Dr Bernadette Best is a Lecturer in Management with the Queen’s Management School. Bernadette has 22 years senior management experience in not-for-profit organisations and she serves as a non-executive board member of The Cedar Foundation. Her research interests include service quality, value co-creation, stakeholder salience, business model innovation, integrative public leadership, and social innovation in not-for-profit and public sector organisations. Bernadette is specifically interested in exploring how value is understood and conceptualised in value networks; factors motivating non-profit organisations to innovate their business models; the dimensions of value co-creation in hybrids; key determinants of stakeholder salience within public service networks, and how stakeholder salience impacts value co-creation at different stages and levels of a service context. Further to securing a research grant from the British Academy/Leverhulme, Bernadette is currently examining value co-creation in multi-stakeholder not-for-profit networks.

Professor Ciaran Connolly is Professor of Accounting at Queen’s Management School. His main area of research is in the field of public services, particularly the financial and performance measurement aspects of the charity and public sectors. Ciaran has published in the area of charity accounting, the private finance initiative and resource accounting and budgeting. His research output in these areas includes publications in academic journals such as: Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, British Accounting Review, Financial Accountability & Management, Journal of Business Ethics and Public Administration. Ciaran has advised the Northern Ireland Audit Office and the Northern Ireland Strategic Investment Board on the funding of public sector investment projects and is a member of the Department for Social Development (Northern Ireland) / Charity Commission for Northern Ireland Accounts and Reports Working Group.

Dr Denise Currie is a Senior Lecturer in Management at Queen’s Management School. Her research interests lie broadly in Human Resource Management and Employee Relations with particular interest in the various dynamics and organisational processes that are integral to creating positive working environments. Her research spans across sectors but she has a particular interest in non-profit organisations and the delivery of health and social care. She has researched how the experiences, knowledge and skills of non-profit workers are utilized and valued when delivering public services under contract, and has examined how this is impacted by various contracting and collaborative conditions. She is further developing this research agenda through a UK-wide project that is examining the experience of health and social care workers at multiple stages through the COVID- 19 pandemic. Tied to her interests in conflict management and employee relations, she is also currently examining the changing role of public dispute resolution agencies in addressing workplace conflict across Anglo- American Countries.  She has published in a number of leading journals including Work, Employment and Society, British Journal of Industrial Relations, International Journal of HRM and Industrial Labor Relations Review. She is also a member of the Editorial Board for Work, Employment and Society.

Professor Declan French is a Reader in Finance at Queen’s Management School. Declan is director of the Queen's University Centre for Health Research at the Management School (CHaRMS) and Subject Leader of the Finance Subject Group. Declan’s research interests include health economics and household finance.  Recent work includes projects on the relationship between household financial stress and health; work disability and the legacy of the Northern Irish Troubles and the cost effectiveness of stratified medicine approaches to colorectal cancer. Declan has also worked on the indebtedness of credit union members and its impact on their mental and physical well-being. He has recently published a paper on the effectiveness of smartphone apps in improving the financial capability of credit union members in the European Journal of Finance and a literature review of  research on financial cooperatives in the International Review of Financial Analysis.

Dr Tom Hastings is a Lecturer in Management at Queen’s Management School. Tom has a background in Economic Geography and combines a geographical approach to researching work, employment and political economy which contributes to debates in Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management (HRM). He is part of a wider cohort of Geographers who have traversed into Management/Business schools in recent years, contributing to exciting new developments across these disciplines. His research interests include: The political economy of labour market institutions; and Labour inspection and the enforcement of worker rights.  Currently he is examining questions of community resilience and ways in which grassroots organisations influence higher tiers of governance. This focus has included an interest in responses to the Covid-19 pandemic but he is also interested in the role of community institutions in accessing public supports across Northern Ireland more widely. 

Dr Shirley-Ann Hazlett is a Senior Lecturer in Management at Queen’s Management School. Her research interests include performance management with a special focus on the public sector.  Additionally she researchers and teaches in the area of corporate social responsibility (CSR). She has published in International Journal of Public Sector Management, the International Small Business Journal and the journal Production Planning and Control.

