Segovia: Faculty and Staff

David Bach The point where business and politics meet is the main focus of David Bach’s teaching and research activities. With considerable professional experience consulting for companies such as McKinsey, Prof Bach watches with interest the way that globalization and new technologies transform the business environment. The opening up of domestic industries and foreign markets has given companies tremendous new opportunities. However, new public scrutiny facilitated by the Internet and 24-hour news media combined with the need to simultaneously manage different social and political environments is posing fresh challenges. His ability to join the dots between these interacting forces is also what comes through in his teaching, as well as in his work in leading academic journals, which have published his studies on industry self-regulation, the politics of Internet telephony, the transformation of the music industry, and China’s growing influence in the field of information technology.

Cornel Ban is a postdoctoral scholar in international studies and deputy director of Brown's Development Studies Program. His area of interest is international political economy, with a focus on the transnational spread of economic ideas and varieties of capitalist development. At the Watson Institute, Cornel collaborates on projects related to international development, with a focus on the BRICs and the Bretton Woods institutions. He has a PhD in international relations and comparative politics from the University of Maryland. His Ph.D. dissertation addresses the diffusion of new economic ideas in peripheral European countries. Cornel holds a JD from Babes-Bolyai University Law School, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and a BA from Babes-Bolyai University.

Odile Cayrols holds a Master’s Degree in Spanish Philology and a pre-doctorate of the Spanish Language and Spanish American Civilization from La Sorbonne Paris. She has extensively taught Spanish and French in several in several institutions, including Estudio Sotomayor, IE Universidad Segovia, Universidad Catolica de Quito and public high schools in Paris.

Angeles Figueroa-Alcorta has been working in the field of higher education for the past six years.  She joined IE as Deputy Director of International Relations at IE School of Arts and Humanities in September 2010, and is currently Executive Director of the Bachelor in International Relations at IE University. Angeles teaches the university-wide Contemporary Issues in International Relations seminar, which introduces students to some of the broad themes in the study of international relations. She holds a Master’s degree in International Relations from IE and a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations and Political Science from Florida International University in Miami (US), where she lived for seven years. After obtaining her bachelor’s degree, Angeles began her career at Florida International University, first as a Teaching Assistant in the Department of International Relations, and then as Coordinator of international programs at the Office of Education Abroad.

Konstantinos Kornetis received an M.A. with Distinction in the History of Southeastern Europe from University College London in 2000, after having studied History and Political Science at the Ludwig Maximilian's University in Munich, and War Studies and Modern Greek at King's College London. He spent research periods in France [Sorbonne/EHESS] and Spain ["Salvador de Madariaga" scholarship] and he was Visiting Global Scholar in History and Film Studies at N.Y.U. in 2001. He received his Ph.D. in History and Civilization from the European University Institute, Florence, in 2006. He is currently Visiting Assistant Professor in History at Brown University.

Miguel Larranaga is the vice-rector of Institutional Relations at IE University. He has a PhD in Medieval History from the Universidad de Duesto, Spain. His research interests include cultural and social history of the Middle Ages, the history from the 5th to 15th centuries and landscape archaeology.

José Lejarraga received his Ph.D. in Business Economics and Quantitative Methods from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (ES). His research interests lie in the intersection between behavioral decision making, experiential learning and entrepreneurship, and for his research he conducts laboratory experiments as well as quantitative analysis of firm-level data. After his Ph.D. he joined Universidad Pompeu Fabra as a post-doctoral fellow to continue his research, and in 2011 he joined IE University as a professor of Entrepreneurship. Some of his work has been published in the Proceedings of the Academy of Management and the European Management Review. He has also presented his research in several international conferences such as the Academy of Management Annual Meeting, the Strategic Management Society’s Meeting, EGOS conference, or the Subjective Probability, Utility and Decision Making Meeting.

Elena Lledó Macau earned her PhD in Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London with a focus on post-war abstraction in France. She has worked in galleries and museums in Europe and organized a number of art festivals and cultural events in Europe and the US. She has lectured at RISD and published contemporary art criticism for over 15 years.

Gustavo Nombela holds a PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics and a Master’s Degree in Economics from the Centro de Estudions Monetarios Y Financieros (CEMF). He has broad research and teaching experience as a tenured professor at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and visiting professor at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He is also the Director of the economic area for Fundación Ideas

Cristina Otero holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Spanish Philology and post-graduate Certificate from Universidad Completense de Madrid. She has taught Spanish for several years at the Oxford Intensive School of English.

Maria E. Suarez earned her MSW from the University of Connecticut and her BA from Syracuse University. A psychotherapist by training, Dean Suarez has over 20 years of experience in college mental health clinics at UConn, NYU, and Brown. In 2008 she was appointed Associate Dean of Student Life at Brown University. Dean Suarez oversees the Student Support Services division that provides 24 hour crisis services for graduate, medical and undergraduate students who may be dealing with a personal or family emergency. She has traveled extensively and has done graduate and post graduate research in Ireland and Cuba.