Faculty Seminar Series

Welcome to the Faculty of Business, Law and Arts (FBLA) monthly Seminar Series.

Designed to cultivate a dynamic and collaborative research culture, the Faculty Seminars Series bring together academics, HDR students, and the broader university community. These seminars are more than just a platform for sharing research—they’re a space for building connections, developing new skills, and fostering innovation. With opportunities for staff to discover colleagues’ expertise, students to connect with mentors, and guest experts to inspire new ideas, the program ensures everyone in the FBLA community has a voice. Whether you are looking to upskill, pitch a project, or engage in lively discussion, these seminars promise an inclusive and intellectually stimulating environment for all.

Purpose:

To foster a collegiate, inclusive and competent research community and culture within FBLA by:

increasing staff awareness of their colleagues’ research expertise and interests

providing opportunities for up-skilling and research discourse

actively involving and connecting HDR students with staff and each other

connecting with external expertise in the form of guest presenters

providing a platform for pitching projects for collegiate input

Listed below you will find a catalogue of previously held seminars.

Visit the faculty events page for more details of upcoming seminars.

The Good Business School

Held 4 March 2025

In this presentation, Professor Alison Pullen discusses the good business school as a fundamental departure from the corporate business school, proposing a vital rethinking of the purpose and practice of business schools, reimagining them as political rather than economic institutions.

Research Ethics: Friend, Foe, Facilitator?

Held 1 April, 2025

In this seminar, Dr Georgina Dimopoulos will wear two ‘hats’ – one as a researcher, and the other as an ethics committee member – to stimulate a conversation about the role, challenges and opportunities of research ethics processes at SCU. She will also offer practical tips, with examples, for preparing ethics applications and responding to the Ethics Committee’s comments. Georgina will seek to show that research ethics need not be a foe, and possibly not even a friend – but rather, a facilitator of and valuable contributor to your research.

A man in a suit and tie sitting at a desk

Journal rankings in SCU Law & Business

Held 6 May, 2025

Professor Mike Ewing says motivation behind this exercise is not to put more pressure on you or to ‘raise the bar’. On the contrary, it is to provide a fairer list with far greater external validity list, free of big anomalies – to ultimately ensure that you are not disadvantaged. There is also an implicit educative component to this.

HDR in FBLA - What, who, why?

Held 10 June, 2025

What do you know about FBLA’s HDR candidates and their research? In this panel discussion, Zeljko Deban (Business), Eliza Hew (Law) and Amanda Balasooriya Mudiyanselage (Business) will give you a 5-minute pitch about their research and share some insights into their HDR experience so far. Please bring along your questions and top tips for our HDR candidates!

How to Respond to Abstract, Incorrect, or Personal Peer Reviews

Held 2 July, 2025

Dr Brendan Walker-Munro. Have you ever slaved over a hot keyboard, trying to put your heart and soul into a paper, only for some nameless academic tear it (and you) to shreds for no apparent reason? Got a reviewer asking you to cite all their work, even though it has nothing to do with your paper? Ever wanted to cry into your laptop at the latest round of peer feedback?

Seeing the Vision - How a Company's Sense of Purpose Drives Value

Held 6 August, 2025

Associate Professor Sagarika Mishra explores the relationship between the readability of the Vision and Mission (VM) statement and firm value. VM statements are critical elements that establish organisational identity and strategy, acting as guides for both internal and external stakeholders.

Drawing our theoretical framework from the goal-setting theory, we find a positive association between the readability of VM statements and firm value, suggesting that having clearer VM statements improves firm value.

We further show that this positive association is driven by higher operating efficiency and labour efficiency, suggesting that clarity in communicating a firm’s vision and mission enhances internal alignment and resource utilisation. Additionally, our study highlights the effect of business groups (BGs), the effect of institutional shareholding, and the effect of financial constraints on the relationship between the readability of VM statements and firm value.

Vicarious trauma and self-care in research

Held 2 September, 2025

During his lecture at the 2017 Tristan Jepson Memorial Foundation Sydney Lecture, David Heilpern shared his challenges and insights regarding vicarious trauma, PTSD, fatigue, the inability to recognise problems and reluctance to seek help. Professor Heilpern raised six key issues which need to be addressed in order to “lift the judicial veil” on the serious mental health issues affecting judicial officers: modern technology; decision fatigue; viewing emotion as bad, intellect as good; security threats; loneliness of the job and the need for more research on mental health issues and the judiciary and remedies. In this seminar, David will share these research insights.

Drawing on her PhD in rape law, Jessica Schaffer explores the challenges of researching traumatic legal topics and considers a three-tiered framework across individual, institutional, and procedural levels to build a more transparent and supportive environment for researchers. At the individual level, researchers and HDR students should be equipped to recognise emotional strain and access guidance on self-care strategies. At the institutional level, universities and supervisors should embed trauma-informed approaches into research planning and supervision. At the procedural level, ethics committees should incorporate researcher wellbeing into approval processes and risk assessments. These frameworks can assist in ensuring emotional risks are acknowledged and mitigated.

Lifting the judicial veil — vicarious trauma, PTSD and the judiciary: a personal story

Head and shoulders of Dr. Alexandr Akimov

Do households respond to dynamic electricity price signals? Evidence from NSW

Held 7 October, 2025

This seminar was delivered by Dr. Alexandr Akimov.

Time-varying tariffs are increasingly being explored as a mechanism to facilitate electricity demand response (DR) among residential consumers. In Australia, electricity retailers have implemented real-time pricing (RTP) tariffs, wherein prices fluctuate every 30 minutes in alignment with wholesale market dynamics. However, the extent to which households respond to such high-frequency price variability remains unclear.

This study investigates household responses to the only commercially available RTP retail tariff in Australia and compares them with a matched cohort of households on conventional flat or time-of-use tariffs. Our findings indicate that, on average, households exposed to RTP tariffs exhibit relatively weak responsiveness to price signals. In contrast, households equipped with rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) systems demonstrate more pronounced responses, primarily attributable to the integration of battery storage and automated control technologies.

These results suggest that enabling technologies such as distributed solar generation and battery storage play a pivotal role in enhancing the effectiveness of DR programs. Behavioural adjustments alone appear insufficient to elicit substantial demand shifts, even among relatively engaged residential customers.

Furthermore, the analysis reveals minimal load shifting during peak pricing periods, while mid-day responsiveness is comparatively stronger. Notably, tariff-induced incentives often act as substitutes for solar generation during periods of overlap. These findings have important implications for the design of more effective residential tariffs and DR policies, highlighting the need to align tariff structures with technological capabilities and consumer engagement levels.

Personalise your experience