Alex Nicholls is Professor of Social Entrepreneurship at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, and was the first staff member of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship in 2004. His research interests range across several key areas within social entrepreneurship and social innovation, including: social finance and social impact investing; the nexus of relationships between accounting, accountability and governance; public and social policy contexts; and Fair Trade. To date Nicholls has published more than eighty papers, working papers, book chapters and articles and six books. Most appear in a wide range of peer reviewed journals and books, including five papers in Financial Times Top 30 journals (with two others under review and resubmit). He is the General Editor of the Skoll Working Papers series and the Editor of the Journal of Social Entrepreneurship. Before his appointment at Saïd Business School in 2004, he served as a Lecturer in Marketing at Aston University. He has also held positions at the University of Surrey; Leeds Metropolitan University and the University of Toronto. Prior to academic life, he held senior management positions at the John Lewis Partnership, the largest mutual retailer in Europe. Alex holds a BA (Hons), MA and PhD in English Language and Literature from King’s College, London and an MBA from Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford.