# Tiziano Peccia

Tiziano Peccia is a French-Italian academic, international manager, and expert in capacity-building strategies, development strategies, human capital management, organizational transformation, and innovation. He is an adjunct professor at the IESEG School of Management (part of the Université Catholique de Lille) and an associate researcher at Université Paris Cité. His work, matured through field missions across Africa and Asia, reflects his Marxist feminism principles, opposition to restrictive immigration policies that lead to unsafe migration, rejection of the death penalty, and advocacy for Pan-Africanism, with a strong emphasis on equity and social justice.

## Early years and education

Born in Salerno, Peccia became politically active at a young age, being elected as his secondary school's student representative at 17. He pursued undergraduate studies in politics and economics at Sapienza University of Rome, where he earned a student merit-based placement to assist as bursary at the Department of Political Studies. As part of the Erasmus, he studied at the University College Dublin School of Economics and wrote his final dissertation on development economics. After gaining work experience in the medical industry in the Netherlands, he continued his studies in Paris. As grandes écoles graduate, he earned a master's degree in international affairs and development from the joint program of Paris Dauphine University and École normale supérieure, graduating as major de promotion (valedictorian).
He later pursued a PhD at Université Paris Cité under the supervision of Professor Azadeh Kian.

## Career

Peccia joined UNESCO as a specialist in science policy and capacity building, undertaking field missions across Africa and Asia and working on public-private partnerships. He co-organized and served on the organizing and scientific committee of the UNESCO-MARS Summit. The summit trained over 500 African researchers and brought together ministers from across the continent. In Ethiopia, he partnered with the office of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, then Ethiopia's minister of foreign affairs, and in Mauritius, he collaborated with the presidential office of Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, President of Mauritius. Peccia also played a key role in the establishment of a UNESCO-affiliated center for basic sciences and nutrition at Mashhad University of Medical Sciences in Iran, promoting gender equity, international mobility, and triangular cooperation (including partnerships with U.S. and Iraqi institutions). During a field mission in Iran, he was interviewed by the journal Dietetics of the Bushehr University of Medical Sciences, where he stated:
   Research is a continuous inspiration (…) a tortuous path, sometimes extremely long, but full of prospects and challenges to be embraced. Do not be afraid of constraints such as languages, mobility, or subjects you have never studied before. Think that the world is your oyster; and if you really want to achieve a goal, keep going, try to see the positive side even in difficult and hard times. This is what a researcher does; looks into black holes to find out a source of light.
He is a strong advocate for SDG 4 (Quality Education for All).
After leaving UNESCO, Peccia transitioned to the private sector and joined the management consultancy industry. He later became part of the Management Group at KPMG, leading projects in people strategy and transformation. He worked in change management, organizational transformation, business strategy, ESG offers, advising clients across various industries, including financial institutions, manufacturing, and healthcare.

## Scholarly contributions

In 2017, Peccia co-authored with African Union civil servants and Egyptian senator Rasha Kelej the book Towards Women participation in Scientific Research in Africa published by the African Union Scientific, Technical, and Research Commission (AU-STRC), addressing barriers to girls' involvement in STEM studies and the female scientist pipeline lacking faced by women in research across the continent.
Since 2022, Peccia has been an adjunct professor at IESEG School of Management and an associate researcher at Université Paris Cité in the Laboratoire de changement social et politique. His academic contributions have been cited by scholars and public platforms such as Radio France and Cimade.
In 2020, he served as lead editor, alongside Azadeh Kian and Anastasia-Athénaïs Porret, of Genre et transgressions : Représentation, agentivité, autodétermination, published by Les Cahiers du CEDREF. This project brought together contributions from international scholars and gender researchers, creating a rich dialogue on transgression and agency in gendered experiences involving social scientists from both OECD countries and the Global South.
Peccia has also collaborated with geographer Hervé Théry on the study Géographie mondiale des blagues (The World Geography of Jokes), outlining stereotypes patterns repetitions worldwide.