CIIM Business School
Faculty - Department of Economics and Finance
Rector - University of Limassol
Department of Economics and Finance
Prof. Theodore Panayotou, the 1st Rector of the UoL, is a Professor of Economics, Ethics and Sustainability. He is a former Faculty member at the J.F.K. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (1986-2009) and a 2007 NOBEL Peace Prize Contributor. He served as Director of the Cyprus International Institute of Management (CIIM) and Professor of Economics, Ethics and Sustainability at CIIM (2000-2023). He has also served as a Visiting Professor at Tel Aviv University (2010-15) and as a Member of the Cyprus President’s Council of the National Economy (2013-18). He has published over 100 journal articles, monographs and books on economic development & environment, climate change, sustainability and competitiveness. He is considered an authority on economic instruments, innovative financing mechanisms, transferable development rights and sustainable and experiential tourism.
Dean of the CIIM Business School
Department of Management, Department of Economics and Finance
Prof. Doron Sonsino is the Dean of the CIIM Business School and an accomplished academic in economics and finance, with a diverse educational background and a strong commitment to quality education and frontier research. He earned his PhD in Business Economics from Stanford University, California. Most recently, he served as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Economics at Ben-Gurion University, Israel (2018–2021). Professor Sonsino is well known for his top-tier publications in economics and finance, particularly in the fields of behavioural and experimental finance. His current research on the financial decisions of private investors and professionals offers valuable insights into their preferences and behaviour regarding advanced financial investment instruments.
Chair of the Department of Economics and Finance and Director of the MSc in Digital Finance and MSc in Financial Services
Department of Economics and Finance
Dr Andrey Afanasiev is the Chair of the Department of Economics and Finance and Director of the MSc in Digital Finance and MSc in Financial Services. He is an Associate Professor of Finance and Risk Management at the University of Limassol. He received his PhD in Mathematics from the Steklov Institute of Mathematics and a PhD in Finance from the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Dr Afanasiev has more than 25 years of experience in international banking and risk management, covering Europe, emerging markets, and the Gulf region. His research and teaching interests include investments, financial and derivatives markets, stochastic finance, risk modelling methods, artificial intelligence, and machine learning with applications in financial services.
Co-director MSc Digital Finance
Department of Economics and Finance
Dr Ekaterina Koroleva is an Associate Professor of FinTech at UoL. She received her PhD in Business Administration and Management (Topic: FinTech Business Models and Their Linkages with Customers and Founders) in 2022 from Tallinn University of Technology (Estonia). In 2016, she obtained a PhD in Regional Economics from the Institute of Regional Economic Problems (Russia). Ekaterina has more than 10 years of teaching experience. Her research and teaching interests are in the fields of financial technologies, digitalisation of the financial sector, and big data analytics with applications in finance.
Vice Chair of the Department of Economics and Finance, Director of the BSc in Economics, and Co-Director of the MSc in Real Estate
Department of Economics and Finance
Dr Snezana Eminidou is the Vice Chair of the Department of Economics and Finance, Director of the BSc in Economics, and Co-Director of the MSc in Real Estate. She is also an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Limassol (UoL). Dr Eminidou holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Cyprus. Her research interests focus on macroeconomics and monetary economics. She has professional experience in the International Business Unit of the National Bank of Greece and in the Department of Economic Analysis and Research at the Central Bank of Cyprus.
Dr Efthymios Lykopoulos is a Lecturer in Economics and Quantitative Methods at the University of Limassol. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Cyprus. His work examines how incentives, information, and market structure shape individual and firm behavior. He teaches microeconomics, statistics, quantitative methods, and game theory across undergraduate and MBA programs.