CEARC Team

Meet Our CEARC Research Team

CPI Advisory CommitteeFiona Duguid: Fiona Duguid (PhD) is a researcher based out of Chelsea, Quebec. She is a Research Fellow with the Centre of Excellence on Accounting and Reporting of Co-operatives, Saint Mary’s University (SMU). She previously worked for the Co-operatives Secretariat for the Government of Canada and the Canadian Co-operative Association. She currently conducts research focusing on co-operatives, social economy, sustainability and community economic development, is an instructor in the SMU Co-operative Business Management program, as well as the MBA program (CED) at Cape Breton University. She is President of the Canadian Association for the Study of Co-operation (CASC).


CPI Advisory Committee

Daphne Rixon: Dr. Daphne Rixon is Associate Professor of Accounting, Saint Mary’s University. She has a PhD from the University of Warwick, United Kingdom and is a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA) and Certified Management Accountant (CMA). Dr. Rixon has a very productive research program which has resulted in 43 peer-reviewed publications and 75 conference presentations. She has won several research awards including the Emerald Literati Network 2018 Award for Excellence her paper co-authored with Larry Corrigan: “A dramaturgical accounting of cooperative performance indicators. It was published in Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management. The paper has already been downloaded more than 530 times.

Daphne is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Co-operative Accounting and Management. In addition to her position of Associate Professor, she is also the Executive Director of the Centre of Excellence in Accounting and Reporting for Co-operatives (CEARC). Dr. Rixon teaches managerial and cost accounting in the undergraduate program as well as Financial Management in the Masters of Management for Co-operatives and Credit Unions (MMCCU) program and Integrative Accounting in the MBA-CPA program.


CEARC Research TeamNik Rowlston: Hedge Fund Administrator, part-time instructor in Financial Instruments at Saint Mary’s University. Nik holds a CA accounting designation from the UK and is a graduate of the University of Nottingham. Nik is working with us on a paper comparing the performance frameworks currently used by co-operatives.


Willy Robinson: Retired CEO of iNova Credit Union, Halifax. Willy is a CPA, CMA and has completed her MBA at Dalhousie University as well as the MMCCU degree from Saint Mary’s University. She is a former member of the Board of CEARC. Willy has volunteered to assist with the data validity after the CPI participants enter their data in the system. 


Maureen McCulloch: Senior lecturer in Accounting in the Oxford Brookes Business School, UK for six years and is also an instructor in the Co-operative Management Education Programme at Saint Mary’s University. Her research focuses on accounting for non-profit and social enterprises including co-operatives. Prior to joining the staff at Oxford Brookes Business School, Maureen was finance director for a number of non-profit organisations, consultant for several others and a visiting lecturer at several UK universities covering accounting for purposes other than profit. Maureen is a Chartered Accountant (UK) and is currently completing her PhD at Sheffield Business School.


Eric Gosselin: After completing a B.Comm. (Hons) at the University of Manitoba, Eric embarked on a career in the music business. Unbeknownst to him and his bandmates, they were operating as a worker co-op. Later on, Eric co-founded a multistakeholder community bike shop, Coop Vélo-Cité. He then supervised the complete renovation of the bike shop, with Sun Certified Builders Cooperative, that transformed the shop into an ultra energy efficient space. Eric loves design: thinking, art, bikes and buildings. Eric is wrapping up his studies in the MMCCU program with a research project on the Co-operative Performance Indicators (CPI). The objective of the research is to test-run the CPI tool with non-profit, volunteer run, community bike shop co-ops in different regions of Canada. Is the CPI tool fit for these co-ops? Eric will graduate from the MMCCU program in September 2019.


Josée Charbonneau: Josée collaborates in various research projects led by the IRECUS, a research and education institute for cooperatives and mutuals located at the University of Sherbrooke, as a research professional. She holds a master's degree in management and governance of cooperatives and mutuals as well as a master's degree in environment. Her interests lie in the contribution of cooperatives to sustainable development.