Noel is Professor of Accounting and Head of the Accounting and Financial Management Group.  Prior to that he was Professor of Corporate Governance and Head of Accounting and Financial Management at the University of Sheffield.

Noel welcomes PhD applicants interested in undertaking research in any area of corporate governance. Recent and current PhD student projects include: governance characteristics and audit pricing; audit committee characteristics and audit quality; governance in the alternative investment market (AIM); director busyness and corporate performance; earnings management surrounding takeovers; and the impact of board gender on new director appointments.

Noel’s teaching focuses on both accounting and corporate governance.

Noel’s main research interest is corporate governance. Specific areas of interest include: the governance role of the board of directors; the holding of multiple directorships; audit committees; the governance role of takeovers; the employment consequences of private equity acquisitions; sovereign wealth funds; and various aspects of auditing, especially audit pricing.  Noel’s research has been published in some of the leading academic journals in the fields of accounting and management such as: Accounting and Business Research; Accounting Forum; British Accounting Review; European Accounting Review; Corporate Governance: An International Review; British Journal of Management; Human Resource Management Journal; International Journal of Management Reviews; European Economic Review; and Journal of Risk and Insurance.

Noel currently serves on the editorial boards of Accounting Forum and Accounting, Finance and Governance Review.

• Abdallah, W, Goergen, M. O’Sullivan, N. (2015). Endogeneity - How failure to correct for it can cause wrong inferences and some remedies, British Journal of Management, 26(4), pp.791-804, ISSN: 1467-8551. DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12113.
• Goergen, M, O'Sullivan, N, Wood, G (2014).  The employment consequences of private equity acquisitions: The case of institutional buy outs, European Economic Review, 71, pp.67-79, ISSN: 0014-2921. DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2014.06.015.
• Goergen, M, O'Sullivan, N, Wood, G (2014).  The consequences of private equity acquisitions for employees: New evidence on the impact on wages, employment and productivity, Human Resource Management Journal, 24(2), pp.145-158, ISSN: 0954-5395. DOI: 10.1111/1748-8583.12032.
• Ghafran, C and O'Sullivan, N (2013) The governance role of audit committees: Reviewing a decade of evidence, International Journal of Management Reviews, 15(4), pp.381-407, ISSN: 1460-8545. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2370.2012.00347.x.
• Xue, B and O'Sullivan, N (2013) Further evidence on the determinants of audit pricing in universities, Accounting Forum, 37(3), pp.196-212, ISSN: 0155-9982. DOI: 10.1016/j.accfor.2012.12.002.