Welcome to the Webpage of Stefanie Beninger’s Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship
This research project, commencing November 2019, focuses on understanding the role of resources in building resilience in marketing systems of refugee-run businesses in Europe. Dr. Stefanie Beninger is an Assistant Professor of Marketing, IE Business School at IE University.
The Project
The project seeks to understand the resilience of marketing systems comprised of refugee-run businesses. Resilience is the ability of a system to recover in the face of disturbances and is part of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals related to communities.
The research output aims to contribute to the refugees themselves, their host countries, and the public and private sector, and thus to the future of Europe and the wider global community.
The project includes fieldwork to collect observational and interview-based data in Europe towards the creation of theoretical models to further academic understanding of resilience and marketing systems, while aiming to create actionable models that can be used to strengthen economic activities of refugee-run businesses and their related systems.
Project Activities
Panel organizer and host: Considering Challenges for Forcibly Displaced People in Hosting Marketplaces, ISMD Conference, December 2021.
I organized and hosted a panel of 6 experts discussing aspects around marketplaces and those who are forcibly displaced.
More details here
Fellowship: 4TU.Resilience Engineering Fellowship
I was selected to be a fellow for 4TU.Resilience Engineering. This program, which is hosted by the four universities in the Netherlands, has a goal to “establish and foster an international network of top-level academic scholars, engineers, practitioners and decision-makers”. As part of this fellowship, working with researchers Tamara Oukes from the University of Twente, Milou Derks from TU Eindhoven, and Petra C. de Weerd-Nederhof from the University of Twente, we will develop a working paper at the nexus of resilience and scaling in situations of financial constraint.
More details here
Keynote Speech: Risk & Resilience Festival, University of Twente, the Netherlands, November 2020.
I was an invited Keynote Speaker at this conference, which had hundreds of participants learning about resilience. My talk was on “Organizational + Community Resilience”.
More information here
Panel organizer and host: Resilience: Macromarketing Perspectives in the Current Situation, Macromarketing Conference, July 2020.
I organized and hosted a panel of 5 experts discussing resilience in relation to Covid-19 and the anti-Black racism movement. This panel, bridging society, research, markets, and education was well received.
Watch the panel here
Keynote Speech: Risk & Resilience Festival, University of Twente, the Netherlands, November 8, 2019.
I was an invited Keynote Speaker at this conference, which brought together over 500 people, including students, general public, policy experts, business and nongovernmental practitioners, and academics. My keynote was titled: Towards a resilient future: Balancing stability and change. During the keynote, I discussed the challenges with of building robust systems to the benefit of actors, networks, and resources and ways to move forward.
More information here
Session Speaker: Risk & Resilience Festival, University of Twente, the Netherlands, November 8, 2019
During this day long conference, I also hosted a 45 minute session called Resilience & System Thinking: Challenges & Opportunities. During this session, I encouraged participants to go beyond a linear and siloed perspective towards viewing the world as comprised of interconnected and holistic systems.
More information here
Host & Presenter: Workshop on Resilience and Sustainability in Marketing Systems, IE University, November 11, 2019
In November 2019, I organised a workshop that welcome marketing scholars from around Europe and further abroad to discuss resilience and sustainability. During this workshop, we will share ideas and discussed ongoing research work. We will learn, for example, about urban refugees in marketing systems and discuss issues and challenges with resilience.
Track chair: Enacting resilience towards sustainable outcomes, ISMD Conference, December 2021
I chaired a track at the ISMD conference, which focused on furthering our understanding of resilience in marketing systems.
More information on the conference can be found here.
Conference presentation: Resilience & Sustainability: Compatible or Not?, ISMD Conference, December 2021
I presented my theoretical paper that investigates the linkages between resilience and sustainability.
More information on the conference can be found here.
Conference presentation: Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics Annual Conference, Virtual, July 2021
I presented the emerging findings of the project, focusing on how migrant run shop owner’s use boundaries to support their resilience.
More information here
Track co-chair & Presenter: Forcibly Displaced Communities & Marketing Systems, 46th Annual Macromarketing Virtual Conference, July 2021
I co-chaired a track at the upcoming Macromarketing conference together with Beatriz de Quero Navarro (Universidad Loyola Andalucia, Spain). We invited scholars from across the globe to submit their academic work that furthers our understanding of forcibly displaced communities and refugees.
I presented the following working paper: The Marketing Systems of Refugee Settlements
More information on the conference can be found here.