Professor Noel Hyndman is Professor of Management Accounting at Queen’s Management School. His main research interests have centred on performance measurement, performance reporting, management accounting and accounting change in charities, public sector organisations and not-for-profit organisations. Noel has been a member of the Charity SORP Committee (Charity Commissioners England and Wales) since 2006, is currently a member of the Department for Social Development (NI) / Charity Commission NI Accounts and Reports Working Group, and in 2015 he was elected chair of the British Accounting and Finance Association’s Public Services and Charities Special Interest Group. He is joint editor of the Accounting, Finance & Governance Review, the official journal of the Irish Accounting and Finance Association, and associate editor of Financial Accountability & Management. 

Dr Martin Kelly is a Lecturer in Accounting at Queen’s Management School. His research interests include accounting and accountability within social enterprises and not-for-profit organisations. Martin is particularly interested in the processes by which accounting representations and calculative measurement impact upon people and practices within organisations. Martin is currently an advisor to the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) in relation to their Chartered Manager award for practicing leaders and managers in the United Kingdom.

Dr Muiris MacCarthaigh is Senior Lecturer in Politics and Public Administration at Queens University Belfast, President of the Political Studies Association of Ireland (2016-19), and co-chair of the European Group for Public Administration’s study group on the Governance of Public Sector Organisations. His research and teaching interests are located across two domains: Irish government and politics; and public administration and policy. He has authored and edited seven books on these issues, most recently Public Sector Reform in Ireland: Countering Crisis (Palgrave 2017), and his work has been published in leading scientific journals including Governance, Public Administration, Public Management Review, Public Policy and Administration and the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis. He is former editor of the journal Administration and currently editorial board member for the International Journal of Public Sector Management and the Emerald book series Critical Perspectives on International Public Sector Management. He is also Visiting Research Fellow at the UCD Geary Institute for Public Policy.

Professor Mariannunziata Liguori is Professor of Management Accounting at Queen’s Management School. She moved to Belfast after a visiting period at the University of Alberta Business School, in Canada. She was awarded her PhD by Bocconi University, Milan. Her main research interests relate to processes of accounting change, control of outsourced public services and performance management in the public and not-for-profit sectors. In 2015 she has been elected secretary of the British Accounting and Finance Association’s Public Services and Charities Special Interest Group. She is a member of the editorial board of Financial Accountability & Management and of the Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management. She has published in a number of other leading journals in the field, such as Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, Organisations Studies and Public Administration.

Dr Danielle McConville is a Senior Lecturer in Accounting at Queen’s Management School. Her research interests include transparency and accountability in a not-for-profit context; the implications of this for stakeholders; and the impact of stakeholders on reporting practices (particularly on the UK Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP)); alongside broader governance themes. Recent publications include papers in Public Money and Management, Voluntas, The Irish Accounting Review and The British Accounting Review. Danielle has been involved with a number of charity sector initiatives in the UK and Ireland, including as co-author of a major report for the Charity Commission on the development of the SORP. 

Professor Donal McKillop is Professor of Financial Services at Queen’s Management School. He has advised the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister in Northern Ireland on intervention measures to alleviate financial hardships due to welfare reform. He chaired the Commission on Credit Unions for the Irish Government. Its work led to the introduction of the Credit Union and Co-Operation with Overseas Regulators Act 2012. He was appointed by the Minister of Finance (Ireland) as Chair of the Credit Union Advisory Committee (2014 to 2018). He currently chairs the Credit Union CEO Forum. The objective of the CEO Forum is to help progress and develop the business models of Irish credit unions through the identification of change enablers.  Donal has completed commissioned research on financial cooperatives for the Royal Irish Academy, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Scottish Executive, the Northern Ireland Government and the Money Advice Service. He is associate editor of the European Journal of Finance.

Dr Sara Melo is a Senior Lecturer in Management at Queen’s Management School. So far most of her research has focused on exploring the organizational dynamics associated with the implementation of innovations aimed at improving healthcare quality and patient safety. Currently, she is particularly interested in researching the impact of new technologies (e.g. internet-of-things, robotics, artificial intelligence, big data, etc.) on the day-to-day work of organisations in general, including the organization and provision of healthcare. She is a member of the editorial board of the Global Journal of Health Science.”

