DrSeán O'Reilly

Seán is an Assistant Professor of Accounting at the UCD College of Business and Academic Director of the subject area’s flagship Master of Accounting programme. He is also the lead Financial Reporting lecturer on the MBA programme at UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School. Seán joined UCD from Technological University Dublin, where he was Assistant Head of the School of Accounting & Finance. He holds a BComm from UCD, an MSc (Accounting) from the Dublin Institute of Technology and a PhD from Dublin City University.

Before entering academia, Seán trained and qualified as a Chartered Accountant with PwC. He is an experienced company founder, director, non-executive director and consultant, including on international projects. Seán has guest lectured at Beijing University of Technology and is a registered Consultant and Finance Specialist with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, advising on several projects in Central Asia.

Seán’s research focuses on entrepreneurial finance, examining how new ventures, particularly in cleantech and other sustainability-driven sectors, are financed and supported as they grow. His work explores the wider entrepreneurial ecosystem, including the role of investors, accelerators and public policy, as well as how emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence are reshaping the financing and development of entrepreneurial firms. Since joining UCD in 2022, Seán has built a growing academic profile, publishing in leading international peer-reviewed journals including Accounting Forum, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, International Small Business Journal, Small Business Economics and Technovation. He has supervised several PhD students to completion and currently serves as Co-Chair of the Entrepreneurial Finance Special Interest Group at the Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

Seán has extensive experience in executive education and is a member of the Final Admitting Examination lecturing team at Chartered Accountants Ireland. He is also an expert lecturer for several of the Big Four accounting firms.

Seán contributes to the wider UCD community as team manager of the UCD Senior Men’s Gaelic Football team, which won the All-Ireland Intermediate Championship in 2025.