Graduate students of Arjo Klamer

Klamer's Graduate Students, Past and Present

"Conversations will only be sustained if they frequently receive new impulses. To that end we need to train people to join the conversation and take over ... Think of graduate teaching as a community service and new recruits as our link to the future — a good reason for treating young scholars well."

— Arjo Klamer from Speaking of Economics

Till Düppe

Till Düppe obtained his PhD in 2009 from the Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics (EIPE) under the supervision of Arjo Klamer and Jos de Mul with a project called "The Phenomenology of Economics". He is currently a Teaching and Research fellow at the Department for the History of Economics at the University of Hamburg, and an Instructor at University of Denver at Beijing. His main research interest is the historical epistemology of economics, inspired by phenomenological philosophy. He is presently working on a book project co-authored with Prof. Roy Weintraub, Arjo's supervisor from Duke University. Click here for a full CV.

Kotipalli Priyatej

Kotipalli Priyatej hails from Mumbai, India. His work focuses on formulation of policy and the role culture and heritage will have while planning for economic development. Prior to being accepted as a PhD candidate with Prof. Arjo Klamer he was working as Sr. Lecturer in the area of Strategic Management and Research Methods at ITM Group of Institutions.

He holds a Masters in Business Administration from the National Institute of Tourism and Hospitality and a bachelors degree in Heritage Management from K.C College, University of Mumbai.

Bertan Selim Pocesta

Bertan Selim most recently worked as Deputy Regional Manager at the Swiss Cultural Programme. His work has focused on running 12 flagship international cooperation projects in the Western Balkans, programme-level strategy development and creating institutional tools to optimise and communicate the impact and relevance of Swiss financial support. Before that he has worked in Amsterdam at the European Cultural Foundation as Policy Officer focusing extensively on cultural policy development in the EU (*focusing on the Netherlands, the Balkans, Mediterranean countries, and South Caucasus), content-development for lobbying activities on EU integration as well as strategy-based organizational transformations. Bertan is currently pursuing his PhD under the supervision of Dr. Arjo Klamer, focusing on: Cultural problems of social diversity within a European context; and its impact on evolution and development of Corporate Social Responsibility within corporations in Europe. He holds a MA degree in European History and Culture from the UvA in Amsterdam.

Note: Biographic information is copied from mediamatic.net.

Diane Ragsdale

Since 1988, [Diane Ragsdale has] worked in the arts in the US in various roles (funder, practitioner, administrator, executive, teacher, and consultant), across a variety of artistic disciplines (theater, dance, film, and music), and in organizations and markets of varying sizes and types. In 2010 I jumped ponds again (quite literally this time) and am now living in Europe and pursuing a PhD in cultural economics.

I'm interested in the relationship between economic strategy and mission. As my advisor at Erasmus University, Arjo Klamer, would say, "financing is never neutral." Jumper seeks to delve into the values, ideologies, politics, and principles that underpin current practices and purposes in the arts and to bring forward for consideration alternative (at times, perhaps, irrational) perspectives &emdash; from history we've forgotten or never learned, from other fields and industries, and from having been an outsider-looking-in for much of my career.

Note: Biographic information is copied from Diane's blog, Jumper.

J. Aldo Do Carmo, Jr.

After completing his Master's thesis on "Collaboration among Museums" with Arjo Klamer, J. Aldo Do Carmo is continuing with PhD research on "Evaluation of Cultural Initiatives" where he will discuss a logical model of cultural-value creation. He intends to propose a systematic method to evaluate the effectiveness of cultural and artistic production, comparing purposes to achievements, investigating the outputs (short-term results) and outcomes (long-term changes or impacts) in the cultural and social milieus.

He holds a Master's degree in Cultural Management from University of Bologna (Italy), and is trained in Strategic Planning, Marketing and Business Management. Do Carmo also holds a degree in geology from Universidade de Säo Paulo (Brazil), and has 15 years of corporate working experience.

Lili Jiang

Lili Jiang is currently working with Arjo Klamer as supervisor for her PhD on art economics at the Faculty of History and Arts at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her research focuses on exploring the relationship between the cultural and market values of art, and comparing the Chinese and Dutch art markets from an artistic perspective.

She holds a Master Degree of Art in Art History from Chongqing University (China) and an undergraduate degree in Visual Painting from Xi'an Jiaotong University (China). She has experience in both the practical and theoretical fields.

Irene van Staveren

Irene van Staveren is an early graduate student of Klamer's career with respect to supervising and promoting students. She completed her PhD in 1999 with the thesis, "Caring for Economics - An Aristotelian Perspective." She is currently Professor of the Special Chair of Economics and Christian Ethics at Radboud University Nijmegen. Other areas of expertise include feminist economics, development economics, labour market economics and regional economics.

Among works Van Stavaren and Klamer have co-authored are 'Geven is geen ruilen. De gift en de economische wetenschap' in Aafke Komter (ed.) Het Geschenk (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1997, pp. 108-120) and 'Zorg als Economisch Concept' in Jaarboek Emancipatie (Den Haag, Ministerie van Sociale Zaken en Werkgelegenheid, 1999, pp. 20-25).

Prof. van Staveren earned a Master's degree in economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam in 1988. A CV (current as of 2009) is available here: < Irene van Staveren, Curriculum Vitae >

Claudine de With

Trained as an art historian, Claudine de With is currently writing with Klamer as her advisor a PhD thesis at the Faculty of History and Arts at Erasmus University. Her thesis focuses on the tension between art and money from the perspective of the visual artist. Her research studies in particular treatises on the theory of art and monographs written by artists and art critics as sources for reconstructing the ideas of artists and money. Her interests are the interconnections between painting and the 'sister arts': literature, film, rhetoric and fashion, as well as the history of ideas.

