Dr Michele Bigoni

Dr Bigoni’s main area of expertise is critical accounting, especially the analysis of the links between accounting and the exercise of power. He investigates these issues both from contemporary and historical perspectives. Michele has been recognised as one of the "thought leaders" in the field of accounting history and religion. Some of his work has been included in the collection of articles and books considered significant to our memory of the Holocaust by Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem

He has received numerous prizes for his teaching and research, including the Academy of Accounting Historians’ Margit F. and Hanns Martin Schoenfeld Award, the Robert W. Gibson Award for the best paper published in Accounting History, the Head of School Prize for Research at Queen’s Management School and Kent Union’s Above and Beyond Award for teaching.

Michele serves as Associate Editor for Critical Perspectives on Accounting and is a member of the Editorial Board of Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Critical Perspectives on Accounting and Accounting History.
His teaching interests cover both financial and management accounting. He has also taught accounting in the public sector.

Michele studies accounting in association with the social and organisational context in which it operates. He analyses the roles accounting can play in organisations and society beyond the traditional focus of promoting efficiency and rational decision making. His work is interdisciplinary in nature and insights from different disciplines including philosophy, sociology, religion and political economy which are used in his analysis of accounting technologies. Particularly relevant for Michele’s research is the work of French sociologist and philosopher, Michel Foucault. Michele has paid particular attention to the role accounting has in the establishment and reproduction of power relations.
In Michele’s work, accounting and its efficiency-rhetoric are seen as effective tools to make decisions look neutral and disinterested even when they are enacted to promote the interest of those who hold the supreme authority in a society. He has also investigated how accounting enables a penetrating control on distant people and sites and has the potential to highlight any deviations from a standard set by those in power. These themes have been analysed both in contemporary society and from a historical perspective. Michele has well-established, enduring relationships with British, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Australian Universities.
Michele is also interested in studying public sector, most especially issues related to planning and control systems, performance management and public value measurement and management. Michele’s publications are in both Italian and English language journals, some of the most recent ones appearing in the 3* journals Accounting Forum, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, British Accounting Review and Critical Perspectives on Accounting. The international standing of his research is also confirmed by the book he has recently edited, which shows how the apparently banal practice of accounting has contributed to the attempted annihilation of Jews by the Nazis (Funnell, W., Bigoni, M., Twyford, E. (2024), Accounting for the Holocaust: Enabling the Final Solution. New York: Routledge).

Michele has taught at both undergraduate and postgraduate level in Italy and the UK. His portfolio of taught courses includes:

• Financial Accounting
• Management Accounting
• Accounting for Non-Specialists
• Issues in Not-For-Profit and Public Sector Accounting
• Financial Statement Analysis
• Public Sector Planning and Control
• Introductory Public Sector Accounting

Michele also engages with executive education courses in Italy, where he teaches public sector planning and control and management accounting.    

Supervision topics

• Accounting history
• Accounting and power
• The role of accounting in its social and political context
• Accounting and neoliberalism
• Accounting and neocolonialism
• Accounting and public value  
  

Current Supervisees

• Fatima Ezzhara Abdelhak: The impact of Covid-19 on management control systems design and use: the case of East Kent NHS Trust

Past Supervisees

• Waksh Awais: Accounting education and (neo)-colonialism. A Gramscian analysis of higher education in Pakistan
• Shashitha Gimhani Jayakody: Essays on political economy and finance
• Orie Miyazawa: Cultural Legacies and Their Implications for Accounting and Accountability in Modern Japan 
  

Michele has been a consultant to a medium-sized Italian Municipality for the design and implementation of a performance measurement and management system. He has also worked with charities in the preparation of their annual reports.``
Michele is a member of the Higher Education Academy and of the Academy of Accounting Historians.