Melina is an experienced accounting academic with a record of high-quality research outputs and projects, a track record of research funding, successful doctorate supervision, and a sustained record of leadership and management roles at a department and school level. Melina actively contributes to the accounting discipline and community with many engagements and roles.
Melina’s research and education experience has evolved around the importance of accounting as an influential social practice that impacts the control and accountability of sustainable organisations, and she focuses on the development of accounting graduates into effective business leaders with social awareness and skills. Melina has experience in developing, leading and supervising research projects using qualitative methodological designs that incorporate the theoretical analysis of substantive empirical evidence and contribute to developing both theory and practice.
Melina graduated in 1998 from the Technological Educational Institute in Kavala, Greece (now International Hellenic University). She gained professional experience working at an Accounting Practice and later, after graduation, at a Tobacco Trading Company. During her undergraduate studies, Melina won a national prize at a student competition of the Chamber of Commerce of Athens and the National Bank of Greece with an essay on the relationship between the public and private sectors suggesting exploring collaborative opportunities between the two sectors. As a final-year student, she participated in a Socrates / Erasmus exchange programme, where she completed a year at the University of Derby, UK (1997-98).
After graduation and gaining work experience in accounting, Melina was awarded a national scholarship for postgraduate studies. This led to joining the MAcc in International Accounting and Financial Management and later the PhD in Accounting program at the University of Glasgow, Scotland. Her doctorate research topic, ‘The role of Trust in a Resource Allocation Process’, under the supervision of Professor Ken Shackleton and Professor Clive Emmanuel, involved an in-depth case study of the interactions of a ‘Start Chamber’ committee while using a thorough Income-Driven Resource Model. The implication of social interactions in implementing the research allocation model was found to be far from technical.
While completing her doctorate, Melina was appointed as a Research Fellow at the Cullen Centre of Risk and Governance at Caledonian University in 2004. In 2005, Melina graduated with a doctorate and, in 2006, joined as a Lecturer in Accounting the Aston Business School at Aston University, UK.
Melina has been continuously involved in roles that contribute to both her academic community and the university in terms of leadership. She has been the Deputy Head of the Department and Acting HoD, ensuring the support of her colleagues and the department’s activities with sustained resourcing plans and mentoring. Other leadership roles included Research Convenor, Ethics Committee member, and UG Programme Director.
In the wider academic community, since 2006, Melina has been involved in organising the Management Accounting Research Group (MARG) annual conference that has been taking place for at least 35 years. Melina is a BAFA mentor for Early Career Researchers and a reviewer of the BAFA 2022 annual conference. She is an active council member of the Management Control Association (MCA), and is currently the Honorary Secretary of the MCA. Melina has been an external examiner at a number of universities, both in the UK and abroad.