As Country Director for Switzerland, Lamia Ben Hamida is an associate Professor in la Haute école de gestion Arc at the University of applied sciences and arts, Western Switzerland. Her research interests focus on international business, innovation, knowledge sharing and spillovers, learning processes and human capital development, international student mobility (ISM), cultural, transversal, global and soft skills, employability, job satisfaction and commitment. She works on the importance of soft and global skills in the professional lives of young students. She is particularly interested in how international student mobility enhances these skills since ISM provides a unique opportunity for students to develop or strengthen their global and soft skills by gaining valuable experiences beyond their home environment. She studies the relationship between employability and soft skills developed by young people through ISM, supported by grants from various foundations, including the Swiss National Agency for International Mobility and the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Given the importance of ISM in terms of global skills, Lamia Ben Hamida has mobilised students'
experiences abroad to create experiential workshops for students who have not had the opportunity to
experience ISM. The groups of students have answered the question "What would we do, if we were in their place?". These home-based internationalization trainings based on the achievements of ISM help consolidate students’ profiles to better meet employer requirements.
Lamia Ben Hamida is actively involved in international projects focusing on these research areas,
collaborating with partners from Tunisia, Morocco, Spain, Ireland, and the Netherlands. She serves as
the Swiss representative for the working group 4 of the Action COST 20115 ENIS “European Network
of International Student Mobility: Connecting Research and Practice”.
Email: lamia.benhamida@he-arc.ch