EDHEC PhD in Finance: a graduation ceremony for thirty candidates who successfully defended their thesis

On 14 January 2023 at the Negresco in Nice, the EDHEC PhD in Finance graduation ceremony was held to celebrate the achievements of thirty candidates who successfully defended their thesis from September 2019 to January 2023.

The event welcomed family members and friends of the fresh graduates from all around the world and featured speeches from Dr Michelle Sisto, Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, EDHEC Business School, Dr Emmanuel Jurczencko, Director of the Finance Graduate Programmes , and Dr Enrique Schroth, Academic Director of the PhD in Finance Programme.  

“The thesis is the greatest hurdle to earn a PhD”, said Professor Schroth, “it must be a piece of original work, it must be useful, and it must make a contribution to the science or to the practice. At EDHEC, we make sure that the quality of the thesis is the highest as it can be. We guide the students and their endeavor. We engage our colleagues abroad to also make judgement as we do. The end result is a very high quality piece of work, publishable in a leading journal, that makes an impact in their career or in their practice of finance !”  

The research work of these new PhD graduates is very diverse and brings new insights or creative solutions for the financial industry. Six of the graduates have already published their research in practitioner-oriented journals such as the Financial Analysts Journal, The Journal of Portfolio Management, The Journal of Financial Research, and The Journal of Behavioral Finance. 

The list of their dissertation, title, abstracts, advisors and dissertation committee is available here.

Staff, management and faculty extend their warmest congratulations to Maggie Ka Ying Cheung, Emanuele Chini, John Collins, Xavier Fixaris, Chayaluck Garun Chompucot, Stephen Gorman, Vladislas Gounas, Jason Ha, Mads Deth Hesselholt, Ian Hunt, Young Dae Kang, Nobuaki Kato, Walid Khalfallah, Thibault Lair, Cheryl Lim, Navneesh Malhan, Sanjay Misra, Lina Nassar, Robert Normand, Ciaran O’Neill, Bijon Pani, Juan Carlos Quintero Valdivieso, Mark Refermat, Bacem Rezgui, Satyajit Saste, Nicolai Semtchouk, Ichiro Tange, Eric Tham, Annalisa Tonetto, and Lou-Salomé Vallée. 

These 30 new graduates live in 15 different countries, and 17 nationalities are represented from all continents. Except two who were participants of the residential track, the others were in the executive track while keeping a full-time job.

Since inception in 2008, the main objective of the doctoral programme has been to train well-established senior professionals in cutting-edge research methods within different fields of Finance. EDHEC Business School thus expects to make an educated, real and useful impact on practices within the financial industry, confirming the EDHEC brand signature “Make an Impact”.  79 candidates have graduated so far (first defences in 2012) and they accumulate 74 working papers published in practitioners’ peer-reviewed journals and in academic journals including The Journal of Financial Economics (2), The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis (2), and The Review of Financial Studies.