Prof Johan Coetzee is an associate professor of banking and finance at the University of the Free State, specialising in banking, financial risk management, behavioural banking, fintech, and the evolving relationship between banks and customers. A chartered banker and certified management and business educator, he has extensive experience in postgraduate supervision, curriculum development, and international academic collaboration across Africa and Europe. His research and industry engagement focus on the impact of technological innovation, data analytics, and artificial intelligence on financial services and banking decision-making.

Prof Sevias Guvuriro holds a PhD in economics from the University of the Free State, where he currently serves as an associate professor and deputy head in the Department of Economics and Finance. He has more than two decades of experience working at higher education institutions, both nationally and internationally. He is an alumnus of the University of Michigan African Presential Scholars (UMAPS) programme (2022) and an alumnus of the University of Oslo (Norway). His research focuses on behavioural development economics and development economics more broadly, and he actively publishes in these areas. Behavioural development economics is a relatively new niche that primarily uses experiments and randomised control trials to better understand economic decision-making processes. This niche area also departs from the conventional standard economic models in terms of human preferences, beliefs, and decision-making. Importantly, it is multidisciplinary in nature, as it combines economics with insights from other disciplines such as psychology and sociology. (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1365-3591)

Dr Celeste Campher is a senior lecturer in the Department of Economics and Finance and also the programme director for Commerce in the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at the University of the Free State. She holds a PhD in behavioural economics from the UFS. She has at least 20 years’ experience as an academic and eight years’ experience as a public servant, where she served in the Office of the Premier and the Free State Provincial Treasury. Other roles include serving as a lecturer at the Summer School at the University of Bremen in Germany since June 2025 and at the UFS Business School since 2011. Her areas of expertise include behavioural economics, macroeconomics, and labour economics at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She successfully completed an NRF-funded project, titled Social Discounting and Risk Attitudes, Time Preferences and Social preferences: An Experimental Study, during her PhD studies from 2015 to 2019. Her research niche includes topics such as social discounting, inequality, and labour.

Hettie van Tonder provides comprehensive administrative, financial, and data support within the academic department. Key responsibilities include coordinating undergraduate and postgraduate assessment cycles, managing student marks within the PeopleSoft Gradebook, and processing postgraduate applications. Additionally, she handles human resources and financial tasks, such as coordinating contracts and capturing claims for external examiners, moderators, and invigilators on PeopleSoft HR. She ensures strict data integrity and compliance by maintaining meticulous records, generating standard faculty reports, and assisting students directly with registration and administrative queries. Ultimately, she serves as a vital operational link, ensuring compliance with institutional policies, accurate data management, and timely financial processing.