Accounting & Finance Department

The Accounting and Finance Department offers a number of specialist accounting and finance courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.

Courses  Our courses provide innovative, vocationally-relevant knowledge and skills and are internationally recognised for excellence in professional education at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Staff  Teaching staff are involved in delivering and regularly updating our innovative and vocationally-relevant undergraduate and postgraduate accounting courses. They are also actively involved in research in a wide range of interest areas.

Research  The Department has achieved significant success in terms of publications in internationally ranked refereed journals and has hosted a number of conferences.

Courses

Our undergraduate and accredited specialist postgraduate courses offer the option to study by full-time, part-time or by online supported distance learning.

Providing vocationally-relevant theory and developing applied accounting and finance skills, our course programme is internationally recognised for excellence in professional education at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

To give our students the opportunity to find out about current practices within the workplace we regularly invite guest speakers from both the accounting profession and from industry. These have included senior members of staff from Anderson, Anderson and Brown, Price Waterhouse Coopers, Johnston Carmichael, Simmons and Co (International) and also our visiting Professors, Mark Allison and Colin Welsh.

Undergraduate Courses

The Department is responsible for two innovative and successful undergraduate courses -

The BA (Hons) Accounting and Finance degree is fully-accredited with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland and also receives some excellent exemptions from the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants and the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants.

The online supported distance learning course BA Accounting (with CIMA Advanced Diploma) degree allows students to uniquely graduate with both their BA and a recognition award from the professional body CIMA.

Postgraduate Courses

Professional development modules such as CIMA Professional Development are also now available by online study.

Graduates from our undergraduate and postgraduate courses are equipped with the skills necessary to develop their career to a senior level in accounting and finance or across a variety of other sectors.

Research

A thriving research culture has been developed within the department with significant success achieved by staff who have published in internationally refereed journals.

Departmental research covers areas such as Accounting Education and Critical Accounting and is managed by the departmental Research Co-ordinator, Professor Linda Kirkham. Staff regularly publish papers in journals, publish refereed monographs and book chapters and are active in presenting papers at national and international conferences. The department has also hosted a number of high profile conferences including the British Accounting Association conference.

Recognition in 2008 RAE
The Accounting and Finance department achieved recognition for their excellent research capability in the 2008 RAE, with 70% of the research output deemed to be of international standing. This is the first time that the Accounting and Finance department was submitted for external review in this way and the department was one of only 14 departments in the UK to submit in this specialist area.

This research rating further consolidates the reputation of the department which is renowned for its teaching capability and demonstrates that the department is a key player in the Accounting and Finance academic community. Departmental research covers areas such as Accounting Education and Critical Accounting -

Accounting Education:  Specific areas of interest - 

  • graduate selection and the profession (Elizabeth Gammie);
  • the performance of undergraduate accountancy students (Elizabeth Gammie and Peter Jones);
  • group assessment at final degree level (Elizabeth Gammie, Brenda Paver and Moraq Matson);
  • selection techniques within the accountancy profession (Elizabeth Gammie);
  • gender issues (Elizabeth Gammie, Brenda Paver and Fiona Duncan);
  • professional training and the development of a professional identity (Susan Hamilton)

Critical Accounting: Areas of interest include -

  • gender issues in accounting (Linda Kirkham);
  • the accounting profession (Elizabeth Gammie and Linda Kirkham);
  • accounting history (Linda Kirkham).

Full information on publications can be seen on the individual staff page, such as those for -

Research Contact
For further information on research within the Accounting and Finance department please contact the Research Co-ordinator, Professor Linda Kirkham

Tel: +44 (0)1224 263554
Email: l.m.kirkham@rgu.ac.uk

Staff

Staff have both established academic expertise and professional experience in the accounting sector. Their responsibilities, research interests and publications can be found on individual staff profile pages.

Head of Department

  • Elizabeth Gammie

    Professor Gammie is Head of the Department of Accounting and Finance. Her research interests are the Accounting Profession and Accounting Education and gender issues.  

    • Research Co-ordinator

  • Linda Kirkham

    Linda Kirkham is a Professor of Accounting within the Department of Accounting and Finance and the Research Co-coordinator for the department.  

    • Academic Staff

  • Farooq Ahmad

    Dr Farooq Ahmad

    Dr Ahmad is a lecturer in International Finance and Corporate Financial Management. His research interests include: Financial Markets Efficiency Analysis; Regulation and Evaluation of innovation/reform impacts on Financial markets.  

  • Michelle Coull

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    Michelle Coull is a Lecturer in the department of Accounting and Finance.  

  • Fiona Duncan

    Fiona Duncan is Course Leader for the BA (Honours) Accounting and Finance and her teaching interests lie in the areas of Financial Reporting, Auditing and International Accounting.  

  • Susan Hamilton

    Dr Susan Hamilton is Lecturer in the Department of Accounting and Finance. Her research interests are in accounting education, in particular professional identity formation and professional development.  

  • Tong Jiao

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    Tong Jiao is a lecturer in the Department of Accounting and Finance.  

  • Pete Jones

    Pete Jones is Lecturer in the Department of Accounting and Finance.  

  • Karen Lund

    Karen is Lecturer in the Department of Accounting and Finance and is Course Leader for the MSc in Oil and Gas Accounting.  

  • Shonagh Mackay

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    Shonagh Mackay is a Lecturer in the Department of Accounting and Finance.  

  • Alex Mackay

    Alex Mackay is Lecturer in the Department of Accounting and Finance.  

  • Morag Matson

    Morag Matson is Lecturer in the Department of Accounting and Finance and her teaching interests lie in Taxation and Financial Accounting.  

  • Brenda Paver

    Brenda is Lecturer in the Department of Accounting and Finance.  

  • Brian Scroggie

    Brian Scroggie is a lecturer in the Department of Accounting and Finance. His teaching interests are in the areas of Treasury, Corporate Finance and Financial Markets.  

  • Lindsey Stewart

    Lindsey Stewart is Lecturer in the Department of Accounting and Finance and teaches in the areas of accounting and finance on undergraduate programmes.  

  • Bing Xu

    Dr Xu is a Lecturer in Finance. Her current research interests include energy economics, forecasting, bankruptcy assessment and prediction and multi-criteria decision analysis.