Danture Wickramasinghe is professor of management accounting at the University of Glasgow. He has joined Glasgow after 19 years of research and teaching at the University of Manchester and a 1 and ½ years at the University of Hull as Professor of Management Accounting and the Director of the Centre for Accounting and Accountability Research. Previously, he has taught management accounting and related subjects at the University of Colombo (Sri Lanka) and the University of Ruhuna (Sri Lanka), and had a visiting appointment at Paris-Dauphine University, France. Formerly, he was the Dean of the Faculty of Management and Finance and the Head of the Department of Commerce at the University of Colombo, and the Head of the Department of Business Administration at the University of Ruhuna. At Manchester, he was the Programme Director of M.Sc. (Accounting & Finance) programme and the Coordinator of the Management Accounting Module on the MBA-worldwide programme.

He has produced a number of research papers out of a large project funded by CIMA and has publications in international journals including Accountability, Auditing, and Accountability Journal, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, Advances in Public Interest in Accounting, Qualitative Research in Accounting and Management, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavioral & Research and Journal of Accounting and Organizational Change. He is the co-author of Management Accounting Change: Approaches and Perspectives (2007), a social theory based management accounting text, a guest editor of the special issue on Management Accounting in Less-developed Countries (2007) at Accounting and Organizational Change and the co-editor of Handbook of Accounting and Development (2012). He continues researching on management accounting issues in both advanced capitalist countries and emerging/ less-developed countries. Professor Wickramasinghe has over 25 years of experience as an enthusiastic and talented university teacher at undergraduate, postgraduate and MBS levels, has produced a number of PhDs, supervised 100s of Master's dissertations, and acted as internal and external examiner for over 10 PhD candidates. He is a regular speaker at research and professional forums, including the workshops organized by CIMA. Currently, he is the Chief External Examiner at Manchester Metropolitan University and the External Examiner at the University of Aberdeen and continues PhD supervision at Manchester.

KEYNOTE TITLE: ACKNOWLEDGING AND LEVERAGING PRE-EXISTING KNOWLEDGE IN QUALITATIVE RESEARCH.

Professor Zahirul Hoque, PhD FCPA FCMA, is an internationally recognized researcher in management accounting and the public sector with over three decades of experience in teaching, research, and university administration and governance at several international universities. He is a full professor of business at Prince Sultan University in Saudi Arabia and an adjunct professor at La Trobe Business School of La Trobe University, Australia. He obtained his PhD from the University of Manchester, UK.

He is the founding editor and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change (JAOC), a deputy editor of Accounting and Finance, a joint Editor of Emerald Studies in Public Service Accounting and Accountability, and serves as an editorial board member of Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, the British Accounting Review, Financial Accountability & Management, Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting and Financial Management, and Accounting and Management Review.

His research has been published in Accounting Organizations and Society, Accounting Auditing & Accountability Journal, British Accounting Review, Accounting and Business Research, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, Accounting and Finance, Sustainability Accounting Management and Policy Journal, Financial Accountability and Management, Management Accounting Research, Journal of Management Accounting Research, Behavioral Research in Accounting, International Journal of Accounting, International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, and Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting and Financial Management.

KEYNOTE TITLE: The Re-Creation of Budgets as an Organizational Routine to Provide Stability
(Because They Decay) and to Provide Decoupling as Symbolic Expressions of Values
(Because They Become Incarnate)

