EXPERTS SEARCH

Aiswarya graduated from Indian Institute of Technology Madras with an Integrated Masters degree in Development Studies and was awarded the Institute Blues Silver award for the best outgoing student . She completed her Master of Business in Sport Management from Deakin University, Melbourne in 2021 under the Deakin Times Vice Chancellor's Meritorious Scholarship Program.

She is a creative director in the Indian film industry and the Founder of Studio ழ - a media strategy and production house in Chennai. Her skill sets include Content Development, Creative direction, Sport and Strategy Consultancy.

She is a part of the prestigious Vice Chancellor's Professional Excellence Program at Deakin University. She brings in strategic management experience from major organisations from across the globe including Australian Open, F1 Grand Prix, Tamil Nadu Assembly elections and Victorian Premier Cricket. She has worked in the direction team of Modern Love Chennai (Amazon Prime) , TEST (Netflix) amongst other projects.

She is currently pursuing her PhD is Sport Media with a focus on Rivalry Branding in Indian Cricket. In her freetime, you can see her honing her feature film script, watching films, playing any sport and hyping up Fincher to anyone she can find.

I have a strong passion for sustainability and social inclusion, which drive my research endeavours within the broader realm of social responsibility. These core values shape my vision and efforts towards creating a sustainable and inclusive world.

In 2016, I undertook the exciting role of the UN Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) portfolio, which further honed my focus on the interconnected themes of sustainability, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and social inclusion, aligning with Deakin University's core values on sustainability. As the PRME Director, my contributions have led to Deakin Business School being recognized as a PRME Champion for the fourth consecutive cycle in 2024-25 and receiving the UN Sharing of Information Progress (SIP) excellence award for reporting in 2020. I value the collaborations and networks I have established and utilized over the years including my active leadership in in the ANZ-PRME Chapter Steering Group, ABDC-PRME Climate Working Group and PRME Champion networks globally. As part of the Climate working Group, I have conducted Carbon literacy training (CLT) for staff and professionals nationally and internationally.

Over the years, I have secured more than Aud 350,000 in funding from DFAT, Department of Home Affairs and Government of Bangladesh, and facilitated capacity building of senior public officials from Bangladesh.

I take great pride in my South Asian roots and have the honour of being a founding member of the South Asian Network of Public Administration (SANPA)- a thinktank to foster research on emerging policy issues in South Asia. This network aligns with my commitment to contributing to the region's sustainable growth and solidifies my position as a respected voice in my field, resonating with scholars across the region.

Within the broader domain of social responsibility, I am known for my research nationally and internationally in the following three interrelated streams:

• Investigating how small businesses perceive and embed social responsibility and extending this focus to developing economies
• Examining social inclusion of marginalized communities and potential of social entrepreneurship in promoting sustainable development and social inclusion; and
• Exploring the embedding of SDGs in business school curricula for responsible management education, with a particular emphasis on enhancing climate literacy and fostering climate action among future business leaders.

Although distinct, these research streams involve cross- fertilizations and are inter-related through their underlying link of social responsibility and sustainable development.

Andries Baeken is a Lecturer in the Management Discipline Group at the Deakin Business School. He earned his PhD in Business Economics at KU Leuven, Belgium. Following previous work experience as policy officer in diversity and equal opportunities at the Flemish government in Belgium, Andries is passionate about the topics of work and paid employment for minority groups such as people with disabilities. His expertise and research interests lie in understanding labour market activation of people with disabilities and long-term illnesses and exploring the opportunities and potential pitfalls of this activation. Using critical perspectives such as ableism and embodiment, he aims to contribute to people with disabilities’ right to work.

Andries has published his work in Journal of Business Ethics and has presented his work at international conferences such as European Group for Organizational Studies and Academy of Management annual meeting. Andries also has experience as managing editor at Applied Psychology: An International Review and serves as a reviewer for journals such as Human Relations and Journal of Business Ethics.

Jordan Bakhsh is a Lecturer at the Deakin Business School, Deakin University. His research focuses on how sport-related events translate into social benefits, including gender equity, community cohesion, and sport participation, His research has been published in leading sport management journals, including Journal of Sport Management, Sport Management Review, and European Sport Management Quarterly, and featured in outlets such as the Australian Broadcasting Company, Canadian Broadcasting Company, Daily Aus, and The Conversation. Jordan’s research has been funded by the Australian Football League, Sport Canada, Basketball Victoria, Baseball Canada, Bowls Victoria, and the Victorian Government’s Office for Women in Sport and Recreation. Jordan’s research was awarded the Deakin University Vice-Chancellor’s Early Career Researcher Award for Career Excellence in Research and Innovation (2025). 

