Athanasios (Thanos) A. Pallis
Short Bio note
Τhanos Pallis is Professor in Port Economics & Policy, Department of Shipping, Trade & Transport, University of the Aegean, Greece, a founding member & co-director of PortEconomics & director the Jean Monnet program “European Port Policy”(since 2003). The academic year 2019-2020 is Visiting Professor at School of Management, Universidad de Los Andes Colombia. He was a Fulbright Scholar (2008-11) at Columbia University, New York, US (Centre for Energy, Marine Transportation & Public Policy) and Adjunct Professor at the Centre for International Trade and Transportation, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada (2008-2017). Previous visiting professorships include Athens University of Economics Greece; University of Antwerp, Belgium; and University of Old Dominion, Virginia US. He has worked in shaping the institutional and regulatory framework of the maritime and logistics sector in four different continents, Thanos served as General Secretary for Ports & Port Policy, at the Ministry of Development, Competitiveness and Shipping, Hellenic Republic (2011-12). A member of IAME since 2000, he has served the Association as elected Council member for three terms (2008-2014), as Secretary (2014-2018) and as President (2018-2020). He won twice the “Maritime Economics & Logistics Best Paper Award” at the IAME 2008 & IAME 2017 Annual Conferences and is active at the Port Performance Research Network (PPRN).
Statement
Being an active IAME member for almost two decades, I would be honoured and privileged to serve the International Association of Maritime Economists as its President.
Since 2000 I have seen our Association growing in strength and expanding to an Association of academics from many different places around the globe. While in recent years this membership remains stable in terms of numbers, the quality of IAME work has made all of us proud. Conference participation and relevance have increased as much as the quality of research output – as evidenced by the increasing impact factor of the two journals associated with IAME, MEL and MPM, and, not least, by the fact that the IAME Conference travels to all five continents.
If you honor me with your vote I would like to work with the Council, the new Secretariat and each of you on two fronts.
First, to further improve what IAME means for its membership. I would like to work and explore what more can we offer to our members, what members would like to see from IAME, and how all these can be delivered in the most effective way.
Second, I would like to see IAME strengthening further its position in the maritime world. With our membership having the intellectual capacity to influence the changing maritime setting, we need to identify the best and most modern ways to communicate the meaningful and quality research output of maritime economists to a maritime community, which is in a state of transformation.
Let’s make together our research qualitative in academic terms and useful in practical ones.
To reach these goals, I would also like to see as IAME priority what is in the mind of all of us: Initiatives encouraging further the academic and professional advancement of the new generation of maritime economists.
I have enjoyed IAME membership for 18 years. I have served the Association as Council for three terms (2008-14). I am now concluding a 5-years term as IAME Secretary, working to modernise the bureaucratic work of our Association. I have been present at the work of the IAME special research community Port Performance Research Network (PPRN) throughout the last 15 years. Today, I ask you to give me the opportunity to serve as IAME President, so that capitalising my experience to work for allowing each of us to experience together an even stronger IAME.