Ioanna Sapfo Pepelasis

Ioanna Sapfo Pepelasis (Born in the USA), a graduate of Harvard and the London School of Economics, is Professor Emerita in the Department of Economics at the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB). She has a long standing εχπερτισε in the areas of the history of : economic development, institutions and entrepreneurship. At AUEB she now teaches in the ERASMUS PROGRAM the course ‘Startup Entrepreneurship. She has co-edited Diaspora Entrepreneurial Networks: Four Centuries of History, (Berg, 2005), Entrepreneurship in Theory and History (Palgrave, Macmillan 2005) and Country Studies in Entrepreneurship – A Historical Perspective (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). She has published articles –on diverse aspects of economic history and the history of enterprise/entrepreneurship of the Diaspora and Greece (18^th-21^st centuries)- in several international edited volumes and prestigious international refereed journals, among them: Business History, Business History Review, Financial History Review, Journal of European Economic History, Journal of Applied Economics, Managerial and Decision Economics. She received in 2003 a prize from the Ottoman Bank Archive for an article on Greek Diaspora Bankers.

She is a member of the Editorial Board of Business History and has been a referee for the aforementioned and other journals, as well as for Routledge and Oxford Bibliographies. She participated in the firOC (Massive Open Online Course) in Greece: ‘Entrepreneurship Beyond Silicon Valley: The Greek story’.

She heads the following two research projects at the department of economics: ‘Mapping of the startup ecosystem in Athens during the recent economic crisis years’ (which is also included among the activities of   the Economic Policy Lab) and ‘Entrepreneurial History and History of Institutions’. She has also acted as Scientific Coordinator for the Project of diaNEOsis on the Charting of the Greek Startup ecosystem (January 2022).

She has also served as a member of: the Councils of The European Business History Association and the European Association of Evolutionary Political Economy. In addition, she has also served on the Board of Directors of the Greek Center for Planning and Economic Research and the National School of Dance.

She has also been active in the entrepreneurship ecosystem in two capacities: As co-founder of TAKEOFFGREECE ,  an initiative for the support of 40+/60+ start-uppers in Greece that undertook mentoring and workshops (2015-2018)  and currently as a member of the Senior Advisory Board of Fashion Revolution Greece, an organization committed to promoting ethical entrepreneurship.

Currently, she is Research Area Coordinator στο European Association of Evolutionary Political Economy and also a Senior Research Fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European & Foreign Policy, where she specializes in ‘Entrepreneurial Internationalization and Diaspora’.