Laura Spira is Professor of Corporate Governance at Oxford Brookes University. Laura trained as a chartered accountant with Peat Marwick Mitchell & Co (now KPMG) in London. She subsequently worked in the National Health Service at regional level in Oxford before joining the Business School at Oxford Brookes University where she has taught on a wide range of courses and undertaken a variety of leadership roles. Laura is Research Relationships Adviser to the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, and a member of the ICAEW Research Advisory Board. Laura was founding treasurer and membership secretary of the British Accounting and Finance Association Corporate Governance Special Interest Group and remains a member of the executive committee. Since 2007, she has acted as co-chair for the annual European Institute of Advanced Studies in Management workshop on corporate governance, held in Brussels.
Judy Slinn has researched the histories of a wide range of companies and organizations, including ICI, Unilever, Morgan Grenfell, and the electricity supply industry. She has researched and written histories of four major City law firms (Freshfields, Linklaters, Clifford Chance, and Ashursts), as well as those of pharmaceutical companies (Glaxo, Abbott Laboratories in the UK) and of other significant UK companies, including Grand Metropolitan (now Diageo) and Booker. Her interest in corporate governance has developed in the last 10 years as Reader in Strategy and Business History in the Business School at Oxford Brookes University. She retired from this post in 2011 and continues to research and write as a business historian.