Lavagnon Ika is a Full Professor of Project Management and Program Director for the MSc in Management at the Telfer School of Management (uOttawa). He holds a joint affiliation with the uOttawa School of International Development and Global Studies. He holds an M.Sc. and a PhD in PM from the Université du Québec.

Over the past 20 years, he has taught PM at the B.Com, MSc, MBA/EMBA and PhD levels in both the French and English languages, in Canada but also in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. He is currently teaching in the Telfer’s executive Master of Business in Complex Project Leadership. He has led a number of PM workshops in organizational settings and advised a number of project managers and senior business leaders in his consulting work. His clients include public sector departments, international organizations like the World Bank and the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF), and other private businesses. A full time faculty member since 2007, he has supervised a few PhD students and a dozen M.Sc. students and sat on many MSc and PhD committees all over the world.

His research topics include: what makes projects successful; why do projects fail and what can be done about it; why projects experience cost overruns and benefit shortfalls; what is the role of project strategy, supervision and management in project success/failure; how projects ‘behave’ or ‘work’; and what makes projects complex. Besides his works on international development projects, Professor Ika has a genuine interest in project settings such as arts and culture, law, education, etc. as well as in strategy and in the foundations of PM Research. He is the author of some twenty-five papers in peer-reviewed journals as well as of more than twenty conference proceedings. Professor Ika’s work has been published in many journals including World Development, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Production Planning and Control, Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, the International Journal of Project Management, the Project Management Journal, the International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, and the Journal of African Business. He is Associate Editor for the International Journal of Project Management, a member of the IPMA Research Group, the Editorial Advisory Board of the International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, and of the Editorial Review Board of the Journal of African Business. His works have been funded by granting agencies such as SSHRC and FRQSC.

He received the Emerald Best Reviewer Award in 2018, Outstanding Paper Award in 2017 and Highly Commended Paper Award in 2011; the IPMA Research Award in 2017 and the IPMA Research Contribution of a Young Researcher Award in 2012. He was awarded the Telfer’s Innovative Researcher Award in 2017. Two of his papers are among the most cited papers in top PM journals since 2011. Many of his papers are praised by PM practitioners.