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Professor of Social Policy at the School of Social Policy and Practice, University of Pennsylvania

Femida Handy is Professor of Social Policy at the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania and the Director of the Ph.D. program. Her research and teaching focus on the economics of the nonprofit sector, volunteering, philanthropy, nonprofit management, entrepreneurship and microfinance.

Handy has published widely in a variety of scientific journals on a variety of nonprofit-related topics and her work has garnered many awards. She has served as the editor-in-chief of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, the premier journal in the field, and on the editorial board of several academic journals.

One area of prominence is her scholarship on volunteering and philanthropy, in an international context. Her recent co-authored books are on books on philanthropy are “The Practice and Promise of Philanthropy in India” (2016) and “The Palgrave Research Companion to Global Philanthropy” (2016). She has also written on environmental issues, including a children’s book that introduces the concept of an ecological footprint. She has also co-authored a book on decision‐making in nonprofit organizations, “Ethical–decision making for social impact” (2018).

Before coming to Penn, Professor Handy was Associate Professor at the Faculty of Environmental Studies, at York University in Toronto, Canada.

Experience

  • –present
    Professor of Social Policy at the School of Social Policy and Practice, University of Pennsylvania