Maria João Major (publication name: Maria Major) is a Full Professor of Management Accounting and Control at ISCTE–IUL (Lisbon, Portugal). She holds a PhD from the University of Manchester, UK, and completed postdoctoral research at Manchester Business School, UK.

Maria João was a Visiting Research Fellow at Alliance Manchester Business School, UK, in 2016, and at Griffith University, Australia, in 2001. She has published in leading academic journals, including Management Accounting Research, European Accounting Review, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, Accounting, Organizations and Society, Financial Accountability & Management, Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management, and Public Money and Management, among others.

She is also the author and co-author of several books and international book chapters. Maria João serves on the editorial boards of Qualitative Research in Accounting and Management, Journal of Accounting and Organizational Change, and Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management, and has previously served on the editorial board of the European Accounting Review. She is actively involved in reviewing manuscripts for several leading accounting journals.

Maria João has been a member of the scientific committees of numerous international accounting conferences, including the annual congresses of the European Accounting Association. She was the convenor of the Manufacturing Accounting Research (EIASM) 2016 and European Network for Research on Organizational and Accounting Change (ENROAC) 2011 conferences.

Additionally, Maria João has received teaching awards recognising her as an outstanding lecturer. Before joining ISCTE–IUL, she was an Associate Professor at Nova School of Business and Economics, where she taught across PhD, Master’s, Bachelor’s, and Executive Education programmes.

More recently, she served as a Non-Executive Director (NED) on the Board of Directors of Portugal’s largest bank, Caixa Geral de Depósitos, where she also sat on the Audit Committee and the Governance Committee (December 2021 – July 2025).