Sebastian Ille is an associate professor of economics in the Onsi Sawiris School of Business at The American University in Cairo. He studies how institutions, incentives, social norms and collective behaviour shape economic transformation, combining economics, game theory, complexity science and computational modeling. He works on inclusive growth, green transition, inequality, education, migration and institutional reform.

His research addresses emerging-economy challenges: how environmental incentives affect firms' financing costs and green behaviour; monetary and fiscal policy interactions; pathways out of innovation traps; and how social norms shape education, conflict and collective action. It analyzes feedback loops and coordination problems that determine whether reforms succeed.

Ille is the author of Models of Society and Complex Systems and more than 30 peer-reviewed articles and policy publications. His scholarship has appeared in International Review of Economics and Finance, Macroeconomic Dynamics, Communications in Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulation, International Journal of Educational Development and Environment and Planning C.

He was an associate professor of economics at Northeastern University London, associate director for research and knowledge exchange in social sciences and lead of the Social Dynamics and Behaviour cluster. He taught at the University of Pisa, Chulalongkorn University and Lebanese American University. A senior fellow of the Higher Education Academy, he was editor-in-chief of the International Social Science Journal from 2015 to 2022.

He has advised the Ministry of Education in Egypt, the Home Office in the United Kingdom, the Canadian Embassy and the World Commission on Forced Displacement. He earned his PhD under Alan Kirman and Herbert Gintis.