People

Dr Saima Ahmad is working as a Lecturer in Business at the Graduate School of Business and Law (GSBL), RMIT University. Saima is an award-winning researcher and the author of journal articles, conference papers and a book chapter. Saima's research areas are organizational behaviour and general management in which she has actively published conceptual frameworks and empirical models to advance the creation of sustainable work environments. Her peer-reviewed work appears in numerous impactful journals including Personnel Review, Non-Profit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Management Decision, European Management Journal, International Journal of Manpower, Employee Relations, European Business Review, Leadership & Org Development Journal, among many others. She makes a strong commitment to RMIT’s research environment through her active involvement in the Business and Human Rights Centre, blogs on Acumen and other RMIT sites, and by bringing new partnership and collaborations to RMIT. As a part of her contribution to teaching and learning within the MBA and MIB programs, Saima coordinates and lectures several courses including Contemporary Issues in International Management, Leading in the Age of Digital Disruption and Business Research Design. She serves on the editorial board of the European Management Journal.

Gabby is an RMIT law student with a passion for action on climate change. She has experience in community engagement and teaching deep democracy through her role as a facilitator with Climate for Change's conversation program. Gabby hopes to use her degree to contribute to Australia's development of just and sustainable business and environmental policy.

Carol Bond is a political and social scientist investigating business-related socio-economic and policy topics in the energy and resources sectors.

Carol is a Lecturer in Management at RMIT University, Australia. Over the course of her career, Carol's work has been concerned with investigating and analysing in how government policy and investment in the energy and resources sectors in Australia affects socio-economic factors both in communities affected by mega projects as well as in communities which are energy insecure. Recently, Carol has been researching how SMEs are affected by a range of developments in the energy sector.  Research partners include:  the Future Fuels CRC, the Australian Hydrogen Council, Energy Networks Australia, and Advisian.

Core research themes are policy impacts on businesses, energy-related equity & distributive justice issues, and circular economy opportunities. In the course of pursuing this agenda, Carol has published journal articles, a monograph, industry-facing articles, and research reports related to the energy and resources sectors within the field of management studies. Key outputs have been published in: Journal of Business Ethics, Australian Journal of Management, and Ecological Economics.

Carol is a member of the Rotary Club of Melbourne.

Professor Forsyth is a Law Professor in the Graduate School of Business & Law, RMIT University and Vice-President of the Australian Labour Law Association, and Vice-President (Independent) of the Australian Institute of Employment Rights. He is an international expert on the future of unions and the emergence of new forms of collective worker representation, in the context of the gig economy and other new business models (e.g. supply chains, labour hire, franchising). In 2015-16 he chaired the Victorian Government's independent inquiry into Labour Hire and Insecure Work. Over a 12-month period, he investigated the problems associated with worker exploitation in the labour hire sector and the proliferation of various forms of non-permanent work, through public hearings and stakeholder meetings held across the state. The State Government has implemented my recommendations through the Labour Hire Licensing Act 2018 (passed by the Victorian Parliament in June 2018).  In October 2018, he won the RMIT University Award for Research Impact (Enterprise); and the RMIT College of Business Awards for Research Impact, Research Excellence - Journal Publication by an Academic, and Best Journal Publication (by School) by an Academic.

Anthony is a frequent contributor to public policy debate on industrial relations and workplace regulation in Australia, through opinion pieces and commentary in The Conversation, Australian Financial Review, The Guardian, ABC Online, ABC/RMIT Fact Check, ABC News 24, ABC Radio and The Australian.

Serene Ho is a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow in Urban Futures at RMIT University. Her interdisciplinary research is focused on the urban poor, where she investigates land rights, trustworthy land information systems, social innovation, gender and climate resilience. She is currently investigating the use of disruptive technologies used to map land rights in urban informal settlements in Odisha, India, and how this impacts trust in formal land tenure information systems, one of the most corrupt public institutions globally. Serene is also currently engaged in a UNFCCC funded, multidisciplinary project led by Prof. Darryn McEvoy and involving a broad team at RMIT, which investigates climate resilience in Honiara, Solomon Islands. She leads the community profiling and gender-related work packages in the project.

