Academic wins FIR-PRI Finance and Sustainability Award for PhD thesis

Dr Lisa Schopohl, Lecturer in Finance at the ICMA Centre, has won the FIR-PRI Finance and Sustainability Award for her PhD thesis titled Essays on Institutional Investment and Socially Responsible Investing.

The €5,000 award is administered by the French Sustainable Investment Forum (FIR) in collaboration with the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) and aims to promote practically relevant academic research and broader disciplinary development of responsible investment scholarship.

In her thesis, Dr Schopohl investigates why and how large institutional investors incorporate environmental, social and ethical considerations into their investment practices and relates their responsible investment approaches to the demands of their ultimate beneficiaries.

Dr Schopohl was presented with her award at a ceremony taking place in Berlin in the context of the PRI Academic Network conference where she also presented one of her research papers. The United Nations-backed PRI is a global network of investors and investment professionals with more than 1,800 signatories dedicated to incorporating environmental, social and governance issues into their decision-making and ownership practices.

Lisa Schopohl: “I’m very delighted that my research has won the FIR-PRI Award for Best PhD thesis and I’m happy to present one of my papers at the PRI conference. The PRI conference is a great place to bring together academics working on topics of responsible investment and sustainability and practitioners from the investment industry who are eager to incorporate these ideas into their investment processes.”