowth’, and has also worked and published in the field of environmental justice.