Academic Advisory Group (AAG)
AAG Chair
Michael Wells was appointed as an inaugural Member of the UKEB on 15 March 2021. Michael is Professor of Practice at Imperial College Business School and a World Bank Group consultant, working to deepen understanding of international financial reporting requirements and fostering capacity to make, audit and regulate the judgments necessary to apply them. He also performs compliance reviews of corporate financial statements for World Bank assessments of country compliance with financial reporting standards. He was Visiting Lecturer at London Business School from 2018 to 2020. Michael is a chartered accountant. He qualified with Ernst & Young (now EY) in South Africa before joining the academic accounting world. He became the Associate Professor responsible for the financial accounting section of a South African university before moving to the UK to join the staff of the International Accounting Standards Committee Foundation (now IFRS Foundation) in London. Michael led the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Education Initiative for almost a decade. During this time IFRS became widely adopted across the world. Michael has experience in a range of accounting education advisory roles. While leading the IFRS Education Initiative he served as a member of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) International Accounting Education Standards Board (IAESB) Consultative Advisory Group (CAG) and the International Association for Accounting Education & Research (IAAER) Board of Advisors. He subsequently served on the American Accounting Association (AAA) Membership Advisory Committee. Before that he served as a member of the AAA Education Committee.
AAG Members
Alan Jagolinzer is the Professor of Financial Accounting, the Head of the Accounting Faculty Subject Group, and the Founder and co-Director of the Cambridge Centre for Financial Reporting & Accountability at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School. Alan is a former Academic Fellow with the IFRS Foundation, the lead co-Editor of the Journal of Financial Reporting, and has published research in top academic journals that relate to insider trading, executive compensation, corporate governance, and the implications of guidance within international financial reporting standards. His research has catalysed regulatory changes and enforcement actions in U.S. capital markets. His current research examines problems with governance structures of US universities and the societal implications of disinformation campaigns. Alan has earned teaching recognition at several universities including the 2010 Stanford University Graduate School of Business MBA Distinguished Teaching Award. Alan is a former U.S. Air Force E-3 AWACS aircraft commander and T-37 spin demonstration and evaluator pilot.
Christian Stadler is a Senior Lecturer in Accounting and Finance at Royal Holloway University of London. He holds a Diploma in Business Management from the University of Regensburg (Germany) and a PhD in Accounting from Royal Holloway. Prior to re-joining Royal Holloway, he was a Lecturer at Lancaster University. He is an editorial board member of Accounting and Business Research. His research areas are financial reporting and international accounting. His work on IFRS policy choice has been published in Abacus, Accounting and Business Research, Accounting, Organizations and Society and Journal of Accounting and Public Policy.
Francisco Urzua is a Reader in Finance at Bayes Business School, City, University of London. He graduated from Tilburg (PhD), LSE (MSc), and PUC Chile (BA). Having published extensively in finance, he is currently working on understanding the real effects of accounting regulations. In particular, whether increased disclosure leads to more M&A activity and a better allocation of resources in the economy, and how disclosure and individual’s privacy concerns interact.
Hafez Abdo is an associate professor of accounting at the University of Nottingham. His research is focused on Accounting and Taxation of the extractive industries with special interest in IFRS 6; he also researches energy policy topics. Prior to joining the University of Nottingham in January 2020, Hafez was a full professor of accounting at Sheffield Hallam University (2018-2020), before which he worked at Nottingham Trent University (2005-2018) and the University of Sheffield (2002-2005). Hafez is an associate editor of two accounting journals: Journal of Financial Reporting and Accounting (JFRA) and Journal of Applied Accounting Research (JAAR). He is a member of the Committee for Departments of Accounting and Finance (CDAF) of BAFA and an External Examiner for the Chartered Institute of Taxation (CIOT).
Ioannis Tsalavoutas is a professor of accounting and the leading founder of the Adam Smith Observatory of Corporate Reporting Practices at the University of Glasgow. His main area of expertise is financial accounting and reporting: in particular, investigating companies’ reporting practices under IFRS across different jurisdictions, along with any economic consequences that may arise from divergence in practice. Ioannis' work experience includes positions as an accounting assistant (in Greece) and as a financial accounting and reporting analyst at Company Reporting Ltd in Edinburgh. Before joining the University of Glasgow in January 2015, Ioannis was a lecturer in accounting at the University of Stirling.
