Black presents paper at workshop in Italy

Dr. William "Bill" Black, a University of North Georgia (UNG) associate professor of accounting, presented a paper at a conference in Messina, Italy, in September.

The presentation was through Black's role as senior editor of the "Accounting Historians Journal," a section journal of the American Accounting Association. Black has held this role since 2017.

Black's co-authors on the paper, "A Bibliometric Analysis of 50 Years of the Accounting Historians Journal," were three scholars from the University of Messina and one from the University of Chieti-Pescara. This paper grew out of contacts made at a conference in Nantes, France, earlier this year, and it is expected to lead to a stream of research papers exploring this area of scholarship.

Other presentations at the conference covered accounting history topics ranging from medieval Italian history to accounting for disaster recovery efforts in the 20th century.

"The most meaningful part of the conference for me was the opportunity to reconnect with other accounting historians from around the world, learn from their research approaches and identify interesting new areas in accounting history to explore," Black said. "Our bibliometric analysis highlighted patterns in topics, authorship and locations for scholarship, and I hope that listeners came away from our presentation with a renewed appreciation for the value an individual scholar can contribute to the development of their area."