Dr Barry Quinn is a Lecturer in Finance at Queen’s Management School. He is also a fellow of the St Andrew’s University Centre for Responsible Banking and a senior associate researcher at the International Research Centre for Cooperative Finance at HEC Montreal. Barry is a professionally chartered statistician with the Royal Statistical Society. He has ten years quantitative finance industry experience in financial services. His research expertise includes applying artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) techniques to financial problems and he has consulted with local firms on both statistical prediction and machine learning projects. Most recently he was lead academic on a £160K KTP project on the application of AI and ML in the retail analytics industry. Barry has published research on the performance of Irish credit unions, the technology adoption traits of the Irish credit union sector and on, Japanese cooperative banks. Barry’s research on financial cooperatives has been published in the European Journal of Finance, Financial Accountability & Management, Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics and the International Review of Financial Analysis.

Dr Martin Quinn is Senior Lecturer in Accounting at Queen’s Management School. He previously worked at Dublin City University and is a Chartered Management Accountant. His main research interests are accounting change, accounting in society, accounting information systems and accounting history. He is a member of the editorial board of Qualitative Research in Accounting and Management and has published in this journal as well as Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal and Management Accounting Research. He has also authored several student and research texts. Full details of his woek can be found at http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Martin_Quinn or at https://pure.qub.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/martin-quinn(a703cfa4-cd34-4125-b7bc-ef46477df138).html

Dr Laura Steele is a Lecturer (Education) in Business and Society at Queen’s Management School. Her research interests include business ethics and corporate governance, with a particular focus on public sector organisations. Prior to joining the University in 2017, Laura worked across a number of public and third sector organisations, including the Northern Ireland Assembly and Special EU Programmes Body.

Dr Elaine Stewart is a Lecturer in Accounting at Queen’s Management School. Her research interests include accounting and finance in the not-for-profit and public sector. Elaine’s PhD thesis (awarded by Queen’s Management School in 2016) investigated public sector accounting reform in UK central government over a thirty-year time frame. She is currently involved in a research project funded by the Money Advice Service with Professor Donal Mc Killop and Dr Declan French investigating whether digital technology could be used to improve the financial capability of credit union members.

Dr Julian Warner is a Lecturer in Management at Queen’s Management School.  His research interests include research evaluation for public bodies, including universities, the dissemination of public knowledge, and creativity and forms of mental labour in copyright.  Relevant publications include Modelling the diffusion of specialised knowledge. Aslib Proceedings. 55, 1-2, 2003, pp.75-83, A critical review of the application of citation studies to the Research Assessment Exercises. Journal of Information Science. 26, 6, 2000, pp.453-460, and Creativity for Feist. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. 64, 6, 2013, pp.1173-1192.

Professor Darinka Asenova is Professor of Risk and Governance at Glasgow Caledonian University. She has published extensively in the areas of public service provision, social risks mitigation, partnership working, governance and service innovation. Over recent years her research focused on local authority decision making within the context of spending cuts and its impact on vulnerable groups. Her most recent project completed in 2015 was entitled ‘Redistribution of Social and Societal Risk: The Impact on Individuals, Their Networks and Communities in Scotland’ (funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation).

Professor Rym Ayadi is Professor of financial systems at HEC Montreal and Director of the International Institute on Cooperatives, leading the International Research Initiative on Cooperative Finance. Her fields of expertise include international financial systems, financial markets and institutions, global financial regulation and governance and socio-economic development in economies in transition. Currently, her research focuses on the redesign of a global stable, sustainable and inclusive financial system that better serves economic and societal long-term objectives with particular emphasis on the diversity of corporate models, private-public partnerships and the role of financial markets to achieve developmental objectives. She is an expert member of several high-level groups in the European Commission, external advisor to the European Parliament, Mediterranean Assembly of the Mediterranean and the Union for the Mediterranean.

Henk ter Bogt is a Professor of Public Management at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands.  After graduating, he worked in practice for over ten years before returning to the university. His main research interests include outsourcing and privatisation, performance measurement, the use of accounting information, performance auditing, and accounting changes in the public sector. He is also an associate editor of Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management and a member of the editorial boards of Financial Accountability & Management and Public Money & Management. He has published in practitioner journals and journals such as Financial Accountability & Management, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, European Accounting Review, European Journal of Law & Economics and Management Accounting Research.

