Find a PhD supervisor
As a PhD researcher, your academic journey will be supported by supervisors who possess relevant research expertise and share common research interests.
We recommend reaching out to potential PhD supervisors directly to engage in discussions about your application and research aspirations.
To identify a suitable supervisor, it is essential to explore the faculty members listed in the relevant departments. Delve into their research interests, published works, and areas of expertise to find a match that aligns with your own academic pursuits.
Start your search
| Supervisor | Sub-department | Bio | Keywords |
|---|---|---|---|
Allen Alexander |
Sustainable Futures | Allen’s research explores socio-economic-environmental transitions toward a Circular Economy, evaluating the impacts of current Cradle-to-Cradle methodologies, or exploring the ‘Performance Economy’ through the theoretical lenses and practical toolkits of innovation, innovation management and continuing entrepreneurship. Allen welcomes PhD queries in these areas. | Circular Economy; Performance economy; Innovation; Innovation Management; Continuing Entrepreneurship |
Shirley Atkinson |
Operations and Analytics | Shirley's research is centered around the intricate relationship between technology and its influence on interpersonal dynamics, with a particular emphasis on coercive control and domestic violence scenarios. Enquiries for potential PhD studies are invited in diverse areas, including IoT surveillance technologies, smart wearables, AI-driven data analysis, and software engineering. The primary goal of Shirley's research is to empower vulnerable individuals and domestic abuse survivors by safeguarding their privacy and security. Through this investigation, she aims to drive positive change and reveal innovative protective measures that can revolutionize intervention strategies for a more secure and supportive future | IoT surveillance; Technology and interpersonal violence; analytics for privacy and security |
Steffen Boehm |
Sustainable Futures | Steffen’s research focuses on a range of social scientific analyses of problems of environmental sustainability and circular economy. He’s particularly interested in governance issues, CSR and business-society-environment relations. He’s investigated the paradoxical relations between business and climate change since 2006 and has published widely on carbon trading and offsetting schemes. More recently, he has researched circular economy approaches and increasingly works on agri-food system challenges. | agri-food, climate change, governance, environment, circular economy, CSR |
Tim Coles |
Business Strategy and Marketing | Tim’s research explores how businesses and organisations in tourism, the cultural industries and creative economy respond to major challenges in their management practices, operations and business models. In the broad context of sustainable tourism, he is interested in innovation and new technologies, the development of new products and experiences, and the measurement and management of the impacts of travel and tourism. His most recent research has been exploring the relationship between tourism and climate change, in particular carbon emissions relating to current policy and crisis responses. As an experienced advisor, Tim welcomes PhD queries in these areas and relating to broad field of tourism management. | Tourism and Leisure; Creative Industries; Climate Change; Innovation and Technology; Impact Management; Sustainability; Sustainable Development; SMEs |
Hannah Collis |
Organisational Behaviour and Human Resource Management | Hannah’s research focuses on a range of individual differences and employee experiences within the workplace. Her key focus explores the relationship between personality and work overtime, looking at dynamics and changes in these variables. She is also interested in the effects of the physical workplace, bringing in topics such as environmental psychology and ergonomics. Finally, Hannah’s research also addresses the topic of wellbeing at work, promoting healthy working and psychological functioning. She mainly conducts quantitative research but has some experience with qualitative research. | Individual Differences; Personality; Physical Workplace; Wellbeing; Health |
Joanne Connell |
Sustainable Futures | Joanne’s research interests focus around the themes of wellbeing, sustainability and business engagement. Joanne is keen on supervising students in the following areas: Wellbeing and innovation in the visitor economy, especially ageing and cognitive impairment and nature-based/outdoor activities; Sustainable development and planning of tourism and recreation (especially in rural and coastal areas, National Parks and heritage sites); Development and management of niche tourism and leisure (especially film and TV, food and drink, gardens, and heritage railways); Places, placemaking and place attachment. | Wellbeing; Visitor Economy; Sustainability; Sustainable Development and Planning of Tourism and Recreation; Niche Tourism; Place Attachement |
Gloria Crabolu |
