2025 BLR Outstanding Research Award

Jędrzej Białkowski (FRM, PRM) is a Professor and the Head of Department of Economics and Finance at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. His research focuses on financial risk management and investments, including socially responsible investing. Since the early 2000s, he has had a research interest in the relationship between politics and capital markets which has resulted in important contributions to the literature. He was a visiting scholar/professor at McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin and Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. He has published in top-ranked finance journals, the Journal of Financial Economics and Journal of Banking and Finance, as well as top outlets in the area of derivatives, the Journal of Derivatives and Journal of Futures Markets. Jedrzej is the recipient of the prestigious award, the Boyle, Lally, and Rose Cup, for best overall paper at the 2019 New Zealand Finance Colloquium.

Xiaopeng Wei is a lecturer at the University of Adelaide, Australia. His research interests include investors’ sentiment, market volatility, behavioural finance, financial derivatives, policy uncertainty, and financial institutions. He is a graduate of Beijing Technology and Business University, with an MSc in Finance from Tilburg University. He received a Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand in March 2020.

Huong Dieu Dang is a Senior Lecturer in Finance at the University of Canterbury. Her research interests include social norms, behavioural finance, credit risk, portfolio management, and financial institutions. Prior to joining the University of Canterbury, she was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. She received an MBA and an MSc from the University of Arizona in 2006 and a Ph.D. from the University of Sydney in 2010. She is a CFA Charterholder and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Applied Accounting Research.