Ms Noreen Byrne is a lecturer at the Department of Food Business & Development and a researcher at the Centre for Co-operative Studies at University College Cork. Her research interests to date have primarily concentrated on credit unions with a specific focus on financial inclusion and  more recently on member value and member driven innovation. More broadly she is interested in user-driven innovation and co-production in both the co-operative and public sector. She has a particular interest in how joint co-production between the provider and the user contributes to innovation, effective service delivery and efficiency.  

Professor Carolyn Cordery a Professor of Accounting at Aston Business School. Her research focuses on not for profit organisations' accounting and accountability, including charities and sports clubs. She is particularly interested in how these organisations are resourced (by donors/philanthropists, grants, contracts, volunteers, etc.) and the resource constraints that cause many of these organisations to be financially vulnerable. Carolyn is Joint Editor of Third Sector Review (the Journal of on Australia and New Zealand Third Sector Research), Associate Editor of Accounting History and on the editorial board of Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal.  She is a Fellow of both Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand and CPA Australia and was a member of the New Zealand Accounting Standards Board from 2011-2016.

Professor Kevin Davis is Professor of Finance at the University of Melbourne, Research Director of the Australian Centre for Financial Studies and a Professor of Finance at Monash University. His primary research interests are financial regulation, financial institutions and markets, financial innovation and corporate finance. He is the Deputy Chair of SIRCA, a member of the Australian Competition Tribunal, and has undertaken an extensive range of consulting assignments for financial institutions, business and government. Professor Davis is a Senior Fellow of Finsia, a Fellow of FTA and holds Bachelor of Economics (Hons I) from Flinders University of South Australia and a Master of Economics from the Australian National University. He was appointed by the Federal Treasurer in December 2013 as a panel member of the Financial System Inquiry chaired by Mr David Murray.

Professor John Goddard has been Professor of Financial Economics at the University of Wales Bangor since 2005. Previously he was Professor in Economics at University of Wales, Swansea. He also has several years practitioner experience in the UK life insurance sector. His research interests are in industrial organisation, the economics of financial institutions, and the economics of professional sports. He has recent publications in Journal of Money Credit and Banking, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Forecasting, European Journal of Operational Research and International Journal of Industrial Organization. He is co-author of the monograph The Economics of Football (Cambridge University Press, 2001), and co-author of the textbook Industrial Organization: Competition, Strategy, Policy (FT Prentice Hall, 2009).

Professor Irvine Lapsley has been Professor of Accounting (and latterly Professor Emeritus) at the University of Edinburgh Business School since 1991. His research interests have focused on public sector reforms, and aspects of this research have explored this in the context of charities, government (local and central) and the NHS. He is Director of the Institute of Public Sector Accounting Research (IPSAR), at the University of Edinburgh and editor of the major journal  Financial Accountability & Management.  He holds visiting professor positions at Queen`s University, Politecnico di Milano, the University of Lund and Mannheim University. Irvine has undertaken research sponsored by, among others, the ESRC, the Leverhulme Trust and the Nuffield Foundation. He has published numerous books and over 100 articles in major refereed journals. 

Dr Stephan Leixnering is Senior Scientist at the Research Institute for Urban Management and Governance at WU Vienna University of Economics and Business. His research focuses on the governance and organization of the public sector. He also works on the emergence of organizational forms and ethical aspects of organization and management. His current research covers collaborative city governance, issues of public corporate governance, the effectiveness of public auditing, and the institutionalization of the corporation as a legal form.

Dr Olive McCarthy is a senior lecturer with the Department of Food Business and Development and a researcher with the Centre for Co-operative Studies, University College Cork (UCC). Her research interests include co-operative organisation and management issues, stakeholder participation in co-operatives, performance measurement and financial inclusion. Her research has been conducted mainly into credit unions, community co-operatives and agricultural co-operatives, on which she has published widely. She coordinates the MSc in Co-operative and Social Enterprise by online learning and the Postgraduate Diploma/MSc in Co-operative Organisation, Food Marketing and Rural Development in UCC. She is also closely associated with the UCC Credit Union Pathways Programme.

Professor Renate Meyer is Professor and head of the Institute for Organisation Studies at WU Vienna University of Business Administration. She is also permanent visiting professor at Copenhagen Business School. Her research focuses on new organisational forms, governance structures and changes in accounting systems in the public sector. Renate has been a member of the executive board of the European Group for Organisational Studies (EGOS) since 2008, serving as chairperson between 2011 and 2014. She is a member several editorial boards, including Organization Studies and Research in the Sociology of Organizations, and has published in such journals as the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Annals, Organization Studies, Journal of Management Studies, Organization, Public Administration, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, or Journal of Management Inquiry. 