Akshay is a Commonwealth Research Scholar, who has almost finished his PhD at the School of Accounting, Information Systems and Supply Chain at RMIT University. Akshay is also an experienced sustainability/social impact analyst and consultant, who conducts ESG research, develops green strategies and helps companies to disclose their Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI) and Social Return on Investment (SROI) reports. Akshay, in his PhD, worked on improving the GRI framework of OECD manufacturing firms to provide more social and environmental value and also investigated the effect of GRI on financial performance. In addition, Akshay also examined the Scope I, II and III emission levels, intensity and emission reduction practices of the North American, South American, European and Asian OECD manufacturing firms.

Vanessa is a Senior Lecturer in the Graduate School of Business and Law at RMIT, teaching and researching in areas of property law, climate change, and sustainable transport. She is a Deputy Leader of Climate Change Research at the RMIT Research Centre for Business and Human Rights.

Her research focuses on regulatory issue in property law, land use, and road transport that connect to climate change. She has worked on national and international research projects to produce books and book chapters, refereed journal articles, as well as consulting to Government and industry bodies. She has attended international events as an expert participant, including as an observer to the 23rd Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn, Germany.

 Her current projects combine practical and theoretical elements, building on her career in legal practice prior to becoming an academic. She is currently involved in projects that address regulatory aspects of road safety for vulnerable road users - namely pedestrians and cyclists. Separately, she is involved in a larger project that examines how climate change affects ownership and enjoyment of land in Australia, which is scheduled to be published as a book in 2022.

The emphasis of Dr Kallies’ research is on energy and environmental law, which a special focus on renewable energy and electricity market regulation.

Her research draws on her study and work experience in Australia and Germany. She holds a German law degree, a LLM  and a PhD, both completed at Melbourne Law School.

Dr Kallies has previously worked for the German Federal Environmental Agency and has been an administrator and researcher in the Centre for Resources, Energy and Environmental Law at Melbourne Law School.

She has presented her work in industry and community forums, and published in academic journals. She is a regular commentator in The Conversation on renewable energy law and policy.

Ingo is an internationally award-winning researcher and educator, passionate about the essentiality and existentiality of human experiences. As Professor at RMIT’s Graduate School of Business and Law, Ingo engages with the community to initiate, lead, and facilitate innovative change across people and systems, supported by his research, teaching, and practice at the nexus of business and design.

For several years now, Ingo has worked with various institutions that promote ethical, responsible and/or sustainable business practices for the betterment of human conditions. This includes his collaboration with StrEAT to help overcome homeless, by creating a new business model that finances the training and reintegration if disadvantaged young people back into the workforce. In 2019 he won the first government tender (as lead-investigator) on using human-cantered design to reform the Children’s Court of Victoria. The aim is to redesign the service model of and related to the court to improve human experiences and outcomes in this environment. Ingo purposefully and continuously uses the combination of research and education for the benefit of various stakeholders and institutions, while grounding this approach in a human-centred design lens.

Currently Ingo is responsible for the course Design Thinking for Business, a course which he developed for RMIT’s Executive MBA program, focusing on collaboration with industry partners to design context-relevant strategy solutions together with executive students. Ingo’s teaching interests further include Strategic Design, Strategy and Service Management. Together with the teaching team, he enjoys discovering research-driven insights that can be integrated into course content and shared by way of exciting learning experiences.

Ingo has also collaborated with governmental, industry and non-profit organisations (previous projects included sectors such as health, legal, banking, property/construction, automotive, and various NGOs).

Dr Jayanthi Kumarasiri is a Lecturer, in the School of Accounting, Information Systems & Supply Chain (AISSC) at RMIT University. She teaches financial and management accounting at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Her PhD is in the area of corporate carbon emissions management and strategies. Her primary research interests are climate change issues, corporate carbon emissions management and management accounting. Jayanthi has a deep understanding of the climate change reporting environment in corporate Australia. Her understanding has been built up over years of exploring this topic from multiple angles through her academic research.

