Lauren Cunningham is an associate professor and the Keith Stanga Professor of Accounting. She serves as the director of research for the C. Warren Neel Corporate Governance Center and the coordinator of the Neel CGC Distinguished Speaker Series, which hosts corporate executives, board members, regulators and other industry leaders. Her research interests include audit, corporate governance and the SEC filing review process (comment letters). 

Cunningham serves as the audit curriculum coordinator and has taught auditing to both undergraduate and graduate students. She also teaches a Ph.D.–prep research seminar for Master of Accountancy students as well as a Ph.D. seminar on current topics in auditing and corporate governance. Her teaching cases are published in Issues in Accounting Education and Current Issues in Auditing. Her data visualization case is the recipient of the Best Paper Award in Issues in Accounting Education and the AAA Innovation in Auditing and Assurance Education Award. 

Cunningham serves as an associate editor at European Accounting Review and on the editorial and review boards for Contemporary Accounting Research, Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory and Accounting Horizons. Her research has been published in The Accounting Review, Contemporary Accounting Research, Review of Accounting Studies and Accounting Horizons and has been presented at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Economic and Risk Analysis and at conferences internationally. Her research has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, CFO.com and Accounting Today, as well as in Agenda, the Financial Times’ corporate governance service. She also has published practitioner–oriented work in collaboration with the Center for Audit Quality and The Institute of Internal Auditors. 

Cunningham received her Ph.D. in accounting from the University of Arkansas. Prior to obtaining her Ph.D., she worked as an audit manager with Grant Thornton, LLP in Dallas, specializing in the real estate and technology industries. She earned her undergraduate degree in accounting from Drury University in Springfield, Mo., and is a licensed certified public accountant in Tennessee.