Dr Ling Xiao is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Accounting and Financial Management with considerable experience of teaching in finance and financial management. Ling was voted as the most popular and most respected lecturer in the 2021 School of Business and Management graduate yearbook. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and currently acts as the programme lead for the BSc Accounting and Finance.

 

Financial research: The overarching theme of Dr Xiao's research is empirical finance: time-series modelling of higher moments i.e. skewness and kurtosis in volatility and dependence between financial, energy and commodity markets. Her research focuses on the applications of novel financial models to make a real-life impact. For example, the higher-moment interdependence found between the European carbon market and energy markets implies new hedging strategies using carbon as an investment asset. Her research provides theoretical proof to advance the application of higher order Omega as a state-of-the-art fund performance index. Another feature of Ling's research is incorporating non-financial factors such as geopolitical risk into macro risk measurement. Constructing a novel market risk basket based on crude oil, copper and stock index to evaluate a country's sovereign debt risk. This new approach provides investors and policy-makers with a better view of the country's sovereign debt risk.  Ling has published original work in Applied Economics Letters, Energy Policy, International Review of Financial Analysis, Journal of Risk and Financial Management and Wilmott Magazine etc. She is a member of the editorial board of World Development Sustainability. 

 

Ling has specific interests in pedagogic research and is currently leading the Management for Education Research Group (MERG) in the School of Business and Management. Recently she has been looking and researching into various pedagogical approaches such as authentic learning, the use of individualised assignments, and educational technology to develop sustainable accounting and finance education. Her contributions are seen in the Society for Research into Higher Education Blog,  Case Research Journal, SAGE Business Case, Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education and several prestigious accounting and financial educational conferences. She won the Best Emerging Paper award at the 2022 British Accounting and Finance Association Accounting Education Special Interest Group conference. 

 

Ling is the programme lead for the BSc Accounting and Finance programme. She has undertaken various leadership and management roles, including as MSc Programme Director, UG Educational Lead, developing and managing various articulation/franchise programmes with universities in China, France and Greece. She has worked closely with professional accountancy bodies in the UK and China for programme accreditation. 

 

Current research projects include:

"Made for Drink: zero-sum or win-win? A novel approach to meeting the challenge of net-zero for SMEs." £20,000 was awarded by Business Partnership and Innovation Funding. This partnership project aims to help the business partnership address its financial and sustainability challenges. 

 

"The Case Study Method – An Inclusive Pedagogy": £6000 was awarded by the College's inclusive education-project funds. This project aims to examine the effectiveness of case method teaching as an inclusive pedagogy for reducing the attainment gap. 

Other professional affiliations:

-China Energy Finance Network: The Four ORiented Energy-Economy-Environment Study (FORE3ST) research group (Member) 

- British Accounting and Finance Association (BAFA member)