Speakers

Kenneth Merchant is an expert in management accounting, management control systems, and corporate governance. He has published in many journals, including Accounting, Organizations and Society, The Accounting Review, Industrial Relations, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Marketing, and Management Science. He has received numerous awards, including five Notable Contributions to Research awards from the American Accounting Association, two for lifetime contributions to the field. He also received an honorary doctorate from the Turku School of Economics (Finland) in 2010. Professor Emeritus Merchant served as Dean of the Leventhal School of Accounting from 1994 to 2001. Before joining USC, he taught at Harvard Business School and UC-Berkeley.

Professor Andreas G. F. Hoepner, Ph.D., is a Financial Data Scientist working towards the vision of a Conflict-Free Capitalism. While the vision is unlikely fully achievable, Andreas’ view is that anyone can strive to make a regular contribution to reducing abusive conflicts of interests and thereby enhancing the fairness of our society’s financial system. Formally, Andreas is Full Professor of Operational Risk, Banking & Finance at the Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School & the Lochlann Quinn School of Business of University College Dublin (UCD), serves on the schools’ management team as Vice Principal for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), and is a named supervisor for UCD’s SFI Centre for Research Training in Machine Learning. Prof. Hoepner is serving on the European Union’s Platform on Sustainable Finance (PSF) as one of five independent members (i.e. appointed in personal capacity instead of representing a legal entity) with a focus on data availability and data quality. Prior to PSF, Andreas served as independent member on the Technical Expert Group (TEG) on Sustainable Finance. In his TEG role, he co-invented ‘EU Climate Transition and EU Paris-Aligned Investing’ (EU Regulation 2020/1818) by aligning investment strategies across asset classes with the IPCC’s 1.5°C trajectory (with no or limited overshoot) and contributed to environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure regulation for benchmark statements (EU 2020/1816) and benchmark methodologies (EU 2020/1817).

Alessandro Ghio is an Assistant Professor in Accounting at Laval University (Canada). He holds a Ph.D. in financial accounting from ESSEC Business School and a Ph.D. in management from the University of Pisa. His research focuses on issues surrounding the sociology of the accounting profession, and corporate social media communication. Alessandro has published in several academic journals including Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Management Inquiry, and Accounting and Business Research and he co-authored two books on corporate disclosure and corporate governance (Springer). Alessandro received the Best Paper Award at the 2018 IAAER World Congress. Alessandro is an associate editor of Accounting Horizons and he is board member of Accounting Forum and Journal of Management and Governance. He has been an ad-hoc reviewer for Management Science, European Accounting Review, Journal of Financial Stability, and Critical Perspectives on Accounting. He is the co-instigator of the project “Queering Accounting” and “Working Women and Wellbeing” and he has led and/or taken key roles in competitive research funded projects equating to over one million Australian dollars. He is regularly invited by the accounting professional bodies, Big4 and universities to develop and facilitate workshops and consult on diversity in business. He is Network Leader for the Alternative Accounting Research Network (AARN). Alessandro teaches the capstone course “Global Issues in Accounting”. He received the prestigious 2019 Aspen Institute Global Award 'Ideas Worth Teaching', the 2019 PRME Dean's Education Award and the 2020 Dean's Award for Early Career Teaching. Prior to joining Laval University, Alessandro has been faculty staff at Monash University (Australia), and he has been a controller in a large telecommunication organization, a consultant for the Italian Ministry of Education on social mobility in education and a visiting scholar at Indiana University.

