Irish Accounting & Finance Association Annual Conference

Irish Accounting & Finance Association Annual Conference

The 32nd IAFA Annual Conference and Doctoral Colloquium took place in DCU Business School between May 15th & 17th.  The event was organised by Dr Ruth Mattimoe, Assistant Professor in Accounting, and was opened by Prof Anne Sinnott, Executive Dean, on Thursday 16th.

This was an extremely well attended conference with empirical, theoretical and review papers presented in all areas of accounting, finance, taxation and risk management.

Prof Barbara Flood opened the Doctoral Colloquium on Wednesday May 15th which provided an opportunity for both current and prospective PhD students to learn more about the PhD process and generate ideas for research topics. Current PhD students, at all stages of doctoral research, were provided with an opportunity to present their work and receive feedback from experienced researchers.

The main conference was also attended by several foreign delegates from Canada, Portugal and Spain, as well as a growing number of foreign PhD students who are working at Irish universities.

Left to Right:  Prof. Joan Ballantine (University of Ulster), Doctoral Colloquium Organiser , Prof Anne Jeny (Essec Paris- IAFA-EAA link), Prof Ian Thomson (Birmingham Business School), Plenary Speaker;  Dr. Elaine Doyle (University of Limerick), Chair, IAFA and Dr. Ruth Mattimoe (DCUBS), Conference Organiser.

Prof Ian Thomson, Director, Lloyds Banking Group Centre for Responsible Business, Convenor Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research, Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham opening his Plenary Session “Accounting and Finance in times of Climate Crisis”

A gala dinner took place at the Croke Park Hotel on Thursday 16^th where the Doctoral Funding Competition awarded prizes to doctoral students who presented work at the colloquium, and whose research contributes to the aims of IAFA.

One of the winners on the night was Katie Scallan who was presented with an award for transcription of interviews that she has been collecting over the last twelve months.

“I presented my overall PhD project on Wednesday, and I presented on Thursday on a research paper that I have in motion at the moment.

The community here is very friendly and helpful and all the feedback you get is constructive and it’s really useful all for your development. 

It opens your eyes to the different areas of research that are going on – you get so blinkered by your own research that it’s sometimes hard to see beyond it.  Every presentation that I’ve been to I’ve got something from it – whether it’s how the work was presented or an approach that they took, or a theory that they used.  No matter how much you think it might not be relevant to you, you always get something from it.”

Prof Joan Ballantine, Doctoral Colloquium Organiser with Dr Elaine Doyle, Chair of IAFA with two of the prizewinners awarded funding at the Colloquium- Katie Scallan, Waterford Institute of Technology- extreme left and Karen-Ann Dwyer (second from right) DCU Business School

Overall, the feedback from the event was that the presentations were thought-provoking and insightful, covering topics from Artificial Intelligence to Sustainability to Big Data in Accountancy and Finance.