New academic titles awarded to Bayes Business School staff

Bayes Business School has announced the latest round of promotions for its staff.

Paolo Aversa has been promoted to Professor of Strategy; Pawel Bilinski to Professor of Accounting; Hans Frankort to Professor of Strategy; and Marius Luedicke Professor of Marketing.

The title of Reader is awarded to Aneesh Banerjee, Reader in Technology and Innovation Management; John Forth, Reader in Human Resource Management; Sara Jones in Creative Interactive System Design; Iqbal Owadally, Reader in Actuarial Science; Jörg-Martin Ries, Reader in Operations Management; and Byung-Gak Son, Reader in Supply Chain Management. The title of Associate Professor of Voluntary Sector Management is awarded to Justin Davis-Smith CBE.

The title of Associate Professor is awarded to Justin Davis Smith CBE, having previously been Senior Lecturer in Voluntary Sector Management.

There have been five promotions to Senior Lecturer – Li Cunningham, Senior Lecturer in Management ; Joelle Evans, Senior Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour; Malvina Marchese, Senior Lecturer in Finance; Thomas Robinson, Senior Lecturer in Marketing; and Simone Santoni, Senior Lecturer in Strategy.

Below lies a biography of each recipient and their career highlight to date.

Paolo Aversa, Professor of Strategy

Professor Aversa is an expert in strategy and innovation, is best known for his research looking at insights into strategy we can gain from studying motorsport. He has published in the top journals in his field and was the director of Bayes’ Full-time MBA.

“Bayes has been my academic home for a decade. Starting with my appointment as Marie Curie Fellow in 2012 I have managed to build a network of solid collaborations and profound friendships with colleagues and alumni, which has helped me grow on both the personal and professional level. At Bayes, I am empowered to develop my passion for research, education and impact, and achieve important objectives which seemed out of reach when I started my doctoral studies. I am grateful for the opportunity I was given, and excited about what the future may bring.”

Pawel Bilinski, Professor of Accounting

Professor Pawel Bilinski is an expert in financial accounting and has published in a range of top accounting, finance and management journals. At Bayes, he has been the Course Director for the MSc Corporate Finance and the BSc Accounting and Finance, and the Director of the Centre for Financial Analysis and Reporting Research (CeFARR).

“I enjoy working with wonderful colleagues and fantastic students at Bayes Business School. I have been privileged to lead MSc and undergraduate degrees and build partnerships with the industry through the CeFARR research centre. One of my biggest achievements was to launch the Young Accounting Scholars Network through which early career researchers can visit and collaborate with researchers at top UK and European business schools.”

Hans Frankort, Professor of Strategy

Professor Frankort’s expertise is in two areas—interorganisational strategies and employee effort—across which he has published in various leading journals. He has won multiple awards each for his research, teaching, and service. He is one of the School’s Research Champions and a member of the University’s Senate and Doctoral College Board of Studies.

“I am proud I have been able to develop a career at Bayes without losing sight of things important and right. I am grateful to the colleagues and students who helped me keep sight of what those things should be.”

Marius Luedicke, Professor of Marketing

Professor Luedicke, an expert in brand strategies, has contributed to the introduction of a new MSc in Marketing Strategy and Innovation programme in 2014 and supported its growth into Bayes’ most sought-after MSc offering as a Course Director.

“Since joining Bayes Business School in 2012, I have been privileged to meet over a thousand talented students from across the globe in my classroom, discuss brand strategies with brilliant marketers, work with inspiring academics, and conduct impactful research with a range of international scholars. I am grateful that Bayes gave me the opportunity to explore questions that concern the well-being of consumers and the strategies of brand managers, including why locals and immigrants clash over certain consumption practices, how anti-gay stigma has fragmented over time, or how brand leaders acquire charismatic authority in the marketplace.”

Aneesh Banerjee, Reader in Technology and Innovation Management

Dr Banerjee is an expert in technology and Innovation management. His research focuses on topics in enterprise technology systems, supply chains, supplier relationship management, healthcare, and governance.

“I would like to acknowledge the generous support of numerous colleagues in all my endeavours at Bayes. From my research and enterprise collaborations to launching the Global MBA in 2020 – I have been fortunate to have had fantastic teams.”

John Forth, Reader in Human Resource Management

Dr Forth’s work focuses on the organisation of firms and its implications for employee well-being and productivity. His research has been published in a range of international journals and these projects have been funded by various government departments and research councils. Dr Forth teaches on undergraduate and MBA programmes.

“Being at Bayes has given me the freedom to go deeper in my research into wage inequality. I’ve been able to use linked employer-employee data in new ways to improve our understanding of gender and ethnic wage gaps. I’ve also been supported to work with academic and government colleagues to build new wage data for the UK, which will drive more research in this area into the future.”

Sara Jones, Reader in Creative Interactive System Design

Dr Jones’ research takes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of applied creativity and design thinking, and their relationships with innovation, especially digital innovation, professional management education and development. Dr Jones looks forward to building on existing collaborations with colleagues in design and the arts, law, psychology and human-computer interaction design to progress her work further.

“I am proud of the projects we are delivering through the Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice, including my role in the Centre of Excellence for the recent Innovation for African Universities programme, and more recently my responsibility for ‘designing creativity in’ to several workstreams on the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project ‘Building a Well Communities Research Consortium’ to investigate the role of community assets such as parks and galleries in improving health outcomes.”

Iqbal Owadally, Reader in Actuarial Science

Dr Owadally works on investment, finance and insurance. His research spans actuarial statistics, data science, operations research, insurance markets and sustainability. He has been a course director for 12 years on three actuarial science degrees.