Valentina Beretta is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Economics and Management of the University of Pavia. She is Adjunct Professor of Healthcare Management at the Department of Economics and Management of the University of Pavia, Italy where, since 2018, she is teaching assistant of the course Financial Accounting. She serves as a reviewer for the following scientific journals: International Journal of Business and Management, SAGE Open, Economia Aziendale Online - Business and Management Sciences International Quarterly Review, Inderscience Publishers and SN Business & Economics. She is part of the Editorial Board of the scientific journal SN Business & Economics. She is Teaching Manager of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Telecom project xAIM (eXplainable Artificial Intelligence in healthcare Management). She collaborates on the following Erasmus+ projects: Local Coordinator of UNIPV unit of the project SAHA (raiSe libyAn Higher education heAlth sector for the benefit of local society), Member of the UNIPV unit of the project HEIPNET (Inclusion of Innovative Work-Based-Learning and Business Partnerships in Hei Curricula Development) and Member of the UNIPV unit of the project ESAGOV (L’Enseignement Supérieur Algérien à l’heure de la Gouvernance Universitaire). She is a member of the international research groups "Assessing Trustworthy AI. Best Practice: Machine learning as a supportive tool to recognize cardiac arrest in emergency calls" and “Assessing Trustworthy AI. Best Practice: Deep Learning based Skin Lesion Classifiers” with Z-Inspection®. She was the Scientific Director of the event for healthcare professionals (ECM) "Medicina 4.0" in Francia e in Italia: sfide e soluzioni per la valutazione dei dispositivi medici connessi, which took place online on the 16th of April 2021. She is Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the submitted project ELAN - Economic and organisationaL impActs of Regulation 2017/745 on medical device iNdustry and end-users in France (Call ANR https://anr.fr - CE36 - Santé publique, santé et sociétés), Coordinated by Professor Nicolas Martelli. She was a visiting scholar at the Université Laval (Québec City, Canada), at the Hôpital Européen Georges Pompidou (Paris, France) and invited visiting scholar at CHU Sainte-Justine and INESSS - Institut national d'excellence en santé et services sociaux (Montréal, Canada). Valentina's main research interests include the following: corporate reporting and disclosure, sustainable performance management, health technology assessment and healthcare management.

Francesca Meli is a research fellow at the Department of Economics and Management of the University of Pavia. Her researches concern the topic of “Sustainability management and reporting”, eventually with specific focuses on health systems. She participates in internal and international projects, such as xAIM (eXplainable Artificial Intelligence in healthcare Management) and SAHA (raiSe libyAn Higher education heAlth sector for the benefit of local society), and provides assistance in teaching activities. She also contributed to the third edition of the “Osservatorio Nazionale sulla Rendicontazione Non Finanziaria”, analysing Non-Financial Disclosures (NFDs) published by Italian companies in 2020.

She obtained a Master’s Degree in Economics, Finance and International Integration at the University of Pavia, where she graduated cum laude. Her work was awarded by Istituto Lombardo – Accademia di Scienze e Lettere, for the best thesis in Economics sciences in 2020 in Lombardy region. She also holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and Management from the University of Milan.

He joined the School of Business in January 2018 from the University of York where he worked as a graduate teaching assistant and senior writing tutor. Prior to that he was an associate lecturer (teaching and research) in Accounting and Auditing at Menoufia University Faculty of Commerce, Egypt. He is also an Associate Fellow if the Higher Education Academy. He completed my Masters (MRes) and PhD degrees in Management (Accounting) at the University of York in 2013 and 2017 respectively. He also hold a Bachelor of Commerce (Accounting) and Postgraduate Diploma (Accounting) from Menoufia University. He has an extensive teaching experience in Egypt (Menoufia University) and the UK (University of York & University of Leicester) at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. He has taught across a broad range of Accounting and Business modules in including Financial Accounting, Management Accounting, Feasibility Studies, Cost Accounting, International Accounting, Government Accounting, Accounting Information Systems, Financial Statement Analysis, Accounting for Financial Institutions, Auditing, and Tax Accounting. He has also served as a reviewer for a number of journals including Journal of Applied Accounting Research, Asian Review of Accounting and Journal of Financial Regulation and Compliance.

Sara Trucco is an Associate Professor in financial and management accounting at the Università degli Studi Internazionali di Roma in Rome. Her main teaching efforts are focused on business administration (undergraduate) and international accounting (master level). She got a Ph.D. in Business Administration at the University of Pisa in 2011, where she was a research fellow from 2011 to 2014. Her main research interests are in the fields of financial accounting, auditing and management accounting.

Graduated in Economics and Management at the University of Palermo and specialization in Administration, Finance and Control at Luiss; after a series of assignments in Enel in the audit department, she deals now with ESG issues related to Enel sustainability plan, reporting, indexes and Human Rights coordinating related activities in the different countries of the Group. She is currently a member of the GSSB of the GRI, of the Board of Directors of Enel Americas and of the EFRAG taskforce for the elaboration of EU sustainability reporting standards.