Mark Leenders is a Professor of Marketing and Innovation and Deputy Head Research and Innovation at the Graduate School of Business & Law, RMIT University. He has been a visiting scholar at leading American universities, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of British Columbia, and University of Pennsylvania.

Mark enjoys high levels of impact and influence in the sub-field of Business and Human Rights known as Innovation Strategy, Creativity, and Business Performance. A key impact area is around the global transformation towards more circular business models that reduce waste and create positive economic and social returns. In 2012, I was appointed as a member of the agenda-setting committee of a multiyear grant scheme of the Dutch Science Foundation (NWO) to stimulate the design and implementation of creative solutions for ‘big problems in society. He is constantly engaging with policymakers and companies in a range of industries to find ways to support ‘green’ innovation and create returns for the company and society. For example, he have helped wineries change their channel structure to be able to get a better return on green investments and construction companies source 'used' furniture rather than 'new' furniture to support the triple bottom line.  He is highly cited and received the ‘new hot paper’ award by Thomson Reuters' ScienceWatch in 2008 as being the co-author of one of the most cited new articles in Business and Economics combined. I am also a frequent contributor to business strategy and public policy debates and have appeared in news items and opinion articles in outlets such as the Washington Post, ABC news, RTL news, Canadian National Radio, De Morgen, Daily Mail, NRC, Knowledge@wharton, RSM insight, Screen Daily, and corporate magazines (e.g., Philips, Royal Shell, and Ericsson).

A key aim of my research is to identify how interdisciplinary research can be advanced by combining aspects of different research traditions from accounting, Information Systems and social theory, to create understandings of the shortcomings of excessive reliance on more traditional economic based thinking. I rely more on ideas from sociology and social philosophy. I believe this has enabled me to build a significant reputation in counter narratives around the overuse of management control systems and the advantages of case approaches to real-world problems rather than extensive use of thin data from surveys etc.

A selection of current projects (ongoing):

• Challenging the taken for granted nature of profit measures and their misuse in performance management. Two recent publications titled Problematising Profit a Research Agenda… and a curated collection of discussions by a group of prominent accounting academics, in AAAJ (ABDC A* publications both published in 2020).
• Islamic finance and banking and most particularly the socio-religious (ascetic) implication of Sharia compliance. We are using mainly organisation theories here including: sense making; Institutional work; and organisational drift in JBE and BAR (ABDC A* publication, 2021).

Laura Maran is an Associate Professor in Management Accounting at RMIT University. Her research interests are in public sector management accounting and accounting history. Her research seeks to contextualize contemporary public sector management practices by using accounting history to identify the legacy of earlier reforms. This work shows, often for the first time, how a historical perspective on the field of New Public Management can provide new ways to examine contemporary public policy. It also allows scholars and policy makers to evaluate the economic and social outcomes of public sector reforms, where accounting has an ideological, political and ethical instrumentality. In addition to international collaborations and co-authorships, Laura has written 11 publications in the past four years, both in English and Italian, seven of which are in ERA and 2016-ABDC-ranked journals and 2017-Scimago Quartile.

Bronwyn Naylor is Professor of Law in the Graduate School of Business and Law. She researches in two areas relevant to business and human rights. The first is how places of detention (which are run by private and public agencies) can be required to protect the human rights of detainees, particularly under the UN Treaty, OPCAT. The second is aimed at encouraging private and public players to focus on recruitment of staff not only on risk (through criminal record checking) but also protecting and supporting people with a criminal past in fulfilling employment. One cohort of particular importance is Aboriginal communities. 

Bronwyn has published extensively and coordinated public symposia bringing together government, civil society and private sector providers, on the regulation and monitoring of prisons and other places of detention, and on the UN Treaty OPCAT (the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture), recently ratified by Australia. In recognition of her standing in the field she was appointed a member of the Advisory Group to the Victorian Ombudsman in her 2019 OPCAT-focussed inquiry, and a member of the OPCAT Advisory Group to the Commonwealth Ombudsman, the federal NPM Coordinator. She is also a Board member ofVACRO, a highly-regarded NGO in the field.