Kamran Ahmed is a Professor of Accounting & Finance, La Trobe Business School. He was Head of School of accounting from 2006-2010. Professor Ahmed began his academic career in Australia in 1988 at the Australian National University, and later had academic appointments at Victoria University of Wellington and the University of New England prior to joining La Trobe University in 1999. He had visiting appointments at the University of British Columbia, Exeter University, the University of Houston and Monash University. Professor Ahmed's research interests are corporate disclosure, corporate accounting policy choice, earnings management, international accounting harmonization, accounting and reporting practices in South Asia, and microfinance reporting. Professor Ahmed has published in such scholarly journals as Abacus, Accounting and Business Research, Accounting Education, Accounting and Finance, British Accounting Review, Corporate Governance: an International Review, Critical Perspective on Accounting, International Journal of Accounting, Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Journal of Business Finance and Accounting, Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, and Journal of International Accounting Research. Professor Ahmed has supervised several Honors, Master and Ph.D. candidates. He is currently on the editorial board of several journals including International Journal of Accounting, International Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Performance Evaluation, International Journal of Accounting and Information Management, Journal of Accounting and Organizational Change, and Research in Accounting in Emerging Economies, and has been an ad hoc reviewer for several other reputed refereed journals.

KEYNOTE TITLE: INTEGRATED REPORTING: A REVIEW AND FUTURE DIRECTION.

Cheryl Duckworth is a professor of Conflict Resolution at Nova Southeastern University. A peace-building program leader and conflict resolution policy analyst, she has served such organizations as the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy and the Center for International Education. She has lived in Zimbabwe and Paraguay, and published and presented globally on her two passions, peace education and peace economics, exploring ways to transform the economic, political, social and psychological root causes of war and violence. Selected publications include her book which explores the role of dignity in social movements, Land and Dignity in Paraguay, and an article on her implementation of critical peace education curriculum in a juvenile detention home. A proponent of engaged scholarship, she co-edited Conflict Resolution and the Scholarship of Engagement: Partnerships Transforming Conflict, which examines how engaged scholarship can enhance the field of conflict resolution. In 2014, she published Teaching About Terror: 9/11 and Collective Memory in US Classrooms, which analyzes the narrative today's students are receiving about 9/11, and the implications of this for global peace and conflict. Most recently, she contributed a chapter to The Changing Dynamics of Terrorism and Violent Extremism: An Analysis (Volume II).

Dr. Duckworth has trained hundreds of students, teachers and community leaders in peace education and conflict resolution both in the US and internationally. Currently she serves as the faculty advisor of NSU's Peace Education Working Group and on the Advisory Board of the Hope Development Organization, a women's rights and peace building organization in Pakistan, and Women's Promise, which advocates for and empowers women's leadership for peace globally. She has also appeared on peace-building related media, such as PRESSedent and The Doug Noll Show.

Duckworth teaches qualitative research methods, foundations of conflict resolution, History, Memory and Conflict Resolution, and peace education. She is active in the International Studies Association, the Comparative and International Education Society and the International Peace Research Association. As a model of engaged scholarship and student-centered curriculum, she also developed a Global Hybrid Course which examined peace education and peace building in Morocco. She also blogs at Teach for Peace.

PLENARY SPEECH TITLE : PEACE EDUCATION AS CONFLICT INTERVENTION: THE ROLE OF SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES IN ADDRESSING 21^ST-CENTURY CONFLICT

Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid is Professor of Political Science, School of Distance Education, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Penang, Malaysia, and former Visiting Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), Malaysia. He has held Visiting Fellowships with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore; the ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore; the Southeast Asia Regional Centre for Counter-Terrorism (SEARCCT), Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, United Kingdom.. Trained as a political scientist and political economist at the universities of Oxford, Leeds and Newcastle, United Kingdom, his research interests lie within the field of political Islam in Southeast Asia. Ahmad Fauzi has published 59 scholarly articles in leading journals such as Indonesia and the Malay World, Islamic Studies, Asian Studies Review, Southeast Asian Studies, Journal of Asian and African Studies, Asian Journal of Political Science, Japanese Journal of Political Science, Asian Survey, Pacific Affairs, Sojourn, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Contemporary Southeast Asia, The Round Table, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society and Politics, Religion and Ideology. He regularly contributes book chapters to edited volumes; recent ones include 'From community to the state to individual preachers: The vicissitudes of traditional Islamic studies in Malaysia' (with Amran Muhammad), in Khalid Arar, Rania Sawalhi, Amaarah DeCuir and Tasneem Amatullah (eds.), Islamic-based Educational Leadership, Administration and Management: Challenging Expectations Through Global Critical Insights (London and New York: Routledge, 2023) ; 'The Salafi-Jihadi Identity and Malaysia's Battle with Islamist Extremism', in Norshahril Saat, A'an Suryana and Mohd. Faizal Musa (eds.), Trending Islam: Cases from Southeast Asia (Singapore: ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute, 2023) and the latest, 'Different streams of Malay nationalism from the late colonial to contemporary eras' (with Azmi Arifin), in Lu Zhouxiang (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Nationalism in East and Southeast Asia (New York and London: Routledge. 2023). Among Ahmad Fauzi's published research monographs are titles such as Islamic Education in Malaysia (RSIS, 2010), Political Islam and Islamist Politics in Malaysia (ISEAS, 2013), Middle Eastern Influences on Islamist Organizations in Malaysia: The Cases of ISMA, IRF and HTM (ISEAS, 2016) and The Extensive Salafization of Malaysian Islam (ISEAS, 2016). Ahmad Fauzi's research has earned him airtime over international media outlets such as Singapore's Channel News Asia and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), besides giving occasional commentaries over Malaysia's media channels such as The Star, The Malay Mail Online, The Edge, Free Malaysia Today, Kosmo!, Harakahdaily and the Chinese-language Sin Chew Jit Poh. In May 2017, Ahmad Fauzi represented Malaysia at the Russia–Islamic World Strategic Meeting held in Grozny, Chechen Republic, Russian Federation. In December 2018, Ahmad Fauzi was appointed to the Malaysian Home Ministry's panel of experts to advise the government on terrorism cases investigated under the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012. Since January 2019, Ahmad Fauzi has been leading Kajian Malaysia: Journal of Malaysian Studies (Penang: USM Press) as its editor-in-chief. Ahmad Fauzi has also been an elected member to USM's Senate since 2020.

PLENARY SPEECH TITLE: Re-evaluating Research Impact in the Digital Era

Dr. Kashan Pirzada Birmingham City University, United Kingdom Kashan Pirzada earned Ph.D., M.Sc., MBA, and BCOM in Accounting and Finance. He has over 14 years of experience in teaching and research in higher education institutes. Before joining Birmingham City University, Kashan was a Senior lecturer at Tunku Puteri Intan Safinaz School of Accountancy (TISSA), University Utara Malaysia. He is also an Associate Fellow of the Asian Research Institute for Corporate Governance (ARICG).

Dr. Pirzada's research interests are accounting and corporate governance, corporate disclosure, CSR/Sustainability, earnings management, and corporate reporting practices in ASEAN. Dr. Pirzada has published more than 40 papers in such scholarly journals as Social Responsibility Journal, Elsevier Journal of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Cogent Business and Management, British Accounting and Finance, Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues, Polish Journal of Management Studies, African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism, and Leisure, Journal of Security and Sustainability Issues, Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, and International Journal of Economics and Management.

Dr. Pirzada has supervised several master's degrees and 5 Ph.D. candidates to completion. He is currently on the editorial board of several reputable ABS/WOS/SCOPUS refereed journals such as the International Journal of Ethics and Systems, Polish Journal of Management Studies, International Trade and Business Law Review, Founding Editor of Accounting and Finance Review, Journal of Finance and Banking Review, Journal of Business and Economics Review and a Lead Guest Editor for Foresight and STI Governance (WOS & SCOPUS-Q1). Dr. Pirzada has been an Adhoc reviewer for several other journals, including the Journal of Applied Accounting Research and Financial Innovation. He is also a columnist in THE EPOCH TIMES, United States.

KEYNOTE TOPIC: CORPORATE STRATEGIES FOR SUSTAINABLE GREEN DEVELOPMENT AND THE KNOWLEDGE GENERATION.