As a workplace mental health researcher, I am driven to find solutions that can improve entrepreneurial well-being. Given their severe vulnerability to work-related stressors, small business owners have a high risk of developing mental health problems including burnout, anxiety, and depression. My research centres on the role that business advisors may play in supporting the mental health support for these entrepreneurs. I look at how various advisors (including accountants, bookkeepers, consultants) - a largely untapped source of mental health support - may be trained to proactively protect and promote their clients' mental health, as well as respond to mental health problems when they develop.

If you would like to find out more about my PhD thesis, you may watch my three minute presentation from Deakin's 2024 3-Minute-Thesis (3MT) final below!

Mike Bengough is a Lecturer in the Management Discipline Group in the Deakin Business School. He is the Unit Chair and Lecturer in the post-graduate units of Managed Change and Management and Organisational Consulting and the under-graduate unit Change Management. He is an accomplished financial services professional having worked in the National Australia Bank for 20 years. Mike's primary objective is to utilise his experience, knowledge and communication and people skills to drive business excellence.

Dr Sukanto Bhattacharya is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Management in Deakin Business School. Sukanto completed his postgraduate degrees, Master of Commerce and PhD from Bond University. He has held a postdoctoral research position at The University of Queensland, served as an assistant professor at Alaska Pacific University, where he was also the director for the MBA (Global Finance) program and was an assistant professor in the International Business and Management at Dickinson College.

Sukanto's areas of expertise cover decision theory in general and ethical decision-making in particular with implications for corporate leadership and governance, especially in operations and the supply chain. He has technical expertise in the application of machine learning-based data analysis tools - particularly artificial neural networks (ANNs) & decision trees (DTs); which can be especially helpful in tackling poorly specified decision problems.

Lecturer and Researcher in Management and Marketing.

Michael Callaghan is a Lecturer and Researcher in both Departments of Management and Marketing in Deakin Business School. Michael recently completed a PhD (by prior publication) with Deakin University, the first ever awarded by the Faculty of Business and Law. His dissertation detailed the development of a quantitative measure of corporate codes of ethics. This work was developed over 15 replications, across seven countries, and has resulted in 39 peer-reviewed publications to date. Michael's thesis has been nominated for award consideration in the 2017 Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Awards.

Michael has published widely in both international journals and conferences, most notably Journal of World Business and Journal of Business Ethics. He is a member of the editorial advisory board for the European Business Review and was awarded Outstanding Reviewer at the 2018 and 2012 Emerald Literati Network, Awards for Excellence.

Michael has served as Unit Chair in four of the six Marketing core units on multiple occasions and has taught in more than 15 units across 3 majors in 3 delivery modes (on/off/online) during his time at Deakin. He is a Certified Practising Marketer (CPM), Fellow of the Academy of Marketing Science (FAMS) and Fellow of the Australian Marketing Institute (FAMI).

The journey to my current role as Deputy Director of the MBA program at the Deakin Business School was far from the typical academic pathway. Rather, it was characterised by an initial twenty years of industry experience which still dominates my focus, and very pragmatic approach, to teaching and research. For me this translates into a convergence of specialisations encompassing business optimisation and transformation through strategy, process, technology, systems, projects and change.

Why the transition to academe? Life in industry was great and predominantly spent at the ATO. Starting as an auditor, I met a thousand people in a thousand businesses, learning the commonalities and the 'not so' commonalities of business! I couldn't have asked for a richer education about the world of enterprise and the people in it. Moving through management, to senior management, then executive level leadership (and involved in some amazing Internet AI projects too!), my understanding of organisational work and all its intricacies pertaining to skill sets, mind sets, relationships and systems became comprehensively entrenched in my psyche. Completing related Bachelor's and Master's degrees only served to reinforce this practical understanding. But overwhelmed with that nagging sensation that something was still missing, coupled with a serendipitous opportunity to join academe (and quench that feeling), I took the plunge!

