Fawaz Khaled, Ph.D.

Dr. Fawaz holds Ph.D. in Real Estate Economics and Finance. His doctoral studies were successfully concluded at Brunel University London in 2017. Alongside this, he possesses a Master's degree in Modelling and Management of Risk. His dedication to academic excellence and pedagogical competence is further underscored by recognition as Fellow from the Higher Education Academy and attainment of an Academic Practice Certificate from the University of Gloucestershire. Currently, Dr. Khaled occupies a role of senior lecturer at Oxford Brookes University. His teaching endeavors encompass a broad spectrum, predominantly centered on real estate investment, finance, economics, and development appraisal. His responsibilities encompass a diverse range of activities, including teaching, research, administration, and coordination of Real Estate Career Fairs.

Dr. Fawaz's research interests revolve around the exploration of economic and financial aspects of real estate markets. His proficiency extends to the application of advanced econometric models to develop policy-oriented research methodologies. Currently, he supervises a Ph.D. student and several other students embarking on their final dissertations. Dr. Khaled is also a member of the Land, Design and Development (LDD) research group and contributes as a peer reviewer for Routledge at Taylor & Francis Group and International Journal of Finance & Economics (IJFE).

Title of speech: Mortgage Default, Property Prices and Banks' Lending Behaviour in Hong Kong SAR

Naser Makarem, Ph.D.

Dr. Naser Makarem is an assistant professor in accounting at the University of Aberdeen, UK. He is the leader of MSc Accounting and Finance programme and Partnerships Programmes Director at Aberdeen Business School. Dr. Makarem teaches several courses in the area of financial accounting both in the UK and at overseas partners in China and Qatar. He supervises PhD students and has research interests in the broad area of financial reporting and particularly earnings management.

Dr. Makarem's research mainly focuses on factors influencing corporate financial reporting. In particular, he studies how social, economic and political factors affect earnings management. He is also interested in changes in earnings management behaviour over time as well as the impact of regulatory environment and political and economic factors on such changes. He also studies how earnings manipulation is restricted by factors such as external audit and corporate governance. More recently, he has started some projects on the impact of corporate social and environmental responsibility on financial reporting and non-financial disclosures, particularly corporate human rights disclosures.

Title of speech: Do female audit partners matter for audit quality? Evidence from Iran

Guanming He, Ph.D.

Guanming works at the business school of Durham University in the United Kingdom, and has served as the director of accounting PhD program and for the university's research degree committee from 2019 to 2023. He has published solo-authored papers at the top-tier and major second-tier international journals including Review of Accounting Studies, Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Financial Review, International Journal of Accounting, and Review of Quantitative Finance & Accounting, as well as an array of co-authored papers at a variety of internationally renowned journals. His research has been featured in various mainstream media and press releases worldwide. He also frequently provides review services for a range of internationally reputable accounting, finance, management, and economics journals (FT 50/ABS 4-3/ABDC A*/A ranked) and books (by Cengage/Pearson/SAGE). He has won 8 best paper awards at a number of internationally reputable conferences and was honored with excellent teaching awards in the Nanyang Technological University and University of Warwick, respectively. In addition, he has attained teaching evaluation scores of 90%+ for quite a few times for his teaching on the undergraduate program, master program, and doctoral program, respectively, at the Nanyang Technological University, University of Warwick, and Durham University.

Title of speech: Assessment of the efficiency of corporate business activities

Florian Marcel Nuţă, Ph.D.

Florian Marcel Nuţă is a Professor Dr. Habil. at Danubius University from Galaţi, with over 17 years of teaching and research experience. He is affiliated with Ştefan cel Mare University of Suceava, Doctoral School of Social and Human Sciences, for research and doctoral supervision. His scientific research is conducted in the following fields: Environmental Accounting, Climate Change Economics, Energy Economics, Urban Environmental Accounting, Carbon Accounting, Green Taxation, and Public Policy.

He is involved in numerous editorial initiatives as editor-in-chief, editor, member of the international scientific board, and reviewer for scientific journals and international conferences, conducting more than 500 peer-reviews during his academic career.

Dr. Nuţă worked as a reviewer for Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews, Energy Efficiency, Resources Policy, Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments, Economic Research, Journal of Entrepreneurship in Emerging Countries, Cogent Business and Management, and other peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Title of speech: The economic and social impact of implementing ESGs for climate-neutral universities

Arman Eshraghi, Ph.D.

