Work at IfU, previous experience and academic profile

Kate (Katharine) is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Strategy and Managerial Accounting (IfU). She completed her Ph.D. in Accounting from the University of Waterloo (Canada). Kate is also a Chartered Accountant, Chartered Professional Accountant (Canada), a Certified Internal Auditor (Institute of Internal Auditors), and holds an Honours Bachelor Degree in Business Administration from the Richard Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario (Canada).

Before joining academia, Kate worked as an external auditor at PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC; Canada). In this role, she worked with both public and private companies in various industries, including Asset Management, Insurance, Manufacturing, Education, Not-for-Profit, and others. After PwC, she went on to work as an internal auditor at Canada Life Assurance Company.

Kate has taught a wide variety of courses at the College, Bachelor and Graduate levels. She has taught primarily accounting-focused courses, including introduction to accounting, advanced accounting, personal taxation (Canada), corporate social responsibility, finance and several management accounting courses. The course styles taught range from lecture-style classes to problem-based learning to case-based courses. She works to actively encourage discussion in the classroom to provide an interactive learning experience for her students.

Research interest

Kate conducts primarily behavioural management accounting research. Her research focuses on judgement and decision-making in organizations. Specifically, she examines performance evaluation systems, the unconscious biases in subjective evaluations, and the effect of management controls on the performance evaluation process. While her main research interests lie in management accounting, she also has research in judgment and decision-making in cybersecurity and audit contexts. This research focuses on using personality, cognitive and neurophysiological measures to understand individuals' decision-making better. Though Kate has worked with various behavioural research tools, she primarily focuses on experimental research methods