Draft:Muhammad Azizul Islam

Muhammad Azizul Islam (born 1975) is a Bangladeshi Australian academic who is Chair in Accountancy and Professor in Sustainability Accounting & Transparency at the University of Aberdeen and is also recognised internationally as a leading sustainability accounting researcher. . Previously, he was a faculty member at School of Accountancy, QUT, Department of Accounting, Deakin University, School of Accounting, RMIT University, Department of Accounting and Information System, University of Dhaka, and Business Adminstration Discipline, Khulna University. He is Chartered Accountant and has a membership from CAANZ. Islam is a civil society representative of Multi-Stakeholder Group (MSG), UKEITI and he is also a member of GRI Advisory Group on Labour and Human Rights standards.

Islam is known for his work on some of the specific sustainability accounting and transparency issues including human rights disclosures, corporate transparency on modern slavery, SDGs & social audit and corporate anti-bribery measures and profiled in news media Conversation BBC, Raconteur The Sydney Morning Herald , Sunday Post , Just-Style, Retail Gazette, Financial Express,  Prothom Alo (premier Bangla news) and IFAC-Gateway. He has published a book ‘Social Compliance Accounting (Springer Nature, 2015). He was the managing Guest Editor for the British Accounting Review, Special section on Modern Slavery and the Accounting Profession. He was a past joint editor of Accounting Research Journal. He is an associate editor of Journal of Social Entrepreneurship.

Education
Islam earned a PhD on Corporate Social and Environmental Reporting Practices within the context of global clothing supply chains from RMIT University. He received a Master’s Degree and Honours Degree in Accounting from The University of Dhaka. He earned a second Master’s Degree in Globalisation and Economic Development from The University of Antwerp.

Key Research work
Over the past 18 years, Professor Islam has been investigating the use of social audits and Human Rights disclosures in relation to the lives of those who work in garment factories loacted in the Global South (mainly in Bangladesh) that supply goods to big multinational companies based in North America, Europe and Australia. His research highlights problematic aspects of corporate social accountability and transparency. In 2020-2023, Islam led a few funded projects including one funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) on preventing exploitation of women in the Bangladesh garment industry

Islam has shared his research fiindings with the UK policymakers and Parliament members via All Party Parliamentary Group meeting/s. His research supports Transform Trade's (a global Trade Justice NGO) campaign for a Fashion Watchdog  and recommends the UK Government to introduce a garment trade adjudicator to eliminate unfair purashing practices by the UK Fashion retailers.

In 2017 and 2018, he made a parliamentary submission to the Australian Parliamentary Inquiry into UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and a submission to the Joint Parliamentary and Senate Inquiry Committee that concentrated on the establishment of a Modern Slavery Act 2018 in Australia.

Accounting profession and modern slavery
Professor Islam focuses on accountants and auditors’ responsibility in relation to curbing modern slavery. The International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) published his article titled ‘Tackling Modern Slavery: What Role Can Accountants Play?. In this article, he sees the future of modern slavery auditing as collaborative, where NGOs and accountants work together to tackle modern slavery. He argues that sustainability accounting should have an emancipatory role for future accountants and managers to tackle modern slavery. In his interview for AccountingWeb, he argues that in an attempt to eliminate modern slavery from Businesses, CFOs, finance directors and accountants should come forward and make their income statements and balance sheets human rights friendly.