Dr Alex Zarifis research blog

Dr Alex Zarifis research and teaching are on the practical applications of technology in business. He has worked at several universities including the University of Cambridge, University of Manchester and the University of Mannheim. He is currently a research affiliate of the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance (CCAF). Dr Alex has worked on large EU and UK funded research projects at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Loughborough University. He also participated in creating the first, government recognised, university degree on blockchain technologies in the world. He obtained his PhD from the University of Manchester.

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Living on Belmont Road where Henry Nowak was murdered

Living on Belmont Road where the 18 year old student Henry Nowak was murdered, hearing it happen, and living through the many strange things that happened before and after the murder, I have been trying to understand why some things happened but the more I learn the stranger it gets.

How shadowy government unit is trying to keep lid on racial tensions

The 22-strong unit was established in 2007 by the late Charles Farr, a former MI6 officer, as part of the Prevent counter-terrorism strategy

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I heard Henry Nowak get stabbed and lived through the aftermath of vigils, counter-vigils, and memorial vandalisms

Belmont Road in Southampton has some Victorian terrace houses, and some large, detached houses, some have even been referred to as ‘Grand Victorian’. If you drive through without paying much attention you would think it is a middle to upper class neighbourhood, an impression reinforced by the Sainsburys and Waitrose not too far away. However, if you look closer, some details suggest otherwise. The streets are permanently dirty with all kinds of rubbish, most of the large houses are divided into many small flats, and the ‘for sale’ signs seem far more than normal. Why are so many people leaving?

I had been an army officer which develops your ability to assess danger, probably to the point of paranoia. Without wanting to, you assess the danger of every place you are in. In the army, what scared us was not the clear dangers, we knew what to do in those situations, and of course we knew what to do when there was no danger. What really scares you when you are in the army are the situations that lull you into a false sense of security. Belmont Road has just enough going for it to lull you into a false sense of security.

In the short time I was there I saw many crimes and tried to get the police interested several times. The night Henry Nowak was murdered I heard some horrible screams that sounded like someone was being stabbed. I told myself I hope that is not as bad as it sounded but I knew.

The next morning Belmont Road was cordoned off. Initially we were told one 18 year old student attacked four people and that the police were trying to understand what happened AFTER that.

Some people put flowers, cards, and some other items such as a book of his team Arsenal. The items gave it a more personal touch than the usual flowers. These flowers and items were repeatedly vandalised. They were thrown on the floor, and it looked like they had been kicked and stamped on. Was this really about one murderer or was this something wider about this area? The murderer was in custody. Who were vandalising the flowers?

When there was a vigil in front of Portswood police station where some flowers and pictures were placed, there was a ‘counter protest’ by people claiming to be against racists! I never heard of a counter-vigil!

I walked past the point he was murdered on my way back from work on the day the court convicted the murderer, someone put white flowers and wrote on a piece of paper ‘Justice’. It was perfect, the right word for closure. On my way to work the next day someone smeared a pink ice cream bar over the paper, and it was now laying down crumbled up, instead of standing up against the tree where it was placed. They didn’t want the white piece of paper writing the word ‘Justice’ to be standing upright. Just like they did not want to see Henry Nowak standing upright.

Dr Alex Zarifis

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Identifying and Ranking the Eight Risks of AI for Each of the Six Main AI-Focused Fintech Business Models

New book chapter:

Zarifis A. & Cheng X. (2026) ‘Identifying and Ranking the Eight Risks of AI for Each of the Six Main AI-Focused Fintech Business Models’ In Nahidi N. & Zarifis A. (eds.) ‘AI, FinTech, and the Future of Robo-Advisory: Risk Management and Ethical Considerations', Contributions to Finance and Accounting, Springer: Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-18109-1_7 (open access)

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Building Trust in Financial Robo-Advisory and Overcoming Ethical Challenges

New book chapter: Zarifis A. & Nunes M. (2026) ‘Building Trust in Financial Robo-Advisory and Overcoming Ethical Challenges’ In Nahidi N. & Zarifis A. (eds.) ‘AI, FinTech, and the Future of Robo-Advisory: Risk Management and Ethical Considerations’, Contributions to Finance and Accounting, Springer: Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-18109-1_5 (open access) #Fintech

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AI, FinTech, and the Future of Robo-Advisory: Risk Management and Ethical Considerations

New edited book of chapters:

Nahidi N. & Zarifis A. (eds.) (2026) ‘AI, FinTech, and the Future of Robo-Advisory: Risk Management and Ethical Considerations’, Contributions to Finance and Accounting, Springer: Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-18109-1 (open access)

#Fintech

#Insurtech

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New Business and AI BSc

If you, your children, or someone else you know, wants to study Business and AI then you can look at this promotional video we made or ask me directly any questions. The purpose of this programme is not to train a computer scientist but a business professional in an AI intensive role such as being a manager in an online only bank.

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Interview on AI

A recent interview I gave on AI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI03WeJtm_Q

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Daily Echo article on leadership in AI

Great to see the @dailyecho reporting on my work on #leadership in #AI. Zarifis A. (2026) ‘Southampton university lecturer wants people to lead with AI’, Daily Echo. Available from: https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/25787778.southampton-university-lecturer-wants-people-lead-ai/

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Call for papers

Special issue centred on digital economy, sustainable economic transformation, and regional development:

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/special_issues/0W5M51X2L6

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Tim Berners-Lee wants everyone to own their own data

Trying to make the world a better place. @ConversationUK @SotonBusiness

Zarifis A. (2025) ‘Tim Berners-Lee wants everyone to own their own data – his plan needs state and consumer support to work’, The Conversation. Available from: https://theconversation.com/tim-berners-lee-wants-everyone-to-own-their-own-data-his-plan-needs-state-and-consumer-support-to-work-269042

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Dr Alex Zarifis presented at J.P. Morgan

I gave a talk a J.P. Morgan yesterday on AI focused business models. If you want to learn more about this topic you can read my book:

Zarifis, Alex. Leadership With AI and Trust: Adapting popular leadership styles for AI, De Gruyter, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111630137

Thank you to Dr Narmin Nahidi and JPM for having me.

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How should universities teach leadership now that teams include humans and autonomous AI agents?

New article @timeshighered:

Zarifis A. (2025) ‘How should universities teach leadership now that teams include humans and autonomous AI agents?’, Times Higher Education. Available from: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/how-should-universities-teach-leadership-now-teams-include-humans-and-autonomous-ai-agents

#Leadership #AI

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The role of trust in blockchain based financial technology

I presented today on the role of trust in blockchain based financial technology at the 3rd OSCM Symposium of Blockchain Research. I tried to give a sense of the journey from 2013 when I started looking at these issues to today.

The presentation covered this research: Zarifis, A., Efthymiou, L., Cheng, X. & Demetriou, S. (2014) ‘Consumer Trust in Digital Currency Enabled Transactions’, Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing-Springer, vol.183, pp.241-254. http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-11460-6_21# Zarifis, A., Cheng, X., Dimitriou, S. & Efthymiou, L. (2015) ‘Trust in Digital Currency Enabled Transactions Model’, Proceedings of the Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems (MCIS), pp.1-8. https://aisel.aisnet.org/mcis2015/3/ Zarifis, A. & Castro, L.A. (2022) ‘The NFT purchasing process and the challenges to trust at each stage’, Sustainability, vol.14, no.24:16482, pp.1-13. https://doi.org/10.3390/su142416482 (open access) Zarifis A. (2023) ‘A Model of Trust in Ethereum Token ‘Ether’ Payments, TRUSTEP’, Businesses, vol.3, no.4, pp.534-547. https://doi.org/10.3390/businesses3040033 (open access) Zarifis A. & Cheng X. (2023) ‘The six ways to build trust and reduce privacy concern in a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)’ In Zarifis A., Ktoridou D., Efthymiou L. & Cheng X. (ed.) Business digital transformation: Selected cases from industry leaders, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.115-138. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33665-2_6 (open access) Zarifis A. & Fu S. (2024) ‘The second extended model of consumer trust in cryptocurrency payments, CRYPTOTRUST 2’, Frontiers in Blockchain, vol.7, pp.1-11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fbloc.2024.1220031 (open access)

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New research: Development of AGI in e-commerce

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) can understand, learn, and apply knowledge across a range of tasks, in a similar way to humans. It is not limited to specific tasks. In e-commerce, AGI is revolutionizing the industry (Cheng et al. 2025).

Reference Cheng, X., Mou, J., Wang, Y., & Zarifis, A. (2025) ‘Development of AGI in e-commerce’, Journal of Electronic Commerce Research, vol.26, no.3, pp.163-169. http://www.jecr.org/node/737

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New book on leadership!

My main output this year is a book on leadership with AI and trust. I tried to bring all the lessons I got from various projects with AI into one short book with practical advice. You can find it here: https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111630137/html

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New book on how to be a leader in AI and trust

This book by Dr Alex Zarifis goes through the popular leadership styles, their strengths and weaknesses, how they can influence AI use, and build trust. The book then offers its proprietary blend of transactional, servant and transformational leadership that achieves the best results.

Reference

Zarifis A. (2025) ‘Leadership with AI and trust: Adapting popular leadership styles for AI’, De Gruyter: Berlin. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111630137

#leadership #management #AI #trust

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Book featured on Fintechview360

Fintechview360 featured my new book on Fintech and the emerging ecosystems. We spoke about the competing centralised and decentralised visions for the future of finance: https://fintechview360.com/new-research-on-fintech-emerging-ecosystems-southampton-university/

Reference

Zarifis A. & Cheng X. (eds.) (2025) ‘Fintech and the Emerging Ecosystems – Exploring Centralised and Decentralised Financial Technologies’, Springer: Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-83402-8