“My greatest pleasure at Bayes in the last few years has been to get to know and teach some remarkable students in actuarial science. I have supervised and worked closely with seven excellent PhD students so far. I won grants, including from the Bank of England, and I have had research contracts with two companies. This has enabled me to pursue my broad research interests in several different fields.”

Jorg-Martin Ries, Reader in Operations Management

Dr Ries is a supply chain expert whose research interests are in the area of supply chain analytics, process and working capital optimisation, warehouse and inventory planning as well as supply chain finance and risk management. He has published in leading international journals and is a Director of the Supply Chain Management and Global Logistics programme at the University of London. He also works on the development and implementation of business analytics applications and has collaborated with industry partners.

“Being at Bayes provided me with the opportunity to work with exceptional and highly inspirational people which I am grateful for. For the past three years, I am highly pleased with the publication of four papers and the guest editorial in prestigious operations management journals and the development and launch of our online programme in supply chain management and global logistics.”

Byung-Gak Son, Reader in Supply Chain Management

Dr Son is an expert in understanding the impact of supply network structure on various aspects of buying firms’ performance.

“I am glad that I was able to be a part of a brilliant team of my colleagues (and friends) laying a foundation for empirical network study in the field of supply chain management. Also, according to my students, my teaching has helped them to make a real impact on their careers. If this is true (I hope so), I think, I did a rather good job!”

Justin Davis-Smith, Associate Professor of Voluntary Sector Management

Associate Professor Davis-Smith is an expert in voluntary sector management and was awarded the CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2011 in recognition of his work on behalf of volunteering and the voluntary sector. He wrote the volunteering strategy for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and has published numerous articles and books on volunteering and the voluntary sector. He is course lead for the voluntary sector masters' programme at Bayes and has devised a new under-graduate degree in Business Management for Social Purpose, which launched in 2021.

“During my time at Bayes, I am particularly proud of setting up a new under-graduate pathway degree in Business Management for Social Purpose to reflect a growing interest among students in value beyond the bottom line, and in contributing to the school's EDI work and decolonisation agenda as Course Director of the charities Master's programme and member of the University's historic funding working group. I am also delighted that my recent book, ‘Idealists and Realists: 100 years of NCVO and voluntary action’, was shortlisted for the best non-profit history book by the international Association for Research in Nonprofit Organisations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA).”

Li Cunningham, Senior Lecturer in Management

Dr Cunningham main interests lie in the areas of international and comparative human resource management, gender and diversity management, private enterprise business and development, especially in China. Her work has been published in numerous leading journals and presented at international conferences.

“Bayes has given me a wonderful platform to further my research and widen academic contacts in far-east Asia, especially China. I am also very proud to lead the largest degree program at Bayes and City, University of London.”

Joelle Evans, Senior Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour

Dr Evans studies how professionals respond to societal and organisational demands for responsibility and accountability. Her work has been published in multiple academic journals and she is also the recipient of a Best Paper Award. Dr Evans teaches courses on Corporate Social Responsibility and Organisational Behaviour in the undergraduate, full-time MBA and modular MBA programs.

“My work highlights some complicated moral issues and dilemmas that professionals must contend with in their everyday work lives. I am pleased to have published work about challenges that are too often silenced in organizations.”

Malvina Marchese, Senior Lecturer in Finance

Dr Marchese is an applied econometrician and a financial forecaster. She is a Fellow of the Institute of International Finance, the Editor of the Foresight: the International Journal of Applied Forecasting and Associate Editor of the Journal of Commodity Markets and of the International Journal of Finance and Economics. Her work is on volatility and correlation forecasting with applications to energy and commodity markets.

"My greatest achievement at Bayes has been transforming the Finance Cluster degrees over the pandemic period to a successful and high in demand program with very strong employability focus and designing a new degree in Fintech with Data Science for undergraduate students starting in October 2023."

Thomas Robinson, Senior Lecturer in Marketing

Dr Robinson is an expert in consumer behaviour and looks at temporality in mobility, nostalgia, branding and technologies, among others. His research is inspired by the philosophies of the time and has been covered in a number of leading journals.

“In 2018 I became the track leader of the Undergraduate in Marketing. This role allowed me to rethink the substance and learning aims in the modules offered. My focus was on student experience and skills needed in FYP outcomes and setting up preparatory content in the modules leading up to the last term. Student experience was transformed to one that was fun and inspirational and resulted in Bayes’ undergraduate offering in Marketing as second best in the UK.”

Simone Santoni, Senior Lecturer in Strategy

Dr Santoni's work combines economic sociology theories and Machine Learning tools to understand the organisation and functioning of cultural markets. His methodological research looks at natural experiments and the problem of empirical identification in observational studies. He is the lead developer of DrSnow – an integrative software implementing natural experiment designs in Python and Julia – and NoveltyMeter – a Bayesian algorithm and software to measure the offerings' novelty in heterogeneous markets.

“In the past two years, I have served as a guest editor for the Leadership Quarterly’s special issue on “harnessing exogenous shocks for leadership and management research.” I am proud of the background of the special issue, which builds on my previous research on natural experiments and the problem of endogeneity in observational studies. I am proud of the process my four guest editor fellows and I have gone through, which allows PhD students to challenge some prevailing views on the role of exogenous shocks in management research. And I am certainly proud of the idea behind the special issue — the search for endogeneity’s kryptonite must continue!”

Professor André Spicer, Dean of Bayes Business School, said:

“I am incredibly proud of the progress made by our outstanding staff at Bayes. These promotions are a reflection of the range of Bayes’ excellence in research, teaching, as well as engagement with practice and service. These individuals are world leaders in their fields and I congratulate them all.”

Ends