Thankom Arun is a Professor of Global Development and Accountability at the Essex Business School. Currently, he is a Professor Extraordinaire at the Stellenbosch business School, South Africa and a Research fellow at IZA, Bonn. He is also chairing an academic steering group on Financial inclusion in the International Cooperative and Mutual Insurance Federation (ICMIF). Previously, he was Professor and Director of the Institute of Global Finance and Development (IGFD), at the Lancashire Business School, UCLan; Visiting Professor at the University of Rome and held academic positions at Manchester and Ulster.

His research has been a move away from arbitrary disciplinary constraints towards an interdisciplinary learning process to understand the uneven relationships in Finance, Accounting and Development, particularly in developing/emerging country contexts. Over the years, the research carried out aims to understand, theorize and tackle the problems created by the uneven relationships between business, society and economy in an interdisciplinary framework.