Professor Warwick Funnell

Warwick Funnell is Professor of Accounting and Public Sector Accountability.

The greatest part of his public sector research has been prompted by threats that have arisen from public sector reforms over the past two decades to institutions and practices designed to ensure the accountability of governments.
Professor Funnell's accounting history research has mainly arisen from his interest in the evolution of institutions of public sector accountability and constitutional requirements. He is a recognised authority in the history of public sector accountability and audit during the 19th and 20th centuries in Britain and Australia and the consequences of new public management reforms for public sector accountability.

The importance of this work was further confirmed when his book A History of British National Audit, published by Oxford University Press, was launched by the British Comptroller and Auditor General in the Palace of Westminster, London. Outside his public sector accounting history interests, his publications reflect a concern for the way in which accounting has been used as a tool of political ideologies and, invariably, the dramatic consequences when this occurs.
His paper Accounting in the Service of the Holocaust has attracted especially significant attention internationally since it was published. The importance of the paper was also recognised when Yad Vashem, the Jewish Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, sent the author a certificate and letter expressing their appreciation for the contributions of the paper to the history of the Holocaust and that they had included the paper in their collection of books and papers considered significant to our memory of the Holocaust. 

Professor Funnell teaches primarily management accounting and management control systems.

Past Supervisees

• Orie Miyazawa: Cultural Legacies and Their Implications for Accounting and Accountability in Modern Japan.
• R Jupe: Privatisation and the Failure of Regulation, (2011) 
• S Robertson: Accounting in the Dutch East India Company 1601-1623, (2010) 
• L Moerman: A Theological Critique of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Debt Initiative: Redefining the Sovereign Debtor and Creditor Relationship. (2009) 
• M Wade: The Credibility of Performance Audit. (2008) 
• B Bubaker: Accounting for Development in Libya. (2007) 
• R Ahmed: Strategic Management Accounting in Local Government. (2005) 
• J Banos: Discourse, power and accounting: A Foucauldian Analysis of the case of the New Settlements of Sierra Morena and Andalucia (1767-1772). (2003) 
• S Dobbs: Common Law Recognition of Opportunity Costs: The Classification Dilemma and the Religious Legacy. (2003) 
• J Nagy: From Accounting, to Accountability, to Accommodation: Economic Rationalism, Audit Quality and the Victorian Audit Office 1992-1999. (2003) 
  

Professor Funnell is a member of several professional bodies, including membership as a Certified Practising Accountant.