The Reg Mathews Memorial Prize is an annual award for the paper considered to have made the most significant contribution towards the social and environmental accounting literature published in Social and Environmental Accountability Journal ( SEAJ). The paper is selected by the Editorial Board of SEAJ and is named in memory of Professor Reg Mathews, a leading figure in the development of social and environmental accounting.

This year, SEAJ are are delighted to award the prize to Professor Eija Vinnari of the Faculty of Management & Business, Tampere University, for her paper, “Animals, Activists and Accounting: On Confronting an Intellectual Dead End”. Eija’s piece is a fascinating and refreshingly honest behind-the-scenes account of the ups and downs of a research journey. Telling the story of her work around counter accounting in the animal rights movement, Eija’s piece is intended to “liberate us anxious academics from the urge to manage our colleagues’ impressions and to encourage us to be more open about the challenges involved in undertaking research”.

Upon hearing the news of the award of the prize, Professor Vinnari said, “What a lovely surprise! I am very grateful to the Editorial Board for this recognition. Let us hope that the commentary will be of help to especially PhD students and other younger scholars – and who knows, maybe it will change some senior minds as well.”

The paper is free to download from the journal website here: https://doi.org/10.1080/0969160X.2021.1889387. Congratulations again to Eija from everyone on the SEAJ editorial team!