On a new mission, I determined that my purpose, and underpinning philosophy, as an academic was to ensure pragmatism, through a modus operandi of practical application, across all academic dimensions. After more than twenty years in academe, my philosophy remains true to the present day. If there is such a thing as a 'pracademic' then I am probably its personification! So, in all of my teaching and research pursuits, I ensure that, wherever possible, inputs, actions, and outputs are designed to enable immediate (or at least short term) outcomes, leading to positive longer term impacts. One of my key intentions is to assist students to see those things that others can't (a key imperative, especially at senior levels in enterprises) and this requires a careful coupling of pragmatism to theory. Theory can show the way, pre-empting the necessary pragmatism - a concept that is often overlooked by those in industry (another reason for my transition!). Where a theory isn't there, then it is research that can develop it.

My teaching pivots around a model that I call the 'triple helix' which highlights that 'strategy informs business processes which in turn, inform technologies, and in the inverse, it is technologies that support business processes, which in turn, support strategy.' This notion is critical in modern enterprises. Processes 'are the business' and require careful and detailed pragmatism to get right. I have taught over a dozen units, mainly post graduate level, that have all inculcated this theme in a variety of ways, and I presently teach into the core of the MBA program in a comprehensive unit called Enterprise Optimisation and Transformation (MBA705) (previously called 'Business Processes and Technology') which is a culmination of all of the best parts of everything else I've taught, as well as a seriously large dose of my industry experience (and that of several industry adjuncts that I bring into the teaching space too!). 

My research directly informs my teaching and also centres upon my triple helix. My earlier research (which included a minor thesis) centred upon government electronic service delivery - exploring the effectiveness of governmental Internet based strategic initiatives and the translation of these into new online processes that interfaced directly with citizens. This led me to broaden my view to the larger, economically critical, small and medium enterprise (SME) sector, to research how it strategises for process optimisation, and transformation, through technological change, particularly involving complex enterprise systems (my PhD research). This triggered a realisation pertaining to the importance of the effectiveness of the impacts of 'awareness', including learning approaches, in enterprises, particularly SMEs. And so my more recent research has been exploring this dimension of business.

My teaching and research activities have converged, placing awareness and learning at its centre, fully operationalising my purpose and its underpinning philosophy! You can check out the details of my teaching and research adventures in the above tabs.

So, what have I learned following long experiences in both industry and academe? Well, it is true to say that the more one learns, the more one realises how much one doesn't know! It's also true to say that everybody sees the world through their own eyes and all have something to teach you, no matter how significant. My 'professional' life's chapters, to date, have been a powerful combination, delivering insights that could only be attained by experiencing them. There is great value in formal learning, this is indisputable, but there is even greater value in the pragmatic stuff - when you throw yourself into the industry fray and learn to adapt to every circumstance. Nothing is as it would seem, but everything is as it is! There are no substitutes for hard earned experience, a growth mind set, lifelong learning, humility, courage, wisdom and authenticity. If you have read this far, I do hope our paths cross one day; I can't wait to hear about, and learn from, your story. The relevance is not so much in what we have done, but rather, it is in what we are going to do. JeffC.

Dr Ali Choudhary is an experienced academic and industry practitioner with over fifteen years of teaching experience across undergraduate and postgraduate business programs in Australia and Pakistan. He completed his PhD in Management at RMIT University, Australia, in 2021. His academic and professional work reflects a strong commitment to high-quality business education, scholarly impact, and industry engagement, consistent with AACSB standards.

Dr Choudhary has published more than twenty peer-reviewed scholarly articles in reputable national and international journals and conference proceedings. His research contributes to contemporary debates in management, entrepreneurship, innovation, and leadership. His scholarly work demonstrates clear alignment between teaching, research, and professional engagement.

Dr Choudhary maintains active and sustained engagement with industry through entrepreneurship and consulting. He has overseen international client relations and global e-commerce operations, providing authentic, practice-informed perspectives that directly inform curriculum content and assessment design. His consulting work focuses on strategic planning, implementation support, and capacity building. He has also designed and delivered executive education and professional development programs in leadership, design thinking, change management, ethics, entrepreneurship, and human resource management.

His teaching philosophy emphasises assurance of learning, critical thinking, collaboration, and the applied integration of theory and practice. He adopts innovative pedagogical approaches such as flipped classrooms, blended learning, gamification, and the responsible integration of AI-enabled tools to enhance learning outcomes. These innovations have directly informed his published research on gamification in entrepreneurship education.