Faculty & Staff

Alexandre Dormeier Freire earned a PhD in development studies at the University of Geneva and became since 2002 a senior lecturer and Asian coordinator of the IMAS (International Executive Master in Development Studies), held in Hanoi and Geneva. As a sociologist, he is mainly working on education and governance issues in Indonesia and Vietnam with a special focus on social inequalities, social transformations, privatization and liberalization impacts. Dr. Dormeier Freire has published both in French and English several articles and books on Vietnam and Indonesia. He has made several mandates for the Swiss Development Cooperation Agency in Asia on skills development related issues. He has also participated in international researches on education and social inequalities in Southeast Asia. He is currently working on the WTO social impacts and quality issues in Vietnam. His 
fields of expertise: Methods in social sciences; Governance, decentralization, state-society relations, (Indonesia, Vietnam); Knowledge society, internationalization of higher education, skills development and social inequalities (Vietnam, Indonesia). He teaches mainly on Methods, Research Design, Governance, WTO Impacts on Education. Dr. Dormeier Freire has an extensive knowledge of current developmental issues in Southeast Asia and has worked with various regional institutions and universities.

Christine Lutringer, researcher and lecturer at the EPFL Centre for Area and Cultural Studies (CACS), is Associate Director of the Executive Master in Asian Affairs. Trained as a political scientist, she studied in Strasbourg  (Institut d’Etudes Politiques), in Rome (University “La Sapienza” and LUISS), and in Geneva at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. She received her PhD in International History and Politics from the Graduate Institute in 2009. Her PhD thesis explores the influences of global regimes on the governance of agriculture in India as well as the responses provided by social movements. Her work relies on extensive field research in India and was awarded the AAID Alumni Association Prize 2010.
Her research interests include social movements in India and in the Global South, Indian agricultural and economic policies, Asian capitalism, and international migrations in Asia. Dr. Lutringer is also the co-convenor of the Europe-Asia Working Group that has been established at the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI).
At EPFL, Dr. Lutringer teaches in the Minor in Area and Cultural Studies, a programme offered by CACS to EPFL Master students, and in the EPFL Human and Social Sciences Programme. Moreover, she is in charge of the summer school organized in Bangalore as part of the Minor. Before joining EPFL, she was a research fellow at the Centre for Asian Studies at the Graduate Institute and a lecturer at the Master in Asian Studies.