Sustainable Futures | Gloria investigates tourism sustainability and destination management issues from a transition point of view. She is interested in policy intervention design, monitoring and evaluation within the tourism industry. Her studies are usually informed by a systems and complexity thinking lens. In her previous research, she collaborated with international organisations such as the European Commission, the World Animal Protection, a series of European cities destination marketing organisations amongst others. | Sustainable tourism; sustainability indicators; monitoring and evaluation; policy design; complexity thinking; systems thinking; transition management; food tourism; animal rights in tourism; just sustainability transition |
Steve Disney |
Operations and Analytics | Stephen Disney’s research interests involve the application of control theory and statistical techniques to operations management and supply chain scenarios to investigate their dynamic, stochastic, and economic performance. Stephen is interested in supervising PhD students studying the bullwhip effect, forecasting, and inventory management problems. Stephen is also interested in supervising topics on supply chain collaboration, MRP nervousness, global dual sourcing, supply chain resilience (including the “China+1” strategy), the dynamics of closed-loop supply chains, integer demand, and non-linear supply chain models. | Supply chain dynamics; bullwhip effect; inventory; collabouration; dual sourcing; supply chain resilience; closed loop supply chains |
Jing-Lin Duanmu |
Business Strategy and Marketing | Jing’s research focuses on how host country political, institutional and cultural environment affect entry (investment), development, and exit (divestment) decisions of multinational corporations (MNCs). How international investment and trade diffuse technologies and cultural values across borders is another interest of Jing’s. Recently, Jing examines how emerging market firms design their CSR strategies to attend to the interests of multiple stakeholders. Jing welcomes PhD enquiries in these areas. | International business; Multinational corporations (MNCs); Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR); International trade |
Janet Geipel |
Business Strategy and Marketing | My research explores the relationship between decision-making and language use. Investigating various communication forms, I've shown that innovative products, like a new vaccination method, are perceived more positively when presented through auditory means than written text. Furthermore, I study how language use influences bilingual consumers’ decisions. My work suggests that bilinguals are more likely to try sustainable but aversive products, like insect-based foods, when described in their proficient foreign than native language. I also study prosocial behaviour, examining blood donation, charitable giving, and vaccination decisions. The aim of my experimental quantitative research is to better understand decision-making processes, ultimately helping people to make better choices. | Decision making; Language; Communication; Bilingualism; Prosocial Behaviour |
Andreas Georgiou |
Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship | Andreas’ research focuses on social, community and collective organizing and entrepreneurship, with an emphasis on the emergence, the internal dynamics and the impact of such forms. He also delves into community-organization relationships and explores mechanisms for harmonious co-existence and shared value creation. He is also interested in community development and resilience, as well as the role of organizations in addressing grand challenges at the local level. Andreas usually utilizes qualitative research methods and his work is informed by several organization theories, such as institutional and sensemaking theories. | Community; Community-based Enterprises; Community-Organization Relationships; Sustainable Entrepreneurship; Sustainable Development; Institutional Theory; Qualitative Research |
Deborah Goodwin |
Degree Apprenticeships | My specialist area is Negotiation and Influencing (including conflict resolution (tactical to strategic/political), diplomacy and international dialogue, environmental dialogue, business and commercial contexts). My own research interests centre on analysing the behavioural aspects of Negotiation and Influence, particularly in stressful and ambiguous contexts. In addition, exploring and assessing the core behaviours in persuasive and influencing situations, and analysing these complexities to gauge viable option creation in many different contexts. My own doctorate is in Applied Negotiation, and I have an OBE for my services to negotiation and education, and a UN Commendation for services to global conflict resolution. The University of Reading also awarded me an Honorary Doctor of Letters for my career in this field as an academic and as a practitioner. I can be of assistance if you are looking to research into areas and aspects of conflict resolution, environmental dialogue and influence and persuasion in multiple contexts. | negotiation; diplomacy; conflict resolution; influence; environmental dialogue; understanding others |
Ji Han |
Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship | Ji Han’s research addresses various topics related to design and innovation, focusing on creativity, data-driven design, AI in design, and design sustainability. He has a particular interest in investigating fundamental theories, methods, and approaches to support early-stage design activities. His research also places a strong emphasis on exploring new computational models and algorithms for supporting creative activities in design and innovation. As an active researcher, Ji Han welcomes PhD queries in these areas and relates to the broad field of design and innovation research. | Creativity; Innovation; Design; Artificial Intelligence; Sustainability |
Sarah Hartley |
Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship | Sarah is interested in the area of technology governance and ethics, particularly in biotechnology and/or AI and data science. She is interested in working with students using qualitative methods in case studies involving technological solutions to societal challenges such as food security, environment and global health. Focused case studies on gene drive or genetic modification technologies in different parts of the world would be particularly welcomed. | technology governance; ethics; global health; food security; qualitative methodologies; responsible innovation |
Levke Henningsen |
Organisational Behaviour and Human Resource Management | Levke’s research interests broadly focus on themes such as gender, diversity, leadership, and careers, well-being, and workplace incivility. Levke is particularly interested in discriminatory processes and self-selection processes in women’s and men’s career advancements, work-life balance, well-being at work, and the effects of flexible work arrangements (e.g., remote work) on the gendered distribution of labour as well as on women’s and men’s career decisions. Furthermore, her research focuses on employees’ interpretations of and coping responses to experienced uncivil behaviour at work and potential interventions. | leadership, careers, gender bias, self-selection, workplace incivility, well-being, flexible work arrangements, interventions |
Emma Jeanes |
Organisational Behaviour and Human Resource Management | Emma’s research focuses on gender and notions of ‘identity‘ in organisations, and the intersection between family / identity and the nature of time at work. She explores these issues with ideas drawn from the writing of Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas and Henri Bergson. Emma also researches in the area of ethics in organisations and research practice, and has an interest in organising in a rural context, particularly in farming (and was involved in a Defra-funded project relating to this topic). She has also written in the field of creativity, particularly in relation to ideas of Gilles Deleuze. Emma‘s research also explores issues at the fringes of organisations, and takes a genealogical, historical as well as contemporary approach. Her work is also often empirical and not exclusively philosophical. | Gender and Discrimination; Work and Life Intersection; Organizing in ‘Ethical’ and Rural Contexts; Ethics and Reflexivity; Identity, Power and Difference |
Rangapriya Kannan-Narasimhan |
Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship | Rangapriya’s primary research stream is a process-practice perspective to understand how individuals accomplish sustainable innovations and ventures, despite constraints in their environmental contexts. Her previous work explores how entrepreneurs engage in creative resourcing to accomplish their innovations. Rangapriya welcomes PhD queries in areas | Entrepreneurship; innovation; process-practice; strategy-as-practice and resourcing |
Bo Yeun Lee |
INDEX | Dr. Boyeun Lee is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in DigitLab at the University of Exeter Business School. With a focus on qualitative research, her scholarly investigations primarily revolve around Data-Driven Design, Data-Driven Innovation, and design interventions in the new products and services development involving cyber-physical systems. Her research endeavours aim to critically examine the challenges and opportunities that arise from the application of novel technologies like AI, Big Data, and IoT and translate them into effective design and business strategies. She obtained a PhD in Design from Lancaster University in the United Kingdom. | Data-Driven Design; Data-Driven Innovation; Digital Transformation; Design Thinking; Qualitative Research |
Jose Menelez Roman |
Sustainable Futures | Jose Melenez is a social scientist focused on how organizations can engage in collective actions to embed innovation in their sustainability policies and practices. Jose’s research focuses on the intersection between sustainability and innovation in tourism, public policy and business models. He is interested in participatory action research to enhance the impact of academic research. His expertise includes developing interdisciplinary education programs that embed sustainability, engaging stakeholders to produce innovative sustainable tourism strategies, co-creating sustainable development projects through international cooperation in the Global South, and developing participatory methods to help businesses, government and communities work together to generate sustainability solutions. | tourism; sustainable tourism; public policy; sustainability innovations; collective actions; participatory methods; action research; sustainable business models; co-creation |
