My name is Torsten Jochem. I am an Associate Professor in Finance at the University of Amsterdam. 

My research centers on understanding employee incentives, the dynamics of shareholder engagement through voting and activism, and the consequences - both intended and unintended - of governance legislation and quasi-standards established by regulators and proxy advisers. I also explore governance issues across disciplines, particularly in voting mechanisms and the effectiveness of teams in scientific settings. 

My teaching combines the study of corporate governance principles and its ecosystem with the application of programming and statistical analysis for finance. My courses, including Corporate Governance, Computational Finance, Python Programming, Machine Learning, and FinTech aim to prepare students for the growing intersection of finance and technology. Both topics cross in the area of FinTech and Decentralized Finance: in this context, we examine how DeFi projects use smart contracts and governance tokens to address intricate governance challenges, offering a practical framework for understanding the importance of (and consequences from a failure in) governance in financial transactions. My goal is for that every UvA finance graduate leaves with solid coding skills and a keen awareness of the pervasive influence of governance issues within the financial sector.