Philip Linsley

Research Information

Philip is Professor of Accounting and Risk based in the School for Business and Society, University of York.  After graduating in Philosophy Philip qualified as a chartered accountant, subsequently working as a financial controller in industry and as a director of a UK based professional accountancy training company. Philip has significant experience as an academic lecturer, researcher and in respect of the administrative roles he has undertaken. He is a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy and researches and teaches in areas related to finance, accounting and risk.

Philip’s main research focus is on risk. Latterly, he has been interested in issues of risk, risk management and culture. In this undertaking his research he has been drawing on neo-Durkheimian cultural theory (as developed by Dame Mary Douglas) to understand diverse topics. For example, he has used this approach to analyse the changing role of psychiatrists, the Enron debacle, the recent financial crisis and risk management in banking. Philip has written research reports for different organisations; for example, for the Institute of Risk Management and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

He is currently undertaking a pilot project investigating financial inclusion amongst Bangladeshi rice farming households. Financial inclusion programmes aim to ensure all individuals have access to formal banking systems and are especially focused on poor adults in the least developed economies. It is claimed financial inclusion can alleviate poverty and improve a country’s economy but despite the best efforts of different stakeholder organisations usage of mobile phone-based digital financial services (DFS) remains relatively low in least developed nations. Consequently, this interdisciplinary project seeks to understand perceptions of DFS amongst Bangladeshi rice farming households and, using Mary Douglas’s neo-Durkheimian institutional theory, to identify how stakeholders can collaborate more effectively to significantly increase uptake of DFS.