Professor Riccardo Mussari is Professor of Public Financial Management at the Department of Business and Law, of the University of Siena, Italy. He has been visiting scholar at several European, USA, Australian and Japanese Universities. He has published extensively on public sector accounting and management issues, with refereed articles in international journals, books, chapters. He is member of the Scientific Boards of National and International academic journals. He consults, also internationally, on public sector accounting, management control, and financial management in public sector organisations. He has an extensive experience in public management and executive training. He was consultant for the Parliamentary Commission for Fiscal Federalism in Italy (XVI Legislature). He is Scientific consultant of IFEL (Institute for Local Government Finance) and ANCI (National Association of Italian Municipalities) on fiscal federalism; member of the Public Accounting Standard Committee established at Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance. He is Editor of the Italian Academic Journal “Azienda Pubblica”.

Professor Susan Newberry is Professor of Accounting at the University of Sydney Business School. Her research area is financial accounting and standard-setting, focusing in particular on public sector accounting. Sue’s interest in understanding the nature and implications of public sector reforms, has included exploring the effect on social policy areas (including health services, childcare and natural disaster), and the operation of charities. She is a member of several editorial boards, including Abacus, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, Financial Accountability & Management, Public Money and Management, the International Review of Administrative Sciences, Accounting, Finance & Governance Review, and Australian Accounting Review.

Dr Elisabeta Pana is Associate Professor of Accounting and Financial Services at Illinois Wesleyan University. Her research focuses on banking, credit unions, and insurance groups. Elisabeta’s current research projects relate to the role of internal capital markets in the distribution of capital to bank subsidiaries and insurer group members. Her recent publications include papers in Journal of Risk Management in Financial Institutions, The Quarterly Journal of Finance, and Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting.

Dr. Tobias Polzer is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Organization Studies at WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria. His research interests include public governance, digitalisation in the public sector, public financial management and public procurement, taking an interpretative perspective. He has published in Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Public Management Review, International Review of Administrative Sciences, Urban Studies, Critical Perspectives on Accounting and Abacus.

Dr Kanshukan Rajaratnam is an Associate Professor of Finance at the Department of Finance and Tax, University of Cape Town. His doctoral study was completed at the Department of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Virginia.  His research interests include decision making in consumer lending, credit union models, systemic risk in the banking sector and regulatory impact on financial institutions. His work has been published in the Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of the Operational Research Society and Annals of Operations Research. He is currently a member of the African Collaboration for Quantitative Finance and Risk Research.

Dr Geraldine Robbins is lecturer in accounting and finance and joint leader of the Performance Management Research Cluster at the Whitaker Institute for Innovation and Societal Change at the National University of Ireland Galway. Geraldine was awarded her PhD by the University of Edinburgh in 2005 and her primary research interests continue to relate to the performance management and accountability of public sector organizations, in particular hospitals and local government. She has published in a number of leading journals in the field including, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, Financial Accountability and Management, British Accounting Review and Local Government Studies.  She is a member of the Management Committee of the EU funded COST Action: Local Public Sector Reforms: An International Comparison (LocRef IS1207).  She is a member of the Board of Directors of Beaumont Hospital, Dublin, 2014-2017 where she also chairs the Finance Committee. 

Professor Mariafrancesca Sicilia is Associate Professor at Bergamo University in Italy and Visiting Fellow in the Department of Public Leadership and Social Enterprise (PuLSE) at The Open University in UK. Her research covers public sector budgeting and accounting, performance management and models of public services delivery, such as coproduction of public services. She has carried out research for Italian central government departments, local governments and other public bodies. She is a member of the executive committee of the Accounting and Accountability Special Interest Group within IRSPM (International Research Society for Public Management). She has published in journals such as Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Public Administration, Public Administration Review, Public Management Review, Public Money and Management.

Dr David Smith is Associate Professor of Economics and interim Dean at the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University. David earned both his M.S. and PhD. degrees from Michigan State University. An economist by training, David’s expertise includes the areas of labor pay and productivity, data loss, and analysis of specific labor markets. He has published in numerous academic and practitioner outlets. His research on credit unions has been used in arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court as well as in state legislative hearings. David has been a commentator on economic issues for various news media, such as CNN, the London Times, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, USA Today, the New York Times, and the Investor’s Business Daily.

