Speaker Bio

Sylvie Matelly, Economist and Director of the Institut Jacques Delors. She holds a master’s degree in international economics with a specialization in financial and commodity markets. She earned her Ph.D. in 2000 from Université Pierre Mendès France in Grenoble, with a PhD on The Economic Determinants of Military Spending. She also pursued academic studies in Barcelona and Montpellier.

In 2001, she joined the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs (IRIS) as a researcher in defense economics, becoming Director of Research in 2008. In 2009, she joined the Ecole de Management Léonard de Vinci (EMLV) as a faculty member, later heading the Department of Economics, Finance, and International Relations. She left EMLV in 2016 to become Deputy Director of IRIS, and in 2023, she was appointed Director of the Institut Jacques Delors.

In 2003, she launched the master’s program in Economics and International Relations at IRIS Sup’, which is now titled Geoeconomics and Risk Management.

Between 2001 and 2002, she worked with the Groupe Transition et Développement in Grenoble and the Institute for the Economy in Transition (Moscow) on a European TACIS project to establish a development agency in Kaliningrad. From 2009 to 2016, she served as Associate Professor at EMLV in La Défense, where she led the Department of Finance, Economics, Law, and International Relations from 2014 to 2016.

Her research sits at the crossroads of economics and geopolitics, focusing on issues such as industrial and defense policy, economic coercion (including export controls, investment screening, sanctions, and anti-corruption policies), and the financing of defense companies in the context of ESG and sustainable finance. She also explores the emerging concept of corporate geopolitical responsibility.

She has published extensively and is the author of several books, including L’Europe peut-elle faire face à la mondialisation? (2015, Documentation Française), Argent sale: à qui profite le crime? (2018), Géopolitique de l’économie (2021), and L’économie, tout simplement (2023, Eyrolles).