She has been particularly influential in publishing on, and advocating for, reforms to laws on criminal record checking in employment decisions by business, government and NGOs. In 2016 she was invited to work on this issue with the Aboriginal organisation Woor-Dungin and her collaborative work with Woor-Dungin was  the subject of an influential NITV/SBS program on criminal records and the Stolen Generation. The Victorian government, in response, made a formal apology, and legislation was passed in 2018 expunging these records of children taken into care up to the late 1980s. The project received the national Indigenous Award 2018 from Philanthropy Australia.

Bronwyn worked as a solicitor, and at the Law Reform Commission of Victoria, and then took up an academic position at Monash in the Law Faculty, before moving to RMIT University in 2016.

Marta Poblett is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Business and Law. In the field of business and human rights, Marta’s research focuses on crowdsourcing methods and digital technologies that are applicable to human rights monitoring. She has undertaken research at the law, technology, and governance intersection for fifteen years in ways that advance the human rights performance of technology businesses. She connects the technological, legal and ethical aspects involved in applying Artificial Intelligence, mobile technologies, and crowdsourcing methods to the management of conflicts and disasters.

Marta actively engages with the media to disseminate her research, writing for The Conversation (as of July 2019, my posts have more than 30,000 readers) and Eureka Street. My research has been featured in the World Economic Forum, The Australian (Australia), and La Vanguardia and Diari Ara (Spain). She has also been an expert commentator on politics on ABC TV News, ABC Radio, The Wire at 2SER, the Student Youth Network (Australia), and Sputnik Radio (Scotland).

Lecturer, Graduate School of Business & Law

Tina's research is in the field of tort law and health law, specifically patients' rights to access compensation following medical negligence for physical and psychological injuries. Tina's research has also explored the role of mediation and emotion in dispute resolution, and the role of non-adversarial approaches to justice in the health law context. A significant focus of Tina's work has been on comparative research from international jurisdictions, exploring how international jurisdictions can provide better access to compensation for injured individuals. Tina has had international visiting fellowships in medical law, with the University of Ottawa in Canada and the University of Antwerp in Belgium, to explore how international jurisdiction compensate medical negligence/mental harm injuries.

Tina's research is industry-aligned, consisting of qualitative research with practising lawyers and tribunal users. Tina has worked on interdisciplinary industry-funded research projects in the medical law context. Tina is currently engaged as Consulting Solicitor with McDonald Legal working on medical negligence and personal injury claims.

Lisanne is currently a law lecturer and a PhD candidate at RMIT University. Lisanne’s teaching areas include commercial law, advanced contract law and jurisprudence.

Qualifications and Awards

Lisanne undertook previous studies at Vrije University in Amsterdam and Uppsala University. Vanessa’s topics of research have ranged from:

• medical negligence
• family law and International Private Law
• European Law
• Human rights law

Her current PhD thesis at RMIT focuses on false confessions as a contributing factor towards wrongful convictions.

Sara is currently a PhD candidate, research assistant on the topic of energy law and economics and a sessional lecturer. Sara currently tutors the subject “Managing International Business Responsibly”, an undergraduate subject in the Bachelor of Business at RMIT. 

Sara has previous professional experience as a communication consultant and in a financial role. Sara undertook a Master studies at Copenhagen Business School.

Research Interests

Sara’s research focuses on gender in global production networks, with emphasis on women workers in the garment industry. By bringing together feminist theories with business perspectives and research methods, Sara seeks ways to expand the understanding of gender in women’s lives within business operations.

Olivia Dean is a PhD Scholarship Student at the Graduate School of Business and Law. Olivia has previous experience in the finance industry. Olivia teaches Company Law (Melbourne and Jakarta), International Commercial Law, Law of Investments and Financial Markets, Corporate Governance and Regulation and Business and Corporations Law.

Research Interests

Olivia’s research focuses on financial entities, banks, flow of money and business relating to responsible lending, investment and financial transactions. Olivia’s research explores the impact of the Modern Slavery Act to the Australian Finance Sector, focusing on reporting obligations and human rights due diligence.

