Georgios Halkias (MSc Marketing & Strategy, class of 05/06) currently works as a doctoral researcher at the Athens University of Economics & Business, Department of Marketing & Communication.

His paper Increasing Advertising Effectiveness through Incongruity-Based Tactics: The Moderating role of Consumer Involvement, written by Georgios Halkias (co-author Flora Kokkinaki) received the 'Best Paper Award 2011' at the 16th International Conference on Corporate and Marketing Communications.

The award was sponsored by the Journal of Marketing Communications, where the article has since been published. The award was presented at the conference by its Editor-in-Chief, Professor Philip J. Kitchen.

Last year Georgios Halkias received a conference bursary from the European Marketing Academy (EMAC) for his paper The Effects of Schema Incongruent Advertising Information: Verbal-Based and Image-Based Incongruity that was presented at the 39th EMAC Conference. The paper was rated in the Top 20 and was nominated for the 'Best Paper Award Based on a Doctoral Dissertation'.

Georgios commented, "I do believe that none of the above would have happened without me taking the beautiful WBS journey... to which I owe a great part of my academic development."