Arman Eshraghi is a Professor of Finance and Chair of Finance and Investment at Cardiff Business School, UK. His academic research spans finance, accounting and psychology with interests including behavioural finance, financial technology and corporate governance. His work is published in some of the leading journals of the field, cited in the media including the Financial Times, Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, Forbes and Bloomberg, and contributed to handbooks published by Cambridge University, Wiley, Springer and Routledge. Professor Eshraghi is an Editor of International Review of Economics and Finance, Senior Editor of Finance Research Letters, Shimomura Fellow of the Development Bank of Japan, Fellow of the Centre for the Study of Decision-Making Uncertainty at UCL, Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Director of the Cardiff Fintech Research Group, and an Advisory Board Member of Fintech Wales. He has advised a number of UK fintech and investment firms in recent years.

Canh Thien Dang, Ph.D.

Dr. Dang is a Lecturer in Economics (Assistant Professor) at the Department of Economics, King's Business School, King's College London. He is also an academic supervisor at the Institute of Finance and Technology, University College of London, and a chief examiner for the University of London International Programme (Econometrics). Before joining King's, he lectured and conducted research at the London School of Economics as an LSE Fellow in Economics, and at the University of Warwick as a postdoctoral fellow (in Economics). He completed his PhD in Economics at the University of Nottingham in 2018. He uses both theory and data to answer questions at the intersection of economics and public policies. His research interests include Development Economics, Public Economics, and Applied Econometrics. His current research focuses on the economics of nonprofit organisations, financial data, public good provision (housing, security, preferential tax treatment, and public procurement), and innovation. Recently, he has published at the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and the Economic Development and Culture Change.

Kausar Abbas, Ph.D.

Kausar Abbas holds a PhD in Islamic Banking and Finance from International Islamic University Malaysia. She teaches Islamic Banking and Finance, E-commerce, Risk Management, Corporate Finance, Quantitative Research, and supervises dissertations at the Postgraduate level. Dr. Abbas has experience teaching undergraduate and postgraduate business and management courses since 2015 in Pakistan and Dubai. Dr. Abbas has presented multiple papers related to Islamic Banking and Finance at the national and international level and has organized global forums, seminars, workshops and training sessions on Islamic Banking and Finance for different sectors since 2014. She has more than 18 papers published in refereed academic journals to her credit.

Kristle Romero Cortes,Ph.D.

Dr. Kristle Cortés is an Associate Professor in the School of Banking and Finance in the Business School at the University of New South Wales. Her research interests include financial intermediation, empirical corporate finance, entrepreneurial finance, and the structure, optimization, and regulatory practices of the financial services industry. Dr. Cortés previously worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland where, in addition to her research, she took part in the Federal Open Market Committee process. Her work has been published in the Journal of Financial Economics, The Review of Economics and Statistics and The Review of Corporate Finance Studies. Dr. Cortés has a PhD in finance from Boston College and a BA in economics and philosophy from Northwestern University.

Chinny Nzekwe-Excel, Ph.D.

Dr Chinny Nzekwe-Excel is an Academic Lead, Consultant and Research Expert in the broad areas of Management Development Initiatives & Repositioning Strategies; International Business; Leadership Concepts; Operations Management Research; Teaching & Learning Innovations, and Construction Management. She is also a Statistics Expert; a Senior Fellow of the Advance Higher Education, UK; a Certified Management & Business Educator; and a Leadership and Management Professional.

Chinny is the Academic Director of the International Masters of Business Administration, and the Program Director of the International Masters of Business Administration with Professional Practice at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. She has strategic involvements with wider & global higher education platforms and has published over 50 research outputs in leading academic journals & conference/ scholarly networks.

Chinny's research outputs have continued to gain wide attention and international recognitions including the Highly Commended Emeralds Literati Networks award. She serves as an editor and a reviewer in several peer-reviewed journals including the Built Environment, Project & Asset Management; Innovations in Education and Teaching Journal; International Journal of Learning; Research & Development, Science Publishing Group.

Muhammad Abrar, Ph.D.