Esmira is an experienced legal academic with 7 years of teaching Australian company law and financial regulations. Esmira is passionate about creating sustainable business strategies. Esmira has taught and is currently coordinating the subject “Law of investments in Financial Markets” at RMIT Vietnam. Esmira held various senior administration roles within the NSW government from 2001 to 2004. Esmira currently holds the role of corporate responsibility consultant at a technical infrastructure firm in Vietnam.

Qualifications and Awards

Esmira completed a Master of Law at the University of Edinburgh,  receiving a Distinction on her dissertation, which covered the topic: “Do Australian laws governing duties of directors permit directors to meet expectations of Corporate Social Responsibility? Is there a need to change the current laws? A comparative analysis from two jurisdictions – Australia and The United Kingdom”. 

Apurva is a qualified overseas lawyer (India), a PhD candidate and HDR Student Representative for Graduate School of Business and Law at RMIT University, Melbourne. Apurva is pursuing a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Corporate Law and Human Rights.  Apurva taught at the Australian Catholic University and Deakin University and her teaching areas include Business law, Media and Communications law, Contracts, Torts and Civil Procedure. In Apurva’s  role of a legal editor at Sai Global Pty Ltd , she gained experience in processing digital, editorial, legislative and compliance-related data following qualitative and quantitative methodologies.

Research Interests

Before pursuing her PhD in Corporate Law and Human Rights, Apurva extensively researched on public service broadcasting policies and legislation underpinning the public broadcasting sector in the UK and Australia. Apurva’s areas of interests are:

• Corporate Purpose     
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Corporate Accountability
• Benefit Corporations
• Broadcasting Legislation and Policy
• Public Broadcasting
• Freedom of speech and expression
• Human Rights            
• Gender Equality

Awards and Qualification

• Master of Arts  (Research), La Trobe University, 2014
• Master of Laws, Univercity College London (UCL), 2011
• Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws, Bharati Vidyapeeth, 2008
• Diploma in Intellectual Property Rights, Asian School of Cyber Laws, 2008
• Diploma in International Business Law & Corporate Laws, Symbiosis International Educational Centre, 2007

Key Publications

• Sharma, A.K. (2018). Balanced Co-Existence Of De Jure And De Facto Independence In Public Broadcasting Sector In: Journal of Creative Industries and Cultural Studies, 1, 26-49.

For more information about Apurva see: https://au.linkedin.com/in/apurvaksharma

Yingyi is a PhD student at the Graduate School of Business and Law whose research focus is cross-border surrogacy and human rights. Her PhD explores how regulating international surrogacy can effectively reduce human rights violations and argues that Australia should increase regulation and set accountability for surrogacy facilitators in order to protect surrogate-born children and surrogate mothers. She successfully undertook ‘New Issues of Cross-border Surrogacy’—a major project (2017-2019), looking at the Chinese experience of cross-border surrogacy arrangements, and co-authored the book “A Study of Private International Law Issue in Cross-border Surrogacy”, an in-depth research of the international and national law governing surrogacy along with recommendations for legal reform.

Before pursuing her PhD at RMIT, she completed Master of Law at Deakin University, receiving a High Distinction on her dissertation: A Step Forward for International Surrogacy: Pre-birth Recognition with Background Check. Yingyi has previously practiced as a paralegal at an international commercial law firm in China and as a legal assistant at Wentworth Group International Pty Ltd in Australia.

Research Interests

Human Rights, Cross-border Surrogacy, Cross-border Insolvency Practice, Feminist legal theory,

Qualifications and Awards

• Fellowship to study at RMIT University
• Fellowship to study at Deakin University
• Lawyer's qualification certificate, China

Key Publications

Book:

Yuan Quan and Yingyi Luo, A Study of Private International Law Issue in Cross-border Surrogacy (2019), Law Press China.

Journal:

Yingyi Luo, ‘Land Title Registration in the United States’ (2016) 5 Legality Vision.

Yuan Quan and Yingyi Luo, ‘Legal Conflicts and Its Resolution Paths in Cross-Border Surrogacy: Experience from The Hague Adoption Convention’ (2019) 30 Chinese Review of International Law.

Profile

www.linkedin.com/in/yingyi-luo-78a537140