Centre for Personal Financial Wellbeing

Professor Andy Lymer, Centre Director and Professor of Taxation and Personal Finance.

Andy’s research interests lie in the areas of taxation, and personal and small business financial wellbeing. Andy is a member of the UK Money and Pension Service’s Research and Evaluation Board, was leader of the Tax Development Programme for HM Treasury from 2008 to 2011 and is the current chair of the global academic and practitioners' Tax Research Network (TRN). He also holds academic positions in personal finance related areas in South Africa (UNISA) and in New Zealand (Massey University).

Dr Hayley James, Senior Research Fellow

Hayley James is Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Personal Financial Wellbeing at Aston Business School. Hayley’s research interests concern sociological perspectives on money, finance and value, and how they intersect with ageing and the lifecourse.

Dr Rasha Kassem, Senior Lecturer in Accounting

Rasha extensively researches all aspects of fraud, including fraud against individuals, its impact on their wellbeing, and how to safeguard individual fraud victims. She also researches fraud against organisations, including insider and external fraud. Other research areas Rasha is interested in include corruption, forensic accounting, audit, governance, and social responsibility. She explores these areas in the private, public, and voluntary sectors. In addition to her academic career, she is a Certified Fraud Examiner, a Consultant at Cifas, and a member of the Cross-Sector Fraud Advisory Board of the Cabinet Office and the Advisory Council at the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners

Dr Halima Sacranie, Research Fellow

Halima’s research is focussed on housing and communities - an important arena for current policy and practice challenges in relation to homelessness, welfare reform, housing options, Generation Rent, housing supply and affordability, financial inclusion, and the role of third sector housing organisations in service delivery.

Dr Lin Tian, Research Associate

Lin is Research Associate in the Centre for Personal Financial Wellbeing at Aston Business School. Her research interests focus on household finance, labour economics and health economics.

Alexus Davis, Research Associate

Alexus is a Research Associate with the Centre for Personal Financial Wellbeing while completing her doctoral thesis. Her thesis considers narratives of maternal care, inequalities in care, maternal phenomenology, and creative methods. She is the author of the poetry collection Cartoon Logic, Cartoon Violence (Baobab Press), as well as two chapbooks.”

Dixon Wong, Centre Manager

Dixon has a varied career across Asia, Africa and Europe serving both private and public organisations in roles of communications, stakeholder engagement and project management. Dixon manages the day-to-day coordination and communication of CPFW’s activities, including event coordination, funding, HR, and social media.

Anne Angsten Clark, Lecturer in Design Thinking and Innovation, University of Bristol

Anne is a lecturer and graduate researcher at the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship of the University of Bristol and the Nest Insight research lead for Real Accounts – a mixed method financial diaries project following the financial lives of 50 UK households. Her research and teaching focuses on social innovation and participatory research and design, particularly related to increasing financial resilience. Anne has 10 years’ experience within financial inclusion, social entrepreneurship and community innovation, primarily across West and East Africa.

Ariane Agunsoye, Senior Lecturer in Economics, Goldsmiths, University of London

Ariane Agunsoye is Senior Lecturer in Economics at the Institute of Management Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. Prior to joining Goldsmiths, she was a visiting lecturer in Germany and worked several years in the private sector. Her research interests are centred on the intersection between political economy and personal finance, exploring how people across different social and demographic groups respond to the rising pressure to manage financial risk.

Bernadene de Clercq, Professor, University of South Africa

Bernadene de Clercq is a Professor in the Department of Taxation at the University of South Africa. Her research explores mechanisms to improve economic and financial well-being in a personal finance ecosystem. Given the complexity and scope of this domain her research approaches includes both quantitative and qualitive of nature. She is working with CPFW exploring how best to develop financial education approaches within South Africa, and beyond.

Carla Hoppe, Founder at Wealthbrite

Carla is the founder of Wealthbrite, a workplace financial wellbeing company. Wealthbrite's mission is to transform the way we learn about money in work. 

Carla qualified as a lawyer having completed a double law programme in English and French Law from King's College London and Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. She also spent over a decade working in two of the Big Four accounting practices; PwC and EY where she specialised in international tax.

David Hayes, Senior Lecturer, University of Bristol

David is a highly-skilled quantitative researcher with over 13 years’ experience of policy research, evaluation and analysis. He specialises in the fields of financial wellbeing, financial capability, mental health and debt, and the wellbeing of the older population. He has an extensive record of strong research with industry, corporate, academic and policy impact, and has been published extensively through government reports, white papers and Government groups, in academic journals and through the national media. He has expertise in a range of advanced statistical methods, research design, evaluation and applied survey analysis. He currently works as a Senior Lecturer with the University of Bristol, and as an independent Research Consultant.

Gary Burke, Associate Professor of Strategy and Organisation, University of Bristol Business School

Dr Gary Burke is an Associate Professor of Strategy and Organisation at the University of Bristol Business School. His research draws on insights from organisation theory to study strategic responses to wicked problems and new forms of organising to tackle grand societal challenges. Recent and current projects include studies of public-private partnerships, sustainability and transformation partnerships, crisis community organising and poverty alleviation strategies.

Jo Phillips, Director of Research and Innovation, Nest Insight

Jo leads Nest Insight’s research and innovation programme, with a focus on finding ways to support low- and moderate-income households to be financially secure, both today and into retirement. Working collaboratively with industry and academic partners, Nest Insight conducts research to better understand the challenges people face, and to develop and test practical, real-world solutions to those challenges. Jo has over 15 years’ experience in social and commercial research across the public, private and third sectors and has led innovation work addressing a range of future opportunities in personal finance and pensions.

Kanimozhi Narayanan, Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour

Kanimozhi Narayanan is a member of the Centre for Personal Financial Wellbeing at Aston Business School. Kani is a lecturer in Organisational Behaviour working within the area of International Human Resource Management and Organisation Behaviour. Kani’s research interests in CPFW focuses on taking a psychological perspective of the harms of addictive behaviours on individual’s financial wellbeing along with understanding how they intersect with their life course and work.

Katie Tonkiss, Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Policy

Katie is a sociologist working in the field of critical citizenship studies, with a particular interest in the lived experience of noncitizenship and statelessness. She is currently working on research exploring the embodied impact of noncitizenship status, including in relation to personal financial wellbeing.

Ngoc Dieu Linh Vi, Lecturer in Economics

Linh is a Lecturer in the Economics, Finance and Entrepreneurship department at Aston University with expertise in Labour Economics, Public Economics, Behavioural Economics, Emerging Market Economies and Big Data Analytics. She is working with CPFW exploring how macro-level factors shape UK population's financial wellbeing.

Olga Biosca, Professor of Economics, Glasgow Caledonian University

Olga Biosca is Professor of Economics and lead researcher on financial inclusion at the Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health. She is interested in the connection between personal financial management and health and wellbeing in vulnerable groups and, also, in the financial diaries methodology which she has extensively used in the UK. She is a co- founder and member of the Iberoamerican Network of Development Studies and a research associate at the Centre for European Research in Microfinance.

Omid Omidvar, Associate Professor, University of Warwick

Omid Omidvar is an Associate Professor in Organisation Studies, University of Warwick where he specialises in researching strategy in complex contexts and uses research approaches including qualitative and ethnographic methods. Omid is working with CPFW to explore how poverty alleviation strategies are developed in UK city and district wide settings as an example of wicked problem strategizing.