Dr.Muhammad Abrar is a Management Sciences (Marketing) Professor. Currently serving as a Professor & Director Lyallpur business school at Government College University, Faisalabad, Pakistan. He received his PhD in Business Administration (Marketing) from The Huazhong University of Science and Technology Wuhan, P.R.China, and holds an MBA from Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Pakistan and M.Sc. (Hons.) Agronomy degree from the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan. He is a well-known scholar in his research areas (Brand Management, Supply Chain Management, Digital Marketing, Services Marketing, Management, and Business Education.).His scholarly peer-reviewed research articles have been published in the top journals, e.g., Journal of Enterprise Information Management, Management Decision, Journal of Competitiveness, Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Economic and Industrial Democracy, International Journal of Emerging Markets, Chinese Management Studies, Autex Research Journal, SAGE Open, Quality & Quantity, Industria Textila, Journal of Islamic Marketing. He can be contacted at: abrarphd@gcuf.edu.pk.

Javier Cifuentes-Faura, Ph.D.

Javier Cifuentes-Faura works in the Department of Financial Economics and Accounting at the University of Murcia (Spain). He graduated in Business Administration and Management from the University of Murcia with the Extraordinary End of Degree Award and the best grade of the promotion. He has completed postgraduate studies such as the Master in Business Administration MBA and the Master in Commercial and Marketing Management at the European Business School of Barcelona, both with Cum Laude recognition for academic excellence. He has been awarded the "Economics and Business 2018" prize by the Official Association of Economists. His lines of research include those related to public administration and economics, business, education, and those related to sustainability and environment. He is a member of the work plan of the EDINSOST2 project: Integration of sustainable development objectives in sustainability education in Spanish university degrees. He has published in JCR and Scopus impact journals, such as Educational Review, Social Indicators Research, Evaluation Review or Journal of Policy Modeling. He has participated in several international conferences, being invited to some of them as keynote speaker.

Avanidhar Subrahmanyam (Subra), Ph.D.

Professor Subrahmanyam ("Subra") is currently a Distinguished Professor of Finance and the Goldyne and Irwin Hearsh Chair in Money and Banking at UCLA. He received his Ph.D. in finance from the Anderson School in 1990. He was Assistant Professor at Columbia University from 1990 to 1993, and Visiting Associate Professor at Anderson in 1993-1994. His current research interests range from the relationship between the trading environment of a firm's stock and the firm's cost of capital to behavioral theories for asset price behavior to empirical determinants of the cross-section of equity returns. Professor Subrahmanyam is the author or coauthor of more than a hundred refereed journal articles on these and other subjects in leading finance and economics journals. He is a member of the Working Research Group on Market Microstructure recently established by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in Cambridge, Mass.

Title of Speech: Leverage is a Double-Edged Sword

Anh L. Tran, Ph.D.

Dr Anh Tran is a Professor of Finance at Bayes Business School (formerly Cass Business School) of City, University of London in August 2010. He is the Academic Director of the M&A Research Centre, the Director of the Business School's summer programme, a fellow of the Gupta Governance Institute, and a fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy. He is also a founding member, trustee and vice president of the Vietnam Finance Association International. Professor Tran's research interests are in empirical corporate finance, including mergers and acquisitions, institutional investors, executive compensation, and corporate governance. He has published many research articles in world leading journals including Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and Management Science. His research papers have been presented at more than 40 international conferences and 60 university seminars around the world. He has been a co-chair of the annual academic conference in M&A at the Business School and acting as a journal editorial board member and a reviewer for many journals and conferences in the field.

Link to profile on the university website: https://www.bayes.city.ac.uk/faculties-and-research/experts/anh-tran

Title of Speech: When and How Are Rule 10b5-1 Plans Used for Insider Stock Sales?

Javier Birchenall, Ph.D.

Javier Birchenall is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB). His research interests are in macroeconomics and long-term economic growth, especially on the effects of disease on long-run economic development, demography and population economics, and labor market mismatch. His work includes studies on the quantity-quality trade-off in fertility, the relationship between economic growth and the secular decline in mortality, the role of non-market-based allocations in the provision of military services, and the influence of agricultural productivity on China's structural transformation. Professor Birchenall received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 2004 under the supervision of Professor Robert Fogel. He has hold visiting positions at Yonsei University (Korea), Universidad de los Andes (Colombia), Universidad del Rosario (Colombia). He is currently an Associate Editor of Economia, the journal of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA). He joined the Economics Department at UCSB in 2004.

Title of Speech: Disease and Economic Development