Professor Ileana Steccolini is Associate Professor of Public Budgeting and Performance Measurement at Bocconi University, Milan and a Visiting Professor at Nottingham Business School and Università della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano. She has published on public sector accounting and accountability reforms and change in such journals as Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, Financial Accountability & Management, Management Accounting Research, Public Administration and Public Administration Review. She is the founder of the Accounting and Accountability Special Interest Group within IRSPM and a member of the editorial board of Financial Accountability & Management, the Journal of Qualitative Research in Accounting and Management, the Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting and Financial Management and Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal.

Dr Luisa Unda is a Lecturer in the Department of Accounting at Monash University, Australia. Her main research interests are corporate governance of not-for-profit financial organisations; board effectiveness in member-owned institutions; CEO compensation and risk management; and financial reporting quality. A current major focus of her research is to understand how the unique features of credit unions together with board of directors’ characteristics influence the performance of credit unions. Luisa’s current goal is to contribute to the scarce analysis of the role of the board of directors in financial cooperatives, such as credit unions.

Professor Anne-Marie Ward is Professor of Accounting at Ulster University Business School. Her main research interests have centred on regulation, governance, management models, financial performance, management conflict and volunteering in credit unions. She has published in a number of leading journals, including Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Journal of Business Ethics, British Accounting Review and Financial Accountability & Management. Anne Marie has strong links with the accounting professional bodies; she is a member of the Credit Union forum (Chartered Accountants Ireland) and regularly publishes professional articles to disseminate her research to the wider professional practice audience.  

Professor James A. Wilcox (University of California, Berkeley) Jim has been Professor of Finance and of Economic Analysis and Policy in the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley since 1978. His research interests include house prices and real estate activity, consumer attitudes and spending, and credit unions and banks. Jim has served as Chief Economist at the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, senior economist for monetary policy and macroeconomics at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, and economist at the Federal Reserve. He is a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and a Fellow of the Wharton Financial Institutions Center. Jim is a founding Fellow of the Filene Research Institute and was President of the International Banking, Economics, and Finance Association in 2012.

Professor John Wilson is a Professor of Banking & Finance and Director for the Centre for Responsible Banking & Finance at the University of St Andrews. His research focuses on banking and credit unions. He is the author of a range of academic publications and in 2015 co-edited the Oxford Handbook of Banking. John serves as Associate Editor to the British Accounting Review, European Journal of Finance, Finance Research Letters and the Journal of Money Credit and Banking. He also serves on the editorial board of a number of journals including the Journal of Business Finance and Accounting and the Journal of Financial Economic Policy. During 2011 and 2012, John served as a member of a Commission on Credit Unions established by the Irish Government. 

Dr Brian Branch is President and CEO of the World Council of Credit Unions (WOCCU). He was awarded his PhD in Economics by the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Brian has designed programs to transfer financial management practices, policies, procedures, tools, products, technologies and management skills to credit unions in Latin America, Africa and the Caribbean. He has provided service and product development assistance for savings, tailored credit products and transaction service networks. He has also designed and led individual survey impact time series studies, market research, institutional assessments and financial field analysis for credit union systems. He co-authored Striking the Balance in Microfinance: A Practical Guide to Mobilizing Savings (2002) with Janette Klaehn and co-edited Safe Money (2000) with Glenn Westley.

Kieran Donnelly was appointed to the post of Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) for Northern Ireland in September 2009 and has been on the Audit Office Senior Management Team since 1997. Previous posts include Head of Value for Money Audit and Head of Financial Audit. Kieran is a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy. Since his appointment as C&AG he has been responsible for the production of over sixty public reports on a wide range of value for money, governance and financial management issues.  

Andrew Hind CB is Editor of Charity Finance. Andrew is former Chief Executive of the Charity Commission England and Wales from 20114 to 2010. At present he is Visiting Professor of charity governance and finance at Cass Business School, London, and is editor of Charity Finance.  Andrew co-founded the Charity Finance Group in 1987 (chair from 1992-1994); he authored The Governance and Management of Charities (1995); and chaired the Charity SORP Committee (2005-2010). He has been involved in the charity sector since 1986, having worked for ActionAid (1986-91) and for Barnardo’s (1992-95).  From 1995-2004 Andrew was chief operating officer at BBC World Service. He is a trustee of the Baring Foundation and chairs the judging panel for the Charity Awards.

