The EAA is delighted to announce the two recipients of the 2024 Anthony G. Hopwood Award for Academic Leadership
Professor Peter Pope, Bocconi University and London School of Economics and Political Science
&
Professor Martin Walker, University of Manchester
Peter Pope and Martin Walker have made significant and enduring contributions to our understanding of accounting and capital markets and to the continued development of the European accounting research community. While their impact has been global, their contribution to European accounting research has been particularly important, and our academic community continues to benefit from their intellectual leadership and work.
Peter and Martin have made extensive contributions to the literature at the interface between accounting and capital markets. Such is the breadth and depth of their work, it is difficult to succinctly summarise. Inter alia, they have studied the impact of national and international accounting policy developments, examined the properties of earnings and disclosure, as well as their antecedents and consequences, and have analysed the links between accounting, corporate governance, information intermediaries, politics and financial markets. Their 1999 collaboration on international differences in earnings properties published in the Journal of Accounting Research remains highly influential in current debates about accounting conservatism and international accounting.
Throughout their academic careers, Peter and Martin have contributed to, and actively engaged in, the nurturing and development of many members of our academic community. Their influence on the development of academic researchers is evident through their collaborations across numerous institutions and countries. They have been mentors of many doctoral students and young researchers, and they have served as coordinators of major European academic training programmes. Peter Pope was coordinator of the EC-funded INTACCT research training network of ten European universities (The European IFRS revolution: compliance, consequences and policy lessons). INTACCT trained 26 European early-stage researchers in accounting between 2007-2010. He was also a chair and faculty member of the EAA Doctoral Colloquium and the coordinator of EIASM’s EDEN PhD Seminar on Empirical Financial Accounting Research. During the early 2000s, Martin Walker contributed as one of the lead researchers when the then Manchester School of Accounting and Finance hosted several Marie Curie Visiting Fellowships for EU-based PhD students. He was a founder of the EAA PhD Mentoring Initiative as part of the ARC (where he remains a senior editor). He was also the UK National Representative for the EAA between 2011 and 2017. Many of the early-stage researchers who have benefited from these initiatives are now tenured professors following successful research and teaching careers of their own.
Peter and Martin have also made major contributions to our community as editors. Along with Andrew Stark, they have co-edited Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, making it one of the leading international journals publishing high quality research at the interfaces between accounting, finance and corporate governance. Since 1991, the JBFA Capital Markets Conference has provided a forum for hundreds of accounting studies and has helped build a thriving community of accounting scholars in Europe and around the world.
Both Peter and Martin have been active members of the EAA for decades, regularly attending our congresses and actively participating in many initiatives. Through their work in developing young researchers, and in generating and overseeing new understandings of the role of corporate reporting in capital markets, they have contributed enormously to the success of the European accounting academic community today and going forward into the future.
The Hopwood Award for Academic Leadership was established in 2005 and renamed to honour Professor Anthony G. Hopwood, who played a prominent role in the creation and development of the EAA. Previous recipients of the Award are Stephen Zeff, Sten Jönsson, Michael Shields, Willem Buijink, John Christensen, Peter Walton, Kari Lukka, David Cooper and Salvador Carmona. The Award recognises academic excellence, academic leadership, and contribution to the EAA.
We have outlined here only a few of Peter’s and Martin’s achievements. We are looking forward to hearing more at the 2024 EAA Annual Congress in Bucharest, where the Anthony G. Hopwood Award will be formally received.
