Emerging Challenges and Innovations in Microfinance and Financial Inclusion

Michael O'Connor is a senior lecturer in the accounting and financial management subject group at Portsmouth Business School. As a law graduate and finance professional he has worked with Andersen and KPMG in Ireland as well as the European Commission in Brussels. He has significant overseas experience in Russia and China, particularly in financial training. In this regard he has also worked as a contractor for international consultancy firms on behalf of public and private sector clients in Western Europe, West Africa, Central Asia. He is a graduate of the European Microfinance Programme at Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium) and was a co-organiser of the 5th European Research Conference on Microfinance.

Joana Silva Afonso is a Senior Research Associate at the University of Portsmouth (Economics and Finance Department). She has experience both as practitioner and researcher in the microfinance sector. She first became involved with microfinance in Portugal where she was a microcredit officer at ANDC (NGO) between 2005 and 2012. In 2013, she completed the European Microfinance Programme at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), which included field work in the Dominican Republic. Between 2015 and 2018, as part of her PhD at the University of Portsmouth, she conducted research on the challenges associated with impact evaluation in microfinance with field work in Pakistan and Zimbabwe. She was a co-organiser of the 5th European Research Conference on Microfinance which took place in June 2017.