Neil Eccles is a professor in the Institute for Corporate Citizenship at the University of South Africa. It should come as no surprise that in this role he teaches and does research. In terms of teaching, he uses moral and political philosophy to try and instil a bit of much needed critical thinking into economic and management science students. His module entitled Sustainability and Greed has been running since 2013, and is taken by between 6 000 and 11 000 undergraduate students a semester.

In terms of research, his interests fall broadly under the banner of business ethics, which he pursues from a critical perspective. He would like to say that he publishes extensively, but in these days of mass publication, this would be stretching the truth. Suffice to say, he tries to publish well. Aligned with this, he is the Editor-in-Chief of the African Journal of Business Ethics and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Sustainable Finance and Investment.

In terms of university management and governance experience, Neil served as the Head of the Institute for Corporate Citizenship at Unisa for nine years between 2008 and 2017. He also served a term on Unisa’s Council as a Senate representative between 2015 and 2017.

Before joining Unisa he spent six years in the consulting industry, in both a mainstream business consulting company as well as a specialist corporate social responsibility consulting firm.

He has a PhD in Ecology from UCT and a BSc, a BSc (honours) and an MSc from Wits.