Our focus is on applied research in the areas of auditing, financial reporting, sustainability, and advisory services for financial institutions. In addition to academic theses, we also supervise practice-oriented theses conducted in cooperation with industry partners.
Important Information on Thesis Supervision
1. Please send all supervision requests jointly to Prof. Dr. Andreas Blumer (andreas.blumer@unisg.ch and andreas.blumer@ch.ey.com – please use both addresses) and Dr. Iva Mihaylova (iva.mihaylova@unisg.ch).
2. When contacting us for the first time, please include the following:
- A complete and up-to-date curriculum vitae in English or German
- Grade transcripts with all results from your previous studies
- A writing sample (a thesis, seminar paper, or similar academic work written by you as sole author)
- A brief statement of your motivation for writing your thesis under our supervision
- The planned time period (start and end dates) and the number of hours per week you intend to devote to the thesis. Please note the HSG rule that 1 ECTS corresponds to 30 hours of work.
3. If you wish to propose your own topic, please outline your idea when first contacting us. Proposals that fall within our areas of expertise improve your chances of being accepted for supervision. Please use our research proposal template (Grobdisposition), which all students supervised by us are required to use.
4. Please contact us only if you genuinely intend to write your thesis under our supervision. We ask that you do not approach multiple chairs simultaneously.
5. We also supervise practice-oriented theses conducted in cooperation with industry partners. These theses combine a scholarly research question with a practical application context within a company or organisation. Topics for practice-oriented theses are published on the HSG Business Platform (https://businessplatform.unisg.ch/). Please contact us about practice-oriented theses only if a relevant topic is currently listed on the platform. Practice-oriented theses are subject to supplementary guidelines that define the roles and responsibilities of all parties involved.
Topic Areas
A bachelor’s or master’s thesis can be written with us in any of the following areas:
- Financial reporting for banks and insurers
- External and internal audit, internal controls
- Regulatory supervision of the financial industry
- Risk management and risk control
- Corporate governance for financial institutions
- Current issues in the context of regulatory requirements (e.g. anti-money laundering, investment suitability, capital adequacy, risk distribution, liquidity requirements)
- Further current topics in the financial industry (e.g. cross-border activities, tax-related matters)
- Sustainability accounting and reporting at banks, insurers, and asset managers, including investment funds
- Human capital management in financial institutions
- Political economy and financial institutions
- A topic of your own that falls within our areas of expertise
Our supervision rules can be found here.
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