Thankom Arun is a Professor at the Essex Business School, University of Essex. He is also Chairing the Academic Steering Committee on Financial inclusion of International Cooperative and Mutual Insurance Federation (ICMIF and is a Professor Extraordinaire at the University of Stellenbosch Business School. Formerly, he was a Visiting Professor at the University of Rome and held various academic positions at the Universities of Ulster, Manchester and Coventry.

Broadly, his research focuses on the issues in Development Finance. Specifically, he has published on banking sector restructuring, microfinance, gender and remittances. Among other journals, he published in the Feminist Economics, Journal of Business Ethics, World Development, Journal of Business Ethics, Corporate Governance: An International Review, Review of Social Economy, Journal of Development Studies and Applied Economics.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in August 2010.