Annual PhD Student Presentations at the ICMA Centre
Doctoral researchers and academics at the ICMA Centre were especially busy this week with the annual PhD presentations taking place on Thursday and Friday. Each year, every doctoral researcher in the ICMA Centre provides an outline of the progress they have made in 20 minute conference-style presentations moderated and assessed by academic faculty and followed up by lively discussions and suggestions for improvements made by peers.
This year, a record number of 35 presentations were delivered by doctoral researchers, many of which run in parallel sessions. The ICMA Centre boasts a very sizeable PhD programme with doctoral candidates specialising in very diverse areas of Finance. This was never more evident than this week with presentations ranging from traditionally important areas such as Empirical Asset Pricing, Mergers and Acquisitions and Portfolio Optimisation to more specialised topics including Shipping Finance, Socially Responsible Investing, Islamic Finance, Microfinance and Behavioural Finance.
Presentations concluded with students, supervisors and assessors enjoying some pizza while Head of School Professor Adrian Bell reflected on the experience by saying: “This was the equivalent of attending a finance conference without having to do the travel and I know a lot more about emerging themes in financial research than I did yesterday”.