Centre information

The Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research (CSEAR) is an international membership-based network that aims to mobilise accounting scholarship to enable a more sustainable society.

CSEAR aims to be a world-recognized, global community of scholars who engage with students, activists, practitioners, policy makers and other interested groups in order to generate and disseminate knowledge on social and environmental accounting and accountability. Our mission is to encourage and facilitate high quality, relevant research, teaching and external engagement with practice and policy through developing knowledge, expertise, resources and a supportive network for mentoring and career development.

CSEAR is overseen by an Executive Council (currently Chaired by Professor Ian Thomson, University of Birmingham) and managed on a day-to-day basis by its Directors (Professor John Ferguson and Dr Shona Russell, University of St Andrews).

Reg Mathews Memorial Prize

Each year SEAJ awards the Reg Mathews Memorial Prize. Winners can be found here.

About the Prize

The Reg Mathews Memorial Prize is an annual award for the paper considered to have made the most significant contribution towards the social and environmental accounting literature published in Social and Environmental Accountability Journal ( SEAJ). The paper is selected by the Executive Editorial Board of SEAJ and is named in memory of Professor Reg Mathews, a leading figure in the development of social and environmental accounting. The award was established in 2013, and first awarded for papers published in 2012.

Professor Reg Mathews

Professor Reg Mathews was one of social accounting's earliest and most influential pioneers. An academic for most of his life, he was a prolific author and an exceptionally generous colleague. His influence on the emerging field of social accounting was manifest equally in his tireless support of new academics and in his important papers on such matters as education, approaches to practice and state-of-the-art reviews of the subject. He was the founding joint editor of Social Accounting Monitor, which paved the way for the international CSEAR community and which developed over time into what we now know as Social and Environmental Accountability Journal.

The CSEAR community honoured Reg with a Festchrift entitled Social Accounting, Mega Accounting and Beyond in 2007 and it is entirely fitting that his inestimable contribution be remembered in this annual prize. Reg passed away in 2012 after a long illness.