Dr Laura Colombo

Dr Laura Colombo is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter Business School (Sustainable Futures, Penryn Campus). She is Programme Director for BSc Business and Environment, an interdisciplinary programme that roots sustainable business in environmental science and environmental justice.

She is a graduate in Political Science from the University of Milan, holds an MSc in Social Economics from the University of Bologna and a PhD in Management Studies from the University of Exeter. Laura Colombo joined the University of Exeter Business School in 2014 as a visiting scholar, having been awarded a studentship from the University of Bologna, to research the discourse of eco-innovation in the European Union’s Horizon 2020 funding programmes. In 2015, she was awarded a fully funded PhD scholarship from the University of Exeter Business School. She became a Lecturer in the Department of Management in 2019 and joined the Sustainable Futures group in Penryn in 2021.

Her primary research interest is in the scaling strategies of social and cooperative enterprises and alternative food networks. Her research also focuses on management education, and specifically civic management education, where human and ecological flourishing serve as the compass needle guiding educational practices.

Her work has been published in leading internatonal journals, including Academy of Management Learning and Education (AMLE) and Organization. 

Laura Colombo is a co-founder and collective member of Management Educators Navigating Degrowth (MEND), which critically explores ideas and practices of post-growth and degrowth in management pedagogies.

She is an Associate Editor at the Academy of Management Learning and Education Journal and an External Examiner at the University of York.  

Before returning to academia, she worked as a project designer, bidding for national and European funding schemes on topics such as food sovereignty, agroecology, environmental justice and transformative learning, building partnerships with NGOs, associations, cooperatives, and environmentally motivated social enterprises.