John Wilson is Professor of Banking & Finance and Head of the Department of Finance at the Business School, University of St Andrews. He is also the Director of the Centre for Responsible Banking & Finance. His research focuses on financial institutions in Asia, Europe and North America. He has published 90 journal articles (with over 14,000 citations; H-index 52) in outlets including Journal of Money Credit & Banking; Journal of Corporate Finance; Journal of International Economics, Journal of Economic Geography; Journal of the Royal Statistical Society; British Journal of Management; European Journal of Operational Research; Regional Studies; Social Science & Medicine; Economic Inquiry; Journal of Banking & Finance; Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization; Journal of International Money & Finance; Journal of Business Finance & Accounting; Journal of Financial Stability; and the International Journal of Industrial Organization.

‌John is the author/co-author of numerous books. These include: European Banking: Efficiency, Technology and Growth (also translated to Chinese); Industrial Organisation: An Analysis of Competitive Markets; The Economics of Business Strategy; Industrial Organization: Competition Strategy and Policy (also translated to Italian and Greek), now in its fifth edition; and Banking: A Very Short Introduction (also translated to Chinese and Uzbek). John edited a five volume Routledge Major Works in Banking. He co-edited the first, second, third and fourth editions of the Oxford Handbook of Banking, also translated to Chinese and Serbian (with Allen Berger & Phil Molyneux). John also co-edited the Handbook of Post Crisis Financial Modelling (with Emmanuel Haven, Phil Molyneux, Sergei Fedotov & Meryem Duygun) and Financial Literacy and Responsible Finance in the FinTech Era (with George Panos & Chris Adcock).

John has been a Member of Scientific Advisory Board of Chartered Association of Business Schools Academic Journal Guide (ABS Journal Rankings) since 2012. Previously, he was Treasurer and General Secretary of the British Accounting and Finance Association during the period 2009-2011, and the founding Chair of the British Accounting and Finance Association Financial Markets and Institutions Special Interest Group over the period 2007-2018. He currently serves as a member of the Conference of Professors of Accounting & Finance Executive Committee. John is also a member of the UK Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) subject statement benchmarking panel for Finance. In 2020, he was appointed as a full panel member to the 2021 Research Evaluation Framework (REF) Sub-panel 17: Business and Management Studies. John has held visiting positions at the Helsinki School of Economics, University of Limoges and University College Dublin. In 2024, he was appointed to the 2025 REF People, Culture and Environment (PCE) pilot panel for Business and Management Studies. 

John  has also acted as external examiner on various Masters programmes to numerous universities (including City University, London (Bayes Business School), University of Edinburgh, University of Dundee and Queen's University of Belfast among others) and examined over 30 PhDs in universities in the UK, Austria, France, Finland and Italy.

John serves as Editor at  Journal of Business Finance and Accounting and Associate Editor to the Journal of Money Credit and Banking, Journal of Financial Stability,  British Accounting Review, European Journal of Finance and Finance Research Letters. He also serves on the editorial board of a number of journals including the Journal of Financial Economic Policy and the Journal of Financial Regulation and Compliance. He has guest edited ten journal special issues for outlets including Journal of Banking & Finance, Journal of Corporate Finance, Journal of Economic Behaviour & Organization, British Accounting Review, European Journal of Finance and Public Money & Management.

In the period June 2011 to April 2012, John served as a full member of a Commission on Credit Unions established by the Irish Government. The Commission delivered interim and final reports to the Minister for Finance in September 2011 and April 2012 respectively. Recommendations in these reports formed the basis on new primary legislation (Credit Union and Co-operation with Overseas Regulators Act 2012) passed in the Irish parliament in 2013.  In 2018, John delivered evidence on the impact of Brexit on UK small and medium-sized enterprises to the House of Lords EU Internal Markets Committee.