Robert Wardrop

Management Practice Professor of Finance
Director & Co-founder of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF)

BCom (Queen’s University), MBA (University of Chicago Booth School of Business), MSc (LSE), PhD (University of Cambridge)

Research interests

Sociology of financial markets; trust; comparative institutionalism; innovation; entrepreneurship.

Subject group: Finance

Professional experience

Bob is an economic sociologist interested in understanding how and why channels and instruments of finance emerge outside the traditional financial system and how this impacts regulators, incumbent financial institutions and consumers. In addition to his role in the School, Bob is a member of the Steering Committee for the Cambridge Centre for Data-Driven Discovery (C2D3), an interdisciplinary research centre at Cambridge bringing together expertise from across academic departments and industry to drive research into the analysis, understanding, and use of big data. 

Prior to pursuing his academic career in 2010, Bob had an international career as a professional investor, most recently as a Managing Director in the investment group of one of the largest privately-owned companies in the United States where he was responsible for a portfolio of European corporate debt and equity investments. He has held several board directorships and advisory roles with academic, governmental and commercial organisations over the course of both his academic and non-academic career.

Awards & honours

• Cambridge Judge Business School Teaching Award, 2022

Selected publications

Here are a selection of Robert Wardrop’s publications. Please see the “Selected publications” tab above for a more comprehensive list.

Wardrop, R., Rau, R. and Zingales, L. (eds.) (2021) The Palgrave handbook of technological finance. Houndsmill: Palgrave Macmillan.

Zhang, B., Rowan, P., Wardrop, R. et al (2018) Early lessons on regulatory innovation to enable inclusive fintech. Cambridge: Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.

Zhang, B., Wardrop, R., Garvey, K. et al (2017) The Africa and Middle East alternative finance benchmarking report. Cambridge: Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.

Wardrop, R. and Ziegler, T. (2016) “A case of regulatory evolution: a review of the UK Financial Conduct Authority’s approach to crowdfunding.” CESifo DICE Report, 14(2): 23-32

Wardrop, R., Rosenberg, R., Zhang, B. et al (2016) Breaking new ground: the Americas alternative finance benchmarking report. Cambridge: Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.

Zhang, B., Deer, L. Wardrop, B. et al (2016) Harnessing potential: the Asia-Pacific alternative finance benchmarking report. Cambridge: Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.