Ms. de With holds a degree in Art History from the University of Leiden.

Paul Teule

Paul Teule is currently working on a dissertation on the (alternative) measures of societal progress, focusing on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and other conventional statistics. Generally recognized as a poor measure of well-being, or even economic activity, GDP (growth) is still associated with progress and national prestige. Currently, the European Commission, as well as the French government are trying to change this. Simultaneously, many competitors (e.g. footprints, green GDP, Happy Planet Index), in a quest for public recognition, seek to supplement or even replace GDP. Paul Teule will try and make sense of it all.

He holds degrees in Economics (BSc) and Philosophy (MA / drs., cum laude) from the University of Amsterdam. He is also a freelance researcher and has regularly contributed articles to a number of Dutch and Belgian media.

Simon Goudsmit

After earning an MBA from Harvard (1950) most of Simon Goudsmit's career was in management. But as a child he had devoured history and noticed that most books on currency were about coins and banknotes rather than the long learning process beginning with the Sumerians that powered the use of money. His Limits of Money (2004), completed under the supervision of Prof. Klamer, thus starts with history and the hard knocks that accompanied the evolution of money from coins to a virtual medium.

Of the many aspects of Klamer's coaching two impressed him most: his dialectic skill and his interpretation of the "oikos" as basic link to economic thinking. Goudsmit has been working on a book which takes this second ingredient, which he calls "bedrock" (of societies) to restore individual identity to matters that are shared, like education and health care. As with many social revolutions, he says, "it takes time before the implications are accepted."

Anna Mignosa

Anna Mignosa completed her PhD in 2005 with the publication of To Preserve or not to Preserve? Economic dilemmas in the cases of Sicilian and Scottish cultural heritage. After earning her undergraduate degree in Economics from the University of Catania, she collaborated in a research project, "The Administration of Cultural Heritage in Sicily." She moved to the Netherlands in 1999 to write her graduate thesis under the supervision of Prof. Klamer, chair of Economics of Art and Culture at Erasmus University, Rotterdam.

Dr. Mignosa is currently a Cultural Economist at the University of Catania as well as an occasional instructor at Academia Vitae, a new university founded by Klamer in Deventer, the Netherlands.

Olav Velthuis
photo: susan b. macdonald

Economic sociologist Olav Velthuis's research interests include sociology of the arts, cultural sociology, art theory, and the economics of art and culture. With Arjo Klamer as his advisor, he received his PhD from Erasmus University Rotterdam in June 2002. In his dissertation, Talking Prices: Contemporary Art, Commercial Galleries, and the Construction of Value, he studied the market for contemporary art in New York and Amsterdam.

Klamer and Velthuis have co-authored several works, including "Wijzigingen in het Nederlandse kansspelbeleid" and "Cultureel ondernemerschap - wat is dat eigenlijk?"

Velthuis is the recipient of a TALENT fellowship, a post-doctoral award sponsored by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. He is currently a visiting scholar at the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University, New York. He holds degrees in Art History and Economics from the University of Amsterdam and studied Sociology at Princeton University.

Wilfred Dolfsma

Wilfred Dolfsma received his PhD at Erasmus University Rotterdam. From 1994 to 1998, Dolfsma worked with Arjo Klamer as a research assistant in the department of Economics of Art and Culture at Erasmus. Klamer has since cited Dolfsma from, among other works, "The Social Construction of Value" (European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 1997, v.3: pp 400-16) and Valuing Pop Music: Institutions, VALUES and Economics (1999 Delft: Eburon).

Dolfsma won the 2001 Helen Potter Award, presented each year to a promising scholar of social economics and author of the best article in the Review of Social Economy for "Metaphors of Knowledge in Economics." He is presently assistant professor at the Rotterdam School of Management and associate professor at the International Institute of Infonomics, a division of University of Maastricht).

Lusy Petrova

With Klamer as her advisor, Lyudmila Petrova was awarded an MA in Cultural Economics and Cultural Entrepreneurship at the Faculty of History and Arts at Erasmus University in 2005. Her thesis, How Creativity Copes with Money, explored the consequences of interactions between visual artists, financial support, and creativity motivation. Her research interests include the economics of art and culture, and different ways to motivate creativity in and support artists.

She holds a degree in Economics from the University of Economics (Varna, Bulgaria) and a degree in Cultural History of the Arts from the New Bulgarian University (Sofia, Bulgaria). Drs. Petrova is currently pursuing a PhD. and is an instructor at Academia Vitae, a new university founded by Klamer in Deventer, the Netherlands.

Erwin Dekker

Erwin Dekker is currently working on his Ph.D. project about the liberal economists working in Vienna between 1860 and 1945 under the supervision of professor Arjo Klamer. He graduated in 2006 at the London School of economics from the 'Philosophy of Economics and the Social Sciences' program. He is currently teaching various cultural economic courses at the Erasmus University. He is also teaching courses on economics and capitalism at the European Studies department of the University of Amsterdam.

He holds a bachelor degree in economics and political science, both obtained at the University of Amsterdam. Occasionally he is also involved in giving policy advice to the cultural sector. His research interests include cultural economics, the history of economics and the social processes of science.