Kevin Johnson is Chief Executive Officer at the Credit Union Development Association [CUDA]. Kevin is also a board member of the Credit Union Restructuring Board, and was an active participant with the Commission on Credit Unions in Ireland. He has over thirty years experience in the financial services industry in Ireland, where he has headed the core service and product business areas of retail banking, established a customer contact centre and a business innovation centre. He also has an extensive background in evolving business models, credit union representation services at both regulatory and legislative levels, has designed many training/education credit union programmes and assists credit unions, individually and collectively, with the development of their strategies.

Frances McCandless is Chief Executive of the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland (appointed in April 2010 as its first Chief Executive). Prior to taking up this post, Frances was employed as Director of Policy at NICVA, an umbrella body which provides advice, information and policy analysis to the 5,000 voluntary and community organisations in Northern Ireland. Frances’s career in the voluntary and community sector goes back over 20 years and she has worked with young people, women returning to work, in housing, with older and disabled people and as an international volunteer with the YMCA.  She has also been a board member of organisations working in the areas of environment, ethnic minorities, reconciliation, community arts, audience development, mediation and physical activity.

Ben Rogers is Research Director for the Filene Research Institute which is a nonprofit, independent, think and do tank for the consumer finance industry. Ben wrestles economic, consumer behaviour, management, and policy questions through Filene Research Institute's research pipeline. As research director, he speaks widely on credit union topics and has authored nearly twenty Filene reports, on topics as divergent as young adult financial behaviour, service channel delivery, noninterest income, and co-operative management. Before coming to the Filene Research Institute, he was a Congressional reporter in Washington D.C., Editor of The CEO Report and Chairman of the National Directors’ Convention. Ben has been cited broadly, including in CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, Credit Union Journal, Credit Union Times, and American Banker. 

Paul Walsh is Chief Executive Officer at Credit Union National Association (CUNA) Mutual Europe, a dedicated life and credit insurance underwriting partner to Credit Unions in Europe, North and Central America. Paul is also a board member of the City of Dublin Skin Cancer Hospital Charity. His management background spans almost 30 years and includes roles in Ireland, the UK and in the Middle East. He was part of the start-up team at The National Lottery in Ireland in the 1980s and went on to lead the consumer redevelopment of Gulf Bank in the Middle East and the Insurance Group and Barclays.   His areas of expertise include strategic development, organisational change, consumer research, credit risk, retail finance and Credit Union business modelling. 

My name is Muteb Alanazi. I was born and raised in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I obtained a Master's Degree in Finance from the University of Wollongong, Australia, in 2009. I have worked as a Financial Controller in the Ministry of Finance in Saudi Arabia since 2010. Currently, I am a PhD student in Accounting at Queen's University of Belfast. My research interests focus on accounting and control systems in the public sector, and, in particular, control of outsourced public services and entities.

Caroline Flynn is a PhD student within the School. Caroline's research investigates risk transfer in public private partnership (PPP) contracts. More specifically, focusing on operational PPP and traditionally procured schools projects in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, it examines whether risk has been transferred as expected at the contract stage with what has been experienced when schools have been operational for a number of years.

Qiao Peng is a PhD student in Finance. She obtained a BSc. in Applied Physics from Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, China and a MSc. in Risk and Investment Management from Queen’s University Belfast, in 2016 and 2017, respectively. Her research interests include merger and acquisition behaviour in credit unions, bankruptcy prediction in credit unions and the application of machine learning techniques in the performance assessment of credit unions. Qiao was the president of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) at Queen’s University Belfast, UEEUB (2019 to 2020) and recipient of a QUB-CSC Scholarship (2018 to 2021).

Gail Sheppard is a PhD student within the School. Her research focuses on public private partnership (PPP) and examines the rationale for the adoption of PPP in the Republic of Ireland. In addition, it explores the extent of the influence of policy transfer and institutional isomorphism in its adoption and in achieving the aims set out by government. Wider research interests include value for money in, and performance measurement by, public resource allocation.