James Brugler is an Associate Professor in the Department of Finance at the University of Melbourne's Faculty of Business and Economics, a position he has held since joining the institution in 2015. He currently serves as the Practitioner-in-Residence Program Coordinator. Brugler holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Cambridge, completed between 2011 and 2015, a Master's by Research from the University of Melbourne, and a Bachelor of Commerce with Honours in Economics from the same university. Prior to commencing graduate studies, he worked in the securities division of a global investment bank. He has also served as a visiting researcher at the Bank of England.

Brugler's research focuses on the design, regulation, and performance of financial markets, with an emphasis on empirical market microstructure, securities trading market structure, high-frequency trading, dark pools, competition between trading venues, price discovery, transparency, market quality, and cost of capital. He also studies household financial decision making. Key publications include "Differential access to dark markets and execution outcomes" with Carole Comerton-Forde (Journal of Financial Economics, 2025), "Benchmarking benchmarks" with Marta Khomhyn and Talis Putniņš (Journal of Financial Economics, 2025), "Secondary market transparency and corporate bond issuing costs" with Carole Comerton-Forde and Spencer Martin (Review of Finance, 2022), "Does financial market structure impact the cost of capital?" with Carole Comerton-Forde and Terry Hendershott (Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 2021), "Interactions among High-Frequency Traders" with Evangelos Benos, Erik Hjalmarsson, and Filip Zikes (Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 2017), and "Estimating background risk hedging demands from cross-sectional data" with Joachim Inkmann and Adrian Rizzo (Journal of Financial Research, 2024). Brugler teaches courses such as Derivative Securities (FNCE30007) and Research Methods for Finance (FNCE40004). He maintains the Melbourne Trade & Liquidity Library for Australian securities data.

Professional Email: james.brugler@unimelb.edu.au