Plenary Speakers

The plenary speakers of the 2021 CPA Conference included Emily Barman, David Cooper, and Katherine Gibson. Recorded videos of these presentations can be found below.

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Emily Barman is Dean of the Graduate School and Vice Provost of Graduate Education of Loyola University Chicago. Her scholarship focuses on the social organization of altruism and philanthropy. Emily Barman’s recent book, Caring capitalism: The meaning and measure of social value in the market (Cambridge University Press, 2016) investigates social value as a distinct order of worth. Her latest research focuses on the causes and consequences of the rise of market-based approaches to pro-poor healthcare (such as advanced market commitments, health enterprises, and primary care franchises), as led by public and nonprofit actors including the Center for Health Market Innovations, the Gates Foundation, HANSHEP, and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization.

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David Cooper is Emeritus Professor at the University of Alberta and part-time professor at the University of Edinburgh. He obtained his undergraduate education at LSE and his PhD from the University of Manchester. David has written or edited nine books and over 90 articles. Throughout his career, David has been active in doctoral education and encouraging critical accounting scholarship. He is a Consulting Editor at Accounting, Organizations and Society and at Critical Perspectives on Accounting (which he co-founded). Together with Trevor Hopper, he conceived and organized the first Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Accounting conference. He currently researches the global regulation of accounting and is active in progressive politics, notably around environmental liabilities.

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Katherine Gibson is internationally known for her research on rethinking economies as sites of ethical action. She trained as a human geographer with expertise in political economy and, with her collaborator for over 30 years, the late Professor Julie Graham, developed a distinctive approach to economic geography drawing on feminism, post-structuralism and action research. The diverse economies research program they initiated has become a vibrant sub-field of study within the social sciences. Katherine Gibson has directed action research projects with communities interested in alternative economic development pathways in Australia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and the Philippines. These experiences have contributed to elaboration of a distinctive 'Community Partnering Approach to Local Development'. The Community Economies Collective, which Gibson-Graham established, is an ongoing collaboration between academic and community researchers and activists in Australia, North America, Europe and South East Asia. The goal of the Collective is to theorise, discuss, represent and ultimately enact new visions of economy.