Our people
Members of the Auckland Centre for Financial Research are elected based on the quality of their recent academic research output and membership is only continued if the appropriate level of research performance is maintained. This ensures that the quality of the work conducted by members of the centre is at the highest level.
On sabbatical at present, Professor Nguyen’s (PhD – Massey University) research interests cover corporate governance, market microstructure, market liquidity, and behavioural finance.
Professor Gilbert holds a PhD degree from Auckland University of Technology and is the Head of the Department of Finance. His research interests include law and finance, financial capability, corporate governance, and market microstructure.
Acting Centre Director, Dr Fernandez-Perez holds a PhD degree from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. His research expertise is in financial econometrics, computational economics, fixed income and commodities.
Professor Tourani-Rad is is Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Business, Economics and Law at AUT and a member of the Australian-New Zealand Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee. He focuses on corporate finance, investments and financial markets and ranks among the top 2% of finance academics worldwide.
Ayesha holds a PhD in Financial Econometrics from Queensland University of Technology, Australia. Her research, teaching, and professional interests focus on improving New Zealanders’ understanding of healthy financial relationships and their personal financial fitness.
Dr Koerniadi holds a PhD degree from Auckland University of Technology. His research interests include corporate finance, corporate governance and earnings management.
Dr Badshah holds a PhD degree from Hanken School of Economics, Finland. His areas of research include empirical asset pricing, financial market integration, market microstructure, derivatives and emerging markets.
Dr Da Fonseca's (PhD - University Claude Bernard Lyon I, France) research has a strong quantitative focus and deals with issues around the pricing of derivative products and risk management.
Dr Chen holds a PhD degree in Finance from University of Texas at San Antonio, the United States. His current research interests are in the areas of corporate finance, market microstructure, international finance, investments, and real estate.
Dr Dodd holds a PhD degree from Durham University, United Kingdom. Her expertise is in the area of international finance and empirical corporate finance.
Dr Wang holds a PhD degree from the University of British Colombia, Canada. His expertise is in the area of risk management and applied econometrics.
Dr Hegde holds a PhD degree from Purdue University, USA. His research interests span topics in empirical corporate finance, corporate governance and asset pricing with a focus on institutional trading behaviour, role of board of directors in firm performance and textual analyses in finance.
Sara Ali holds a PhD degree from the University of Karachi. Her research interest includes asset pricing, financial risk management, investments, hedge funds, and financial econometrics, and recent research focuses on economic policy uncertainty and institutional investors' behaviour. Sara specialises in handling and analysing textual data using industry-standard software like STATA and SAS, developing Python codes to explore the emerging topics in research.
Dr Kumar holds a PhD degree from the Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. His expertise is in the area of time series and panel data analysis.
Dr Bahadar holds a PhD degree from Lincoln University, New Zealand. His research interests include Financial Markets, Corporate Finance, and Corporate Governance.
Dr Yang holds a PhD degree from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His current research interests are in the areas of corporate finance, investments, and China-related issues.
Dr Nguyen holds a PhD in Finance from the University of Waikato. His research includes corporate governance, financial risk management and financial analysis.
Tracy is the coordinator for the Auckland Centre for Financial Research and responsible for the website, communications, conferences and events.
Honorary Fellows:
Professor Bart Frijns, PhD
Prof. Frijns is a Full Professor, Department of Accounting and Finance, Research Line Resilience (part of LIRS program) at Open Universiteit: Heerlen, NL. His research expertise is in empirical finance and applied financial econometrics, which he has applied in the areas of market microstructure, volatility modelling, etc.
Professor Robert I. Webb, PhD
Prof. Webb is the Paul Tudor Jones II Research Professor at the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, USA. Prof. Webb holds a PhD from the University of Chicago and has extensive industry experience in futures markets. Prof. Webb is the editor of the Journal of Futures Markets.
Associate Fellows:
Professor Sugato Chakravarti, PhD
Professor Chakravarti is with the Department of Consumer Science at Purdue University, US. He holds a doctorate from Indiana University. Prof. Chakravarti’s research interests are in the areas of Investments; Asset Pricing; Stock, Bond, and Options Markets; Market Microstructure; International Finance; Small Business Finance; Banking Relationships; Corporate Finance; Household Behavior and Family Economics related to Investments and Retirement.
Dr Indriawan holds a PhD degree from Auckland University of Technology. His expertise focuses on macroeconomic news announcements and underlying market microstructure theory that drives prices of stocks listed in multiple markets.
Professor James W Kolari, PhD
Professor Kolari is from the Mays Business School, Texas A & M University where he has taught financial markets and institutions since earning his PhD in 1980. He has published over 90 refereed articles, 10 co-authored books and numerous monographs.
Professor Thorsten Lehnert, PhD
Professor Lehnert is with the Luxembourg School of Finance (LSF) at the University of Luxembourg and holds a PhD in Finance from Maastricht University in the Netherlands. Prof. Lehnert is the Co-head of the Doctoral School of Economics and Finance at the LSF. His research interests are in the area of volatility modelling and option pricing.
Professor Qian Sun, PhD
Professor Sun is the head of the Department of Finance at Fudan University, China. Prof. Sun has a PhD from Arizona State University, US, and has an extensive publication record in the area of Corporate Finance and Investments.
Dr Remco Zwinkels, PhD
Dr Zwinkels is an Associate Professor at the Free university Amsterdam, the Netherlands and has a doctorate from the Radboud University, the Netherlands. Dr Zwinkels’ research expertise is in the area of Heterogeneous Agent Modelling and Behavioural Finance.
Dr JinGi Ha, PhD
Dr Ha completed his PhD in Finance at Singapore Management University. His previous research developed a simple measure for implied informed trading and proved its effectiveness. His research areas of interest include market microstructure and mutual fund governance.
PhD students
- Chris Zhang
- Huiqiong (Joanne) Tang
- Ni Yang
- Damon Yu
Visiting researchers
Many high-profile, international researchers have visited our centre over the years.
Scholarships and positions
Find out about scholarships and other opportunities available in our centre.