Research Excellence Award winners 2019

Dr Julia Fehrer, Graduate School of Management

Julia is a Lecturer in Digital Marketing at the Graduate School of Management. She received her PhD very recently – only in June 2017. Despite this, she has demonstrated excellent performance both in terms of research output, international research collaborations, industry engagement and leadership.

Julia’s research is strongly aligned with one of the Business School’s strategic themes – Innovation and Value Creation. Her research has produced high quality outputs that range from journal articles, through book chapters to top conference papers and has enabled her to receive several esteemed awards during the last few years. She is actively engaged in several research projects with industry, covering themes such as collaborative economy, commercialization of deep-tech innovations and developing markets for new bio-based materials.

Julia is also the co-leader of a newly established special interest group on Market Shaping and Innovation within the Australian & New Zealand Marketing Academy. In less than a year this group has attracted 73 members from 37 universities in 12 countries.

Dr Maryam Hasannasab, Accounting and Finance

Maryam is a Research Fellow at the Department of Accounting and Finance.

Less than two years since completing her PhD, Maryam is already recognised as a high-flying researcher in the area of efficiency, operational productivity and sustainability. Sustainable business is one of the areas where the Business School is trying to develop and promote its expertise.

Her research portfolio includes innovative work on pricing models for bank equity capital and non-performing loans and models for the pricing of environmental outputs such as greenhouse emissions. Other work conducted by Maryam is in the space of public health. During the period 2016-2018, Maryam has published papers in top-ranked journals and completed other work with internationally leading researchers in her field. Not only has she demonstrated strong publishing performance, she also contributed actively to the research environment through reviewing for a number of highly ranked journals, sharing her expertise with colleagues and giving invited presentations at conferences.

In addition, she acted as the principal investigator to put forward an application for the Marsden Fund and progressed to the second round last year. 

Professor Charl de Villiers, Graduate School of Management

Charl is employed at the Graduate School of Management. He is a distinguished accounting academic whose research covers areas such as sustainability accounting and reporting as well as integrated reporting. He also studies management control systems, particularly in relation to carbon emissions and climate change. Under this umbrella he examines the social and environmental implications of business activities and the social and environmental disclosure decisions managers make.

His research has attracted a high number of citations documenting high scholarly impact.  Charl has made outstanding contributions to the research community by regularly organising high-profile disciplinary conferences. He serves on 10 editorial boards and is actively involved in reviewing work – in 2018 he was ranked by Publon as a top 1% reviewer in the field of economics and business.

Professor Peter Boxall, Management and International Business

Peter’s home department is Management and International Business. His research is concerned with strategic HRM, including a stream of research on ‘high-performance work systems’ and includes studying the mutuality between employers and workers and how it can be improved, making employment relationships more productive and more satisfying.

Peter’s research has high scholarly impact. An article published in 2017 in HRM Review that contained a comprehensive review of the HRM literature based on an analysis of 12,000+ articles, Peter’s 2009 co-authored article on high-performance work systems was identified as the 2nd most highly cited article in the world in the field of employment relations. Web of Science has also identified this piece of research as a highly cited paper – top 1% of its academic field. The book Strategy and HRM co-authored by Peter was highly praised, too – the strategic HRM paradigm that this book put forward is known as the 2nd most highly cited paradigm in the management literature.

Peter has made continuous efforts to translate his research into actionable knowledge. He was the founding President of the academic branch of the HR Institute of NZ and he was instrumental in establishing the Institute’s Research Forum which brings together HR academics, graduate students and HR practitioners.

Professor Prasanna Gai, Economics

Prasanna is a Professor of Macroeconomics at the Department of Economics. Over the course of his career he has continually contributed at an outstanding level to generating and disseminating knowledge at the intersection of monetary economics, financial economics and the economics of banking. In that respect his research is well aligned with not just one but two of the Business School’s strategic themes – Leadership and governance and Sustainable business.

Prasanna has published in top quality outlets over the last ten years and has been continuously internationally recognised at the highest level in his specialist field. He has published quality in quantity. His research stands the test of various international rankings and his papers also stand the test of time by being highly cited. There are thus multiple streams of evidence that demonstrate his strong publishing record.

In addition, Prasanna’s research has made significant impact on economic policy. His research directly informs policy developed by multiple OECD central banks. He is serving on various international scientific committees. Other international bodies recognize Prasanna’s research through invitations to prestigious appointments.