Greg Molecke |
Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship | Greg welcomes PhD enquires for qualitative research in: How social impact is a strategic resource for businesses, charities, and hybrids to gain resources and legitimacy. How impact assessments are created and then understood and interpreted to enable organizational learning and enhance performance. How hybrid organizations navigate the tensions that arise among different stakeholders, priorities, and ways of operating. Greg employs several theoretical lenses: sensemaking, bricolage, institutional logics, legitimacy, and paradox | Social Entrepreneurship, Social Impact, Sense-making, Institutional logics, Grand Challenges, Qualitative Research |
David Monciardini |
Sustainable Futures | David is interested in supervising PhD students working on interdisciplinary research at the cross-road between business, regulation and sustainability studies. In particular, his research focuses on three areas: first, business and human rights including global supply chains due diligence; second, circular economy and its regulation; third, accounting for sustainable companies, including environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure and sustainable finance. | Circular economy; Business and human rights; Social and environmental disclosure; Sustainable finance; Business regulation |
Mohsen Mosleh |
Operations and Analytics | Mohsen is interested in understanding how (mis)information spreads on social media and how structure of social networks biases the flow of information by using data analytics techniques (e.g., statistical analysis of social media data, natural language processing, etc), survey experiments, and digital field experiments (causal inference models). Mohsen welcomes PhD enquiries in these areas and computational social science, social computing, social networks, social media analytics, digital field experiments. | network theory; computational social science; information diffusion; big data |
Nav Mustafee |
Operations and Analytics | Nav’s research focuses on Modelling & Simulation (M&S) methodologies and application in areas such as healthcare, supply chain management, and the circular economy, with particular interest in Hybrid Modelling and Simulation. Nav welcomes PhD queries in areas related to simulation methodologies (e.g., Hybrid Modelling and Simulation, Real-time and Symbiotic Simulation, Data-driven/Industry 4.0 Simulation), Data Science and Predictive Analytics, Health and Social Care Simulation, Supply Chain Simulation and Modelling for Sustainability. | modelling and simulation; supply chain management; circular economy; operational research |
Eunice Oppon |
Sustainable Futures | Eunice’s research interest is in value- and supply-chain impact assessment within agricultural, energy and climate change systems. She is also trained in applied economics, techno-economic assessment and energy economics. She specifically specializes in operations and management research with expertise in supply chain sustainability assessment in various sectors including agricultural and food systems sector. Eunice employs quantitative methods including input-output and life cycle assessment tools to estimate embodied environmental, economic and social impacts. Her analytical and methodological work focuses on measuring sustainability in supply chains. | Sustainability; Sustainable Development; Climate Change; Ecological Change; Supply Chains |
Susan Reh |
Organisational Behaviour and Human Resource Management | Susan’s research revolves around workplace dynamics and how these unfold over time in areas such as well-being, aging, or social comparisons and interpersonal behaviour. Using such a temporal lens, she investigates, for instance, how emotional job demands affect employees’ emotional well-being and job satisfaction across the working lifespan, or how work sets people on more or less favourable trajectories of well-being. In another line of research, she studies why employees undermine rising stars who pose a threat to their future status and how social comparisons between may facilitate knowledge exchange and cooperation. | social comparison; interpersonal behavior; emotions, ageing, well-being, personality, motivation; status (threat), competition |
Michael Rowlinson |
Business Strategy and Marketing | Michael is interested in supervising qualitative historical research in almost any field as well as contemporary research on how organizations use the past in the present. He is particularly interested in the historical aspects of corporate visitor attractions such as Cadbury World. His current research focuses on the history of internal communication in organizations. He has written extensively on the use of historical methods in management and organization studies. | Qualitative Research; Management and Organisational History; Organisation Theory; Critical Management Studies |
Ruth Sealy |
Organisational Behaviour and Human Resource Management | My current focus is Behavioural Corporate Governance, on boardroom dynamics, and the responsiblization of diversifying boards and leadership teams, the incorporation of diversity in Environmental Social & Governance (ESG) measures as well as the motivations and legitimacy of CEOs’ and Chairs’ decisions and processes to become more equitable successful organisations. The role of board evaluation and its function is also under-researched, with regulators’ and investors’ expectations at odds. Two other areas include individual level processes: work identity, role models and the impact of demography on gender, and career decisions. In addition, this includes work on intersectionality, privileged identities and identity imposition. And finally research on public policy regarding boardroom and leadership diversity: governance, inclusion, regulation, leadership. I am predominantly a qualitative researcher. | Behavioural Corporate Governance; Women in Leadership; Board Demographics, Board Dynamics; Role Models; Meritocracy and Legitimacy |
Lindsay Stringfellow |
Business Strategy and Marketing | Lindsay’s research interests are broadly situated within organisation studies, and particularly with the evolving landscape of, and sociological approaches to, our understanding of the traditional professions. Her research has focused in particular on small accounting firms, and the relational routes through which professionals in such organisations gain resources and seek to obtain status and legitimacy within the professional field. This aligns with an interest in the broader dynamics of power in the accounting field, and the social mechanisms through which dominant firms obtain and maintain their position. | Small Practitioners and Organizations; Bourdieusian Theory; Power, Legitimacy and Status; Formation of Taste in Cultural Fields; Sociology of the Professions |
Avril Sun |
Operations and Analytics | Avril is interested in supervising PhD students in risk management and resilience, sustainable supply chain management, digitalization, service operations and technology innovation in supply chain management. Her research focus on understanding supply chain dynamic change and adaptive patterns in disruptive and complex environments such as environmental and social sustainability in global supply chains, the evolution of clusters and supply networks under uncertainty, methods and approaches to mitigate risks and build supply chain resilience. She also undertakes interdisciplinary research to explore how technology and digitalisation help transform business operations within the organizations and along the supply chain. | risk management; supply chain resilience; sustainability; service supply chain; digital technologies; innovation |
Erno Tornikoski |
Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship | Erno’s research interests involve the application of psychological and sociological theories, and both qualitative and quantitative methods to entrepreneurship to investigate how enterprising individuals transform entrepreneurial ideas into value creating new activities. Erno is interested in supervising PhD students in the above areas as well as in exploring new research ideas connecting entrepreneurship and the following topics: sustainable value creation, community-based resilience, and frugal innovation. | entrepreneurship; sustainability; community-based resilience |
Justin Tumlinson |
Operations and Analytics | Justin’s research straddles the broad boundary between economics and management, peering inside organizations, from firms to families, to understand (1) how individuals’ incentives and institutional structures impact social welfare and (2) how society influences individual behavior within institutions. Substantive domains include but are not limited to Corporate Social Responsibility, Environment, Discrimination, Inequality, Teams, Partnerships, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, International Trade and Culture. He supervises applied quantitative research—either (causally identified) empirical analyses of large-scale secondary data or formal (e.g., game theoretic or probability) modelling work. He accepts students targeting academic careers—most of his prior students are now academics. | Applied Econometrics; Applied Game Theory; Formal Modelling; Information; Organizations |
Gail Whiteman |
Business Strategy and Marketing | Gail’s research utilises organisation theory on knowledge to analyse how a range of actors (companies, civil society, and local communities) make sense of ecological change, and how these actors transform and build resilience across scales given environmental pressures and social inequities. Gail’s research is intended to help organisations deal more effectively with sustainability challenges. | Sustainability; Ecological Change; Social Inequity |
Andreas Wihler |
Organisational Behaviour and Human Resource Management | Andreas' research falls at the intersection of organizational politics, leadership, and individual differences. Thus, his research focuses on perceptions and consequences of both positive and negative leader behaviours as well as employee proactivity. He is also interested in the effects of personality and motivation on job performance and career success. Andreas works in international research collaborations with various organizations around the globe. | Transformational Leadership; Destructive Leadership; Organizational Politics; Individual Differences |