Track co-chair: Forcibly Displaced Communities & Marketing Systems, 45th Annual Macromarketing Conference, Universidad de Los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia, July 2020
*Note: this conference was largely cancelled due to Covid, although proceedings were published. The track was carried through to 2021.
I am co-chairing a track at the upcoming Macromarketing conference (postponed due to the crisis), together with Beatriz de Quero Navarro (Universidad Loyola Andalucia, Spain) and Marcos Ferreira Santos (Universidad La Sabana, Colombia).
More information on the conference can be found here.
Participant: ECPR’s Qualitative Interviewing Course
In February 2020, I participated in the week long course, hosted by Dr. Lea Sgier, aimed at furthering interviewing skills, including among vulnerable populations. Together with 15 researchers from around Europe, we discussed best practices and honed our interviewing and qualitative research skills.
More information on this course can be found here.
Participant: Refugees in the 21st Century Coursera Course by University of London
In Spring 2020, I participated in this six week course that cultivates a deeper understanding of contemporary issues regarding refugees and the global movement of people, including understanding the technical and legal definitions and policies surrounding forcibly displaced peoples.
More information on this course can be found here.
Working Paper: Beninger, S. and B. Bullinger, Boundaries, communities, resilience: Practices of migrant shop owners
This working paper is based on the ongoing fieldwork focused on shop owners with a migrant background in an urban neighbourhood in a European city.
Working Paper: Beninger, S., Resilience & Sustainability: Compatible or Not?
This working paper delves into the interconnections between two oft-used constructs, that of resilience and of sustainability.
Working Paper: Markets, Businesses, and Consumption in Refugees Settlements: A Review and Future Research Trajectory
An early version of this paper, assessing the current theoretical knowledge academic marketing scholars have related to marketing systems comprised of refugee-run businesses, was presented at the Macromarketing Conference in 2021. The paper is under review at Markets, Globalization & Development Review (read about this journal, here).
Published article: Beninger, S. and J.N.P. Francis (forthcoming), Resources for Business Resilience in a Covid-19 World: A Community-Centric Approach. Business Horizons. Click here to view
This paper outlines resources, operationalized as capitals, at the nexus of organizations and communities that can support resilience. Please see the infographic of the paper below:
Chapter: Beninger, S. and L. Rakib Ortega (2021), “Key Aspects Supporting Resilient Economic Systems,” The Palgrave Handbook of Climate Resilient Societies, R.C. Brears, ed. Springer.
This chapter, based on extant literature, covers key aspects of resilient economic systems, including organizational, supply chain, and community resilience. Click here to read this article.
Article: Beninger, S. and J.N.P. Francis (2021), Collective Market Shaping by Competitors and its Contribution to Market Resilience. Journal of Business Research, 122(January), 293-303. Click here to view
This peer-reviewed journal article focuses on practices involved in resilience work, based on data from my PhD dissertation.
Article: Aligning Resources for Resilience, IE Insights
This short article argues that resilience requires resources that are redundant, flexible, and diverse. Click here to read this article
Article: Another Kind of Resilience, with IE’s Building Resilience portal
This short article describes resilience and argues for an approach that uses one that focuses on adaption. Click here to read this article
About Dr. Stefanie Beninger
Dr. Stefanie Beninger is a Canadian-Dutch researcher. She is a full-time tenure track Assistant Professor of marketing at IE Business School at IE University in Madrid, Spain. She holds a PhD and BBA from the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University in Canada and an MBA from Nyenrode Business University in the Netherlands.
Dr. Beninger is an Associate Editor for Business Horizons, the VP of Media for the Macromarketing Society, and a board member of the International Society of Markets and Development, and on the Manuscript Review Boards for the Journal of Macromarketing, Journal of Marketing Education, and Subsistence Marketplaces journal. She has published in academic journals and presented at a variety of international conferences.
Dr. Beninger has taught marketing at various institutions, including at IE Business School (Spain), and as a lecturer at Simon Fraser University (Canada), a co-lecturer at Nyenrode Business University (the Netherlands), and a guest lecturer at University of Mandalay (Myanmar) at both the undergraduate and graduate level.
During her doctoral work, Dr. Beninger won the Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship, a $105,000(Cdn) doctoral scholarship from Canada’s Social Science and Humanities Research Council. Before her academic career, she worked in marketing and management in both Canada and the Netherlands.
You can learn more about Dr. Beninger here
About the Marie Curie Fellowship
The Marie Sklodowska Curie Fellowships is one of the most prestigious and competitive Sub-Programs of the EU H2020 Program. This two-year fellow is awarded to the most promising researchers to help them develop their research career in Europe.
More information can be found here.