Professor David Boughey

Professor David Boughey has been the Interim Dean of the University of Exeter Business School since August 2023. He joined the University of Exeter Business School in 2009 and in September 2021 completed a second term as Associate Dean for Education. Previously he was head of the School of Strategy & International Business at Bristol Business School, UWE. Whether through study or work, Professor Boughey has experienced university life at a range of different institutions. During his BA in History at Royal Holloway University of London, he studied for a year at Washington & Jefferson College in the United States. After completing his undergraduate degree, he moved to Oxford for a Masters in Economic and Social History, before returning to Royal Holloway for his PhD in Business History, where he also gained his first post as a lecturer. 

While Professor Boughey’s primary interests have been in enhancing teaching, learning and the student experience, he’s continued his research interest in the firms that equipped and ran Britain’s overseas railway empire. Professor Boughey’s PhD assessed the organisational structure and firm strategies in the British railway locomotive engineering industry up to the 1930s. This research explained the emergence of a structural schism in the industry that resulted in Britain’s railway companies internalising manufacture in their own workshops, while separate engineering firms focused on the export market. Serving Britain’s formal and informal empire, these export-led firms navigated the vicissitudes of demand by being flexible in locomotive design, through product diversification, and by industry-wide co-operation, if not collaboration. More recently, Professor Boughey has been working on measuring and understanding the foreign investment from British registered firms that ran railways elsewhere in the world.

Qualifications:

• BA Modern History, Economic History and Politics (Royal Holloway, University of London)
• MSc Economic and Social History (Oxford)
• PhD Business History (Royal Holloway, University of London)
• PGCertHE (University of the West of England)
• Principal Fellow HEA