Dr Janice Denoncourt is Associate Professor of Law at Nottingham Law School, Nottingham Trent University where she leads the Intellectual Property and Innovation Research Group Janice’s multi-disciplinary research and teaching involves business law, corporate governance, emerging technology law, finance, innovation theory, intangibles, intellectual property and sustainability. She is the author of Intellectual Property, Finance and Corporate Governance (2018) Routledge Taylor-Francis. Prior to her academic career, Janice qualified as a solicitor in England and Wales; as a Barrister, Solicitor and Trade Mark Attorney in Western Australia. She practised law with Herbert Smith Freehills, Minter Ellison and was sole inhouse Counsel, Assistant Company Secretary and an alternate Director with the Brandrill Group (WA). On relocation to the UK, she became Head of Legal Affairs for Worlds Apart Ltd, a large private firm. Janice holds a BA from McGill University, Canada; completed her LLB at the University of Western Australia; and her PhD at the University of Nottingham. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts (RSA) and a member of the European Accounting Association (EAA). She is also a Director of the London-based Intellectual Property Awareness Network and member of their Business & Finance group.
Dr Ronita Ram has been an Associate Professor in Accounting at Henley Business School, University of Reading, since 2015, where she is also Director of Postgraduate Research in Accounting. She has a PhD in accounting from the University of Sydney and her thesis, Development of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for Small and Medium-Sized Entities, won the prestigious Emerald and EFMD Highly Commended Doctoral Research Award. Her research interests focus on the development of IFRS, use of IFRS and compliance issues. Ronita has published in various international journals and is a reviewer for a number of accounting journals. Her latest research looks at how trust is established by bankers when using IFRS-based financial statements to make credit decisions. With over 15 years of teaching and research experience at tertiary level, Ronita specialises in teaching IFRS to both undergraduates and postgraduates. She has also been a lecturer at the University of Sydney and the University of the South Pacific in Fiji. Ronita is a qualified accountant and a member of the Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand.
Stefano Cascino is an Associate Professor of Accounting at the London School of Economics. His primary research interests include disclosure regulation, corporate governance, and credit markets. His research has been published in leading academic journals, such as Journal of Accounting Research, The Accounting Review, Review of Accounting Studies, and Management Science, and has generated the interest of practitioners and standard setters including the Australian Accounting Standards Board (AASB), International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). His research has also been cited in several media outlets such as the Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog, Harvard Law School Bankruptcy Roundtable, and LSE Business Review. He has received funding and research grants from the Institute of The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS) and the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG). He serves as associate editor for Accounting and Business Research and is a member of the editorial board of Journal of Business Finance and Accounting, European Accounting Review, and Journal of International Accounting Research. He has been a visiting researcher at the Humboldt University of Berlin, LUISS Business School, and Queensland University of Technology. He teaches financial statement analysis and valuation to undergraduate students, financial accounting to master students, and empirical capital markets research to PhD students. For his dedication to teaching, he received the LSE Teaching Excellence Award in 2012, and the LSE Education Excellence Award in 2016, 2017, and 2018. He holds a PhD in Business Economics (Accounting) from the University of Naples Federico II and is a Certified Public Accountant and Statutory Auditor (Italy).
Dr Wei Jiang is currently a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) of Accounting at Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester. Wei’s research investigates the use of accounting information by capital market participants, and the effects of corporate governance on firm performance and corporate policies. Her work has been published in a number of international peer-reviewed academic journals and the ‘Forbes’ online magazine. Prior to joining Alliance Manchester Business School, Wei held a position as an Assistant Professor of Accounting at Warwick Business School, the University of Warwick. Wei was a Dorothy Hodgkin Postgraduate Award Scholar for her PhD studies at the University of Manchester. Wei sits on the editorial board of Accounting and Business Research, and serves as an ad-hoc reviewer for a number of journals in the accounting, finance and management fields. Wei has experience teaching accounting courses at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels.