Who we are

Dr Christian's primary research interest focuses on emerging collaborative online innovation communities. His area of research includes digital innovation ecosystems, community governance, digital platform strategy, emergent ICT-based business models. Part of his research involves developing and applying novel data science techniques in the study of online innovation networks.Jose has worked on and has co-authored research reports for various large European projects including CRE8TV, SPARK, and INSPIRE. For the CRE8TV project he identified barriers to value appropriation in digital market places. For the SPARK project he helped identify how to support social enterprises in their innovation activities. For the INSPIRE project, Jose co-developed a set of business innovation tools to support open innovation activities in European SMEs.

Zahra Fazeli is a senior lecturer in Marketing at School of Business and Law in University of Brighton. She holds MA in Marketing and PhD in Business Marketing from University of Brighton. She is also a fellow in Higher Education Academy and is CMBE. Zahra has several years of experience in management and marketing fields in different industries such as fashion retail and restaurant as well as being a business and marketing consultant in various sectors over the past 13 years. 

Dave's research interests are focused on using evidence-based theory to improve managment practice. His overall theoretical orientation is Organisational Sociology and he draws extensively from the practice area known as Organisation Development. His study of highly innovative organisations supplied the insights used in the Managing Innovation Training Programme that has been experienced by more than 10,000 managers in 19 countries. He has undertaken research into the role of open innovation in not-for-profit organisations and he is exploring the interdependencies between entrepreneurship, change, organisation development and innovation managment. He has completed a study of the styles used by Change Agents and is preparing this study for publication. For more than two decades he has investigated the competencies required for an organisation, and its leaders, to be effectively agile and his latest book 'Exploiting Agility for Advantage' was published by De Gruyter in Berlin in September 2020.

My primary current interests are sustainability, climate change and strategy - evaluation, policy, development and implementation. My textbook, Sustainable Business Strategy: Analysis, Choice and Implementation was published by De Gruyter on 4 April 2022.

I have sustained research profiles in design and design management; creative industries - product, process and value; and continuous improvement in new product development.

My interest in railways links all of these.

I am a world leading researcher in the field of stock market liquidity. I am particularly interested in developing new measures of liquidity, how liquidity reacts to news, carbon markets and the liquidity of zero leverage firms. More recently, my research has also included liquidity of SMEs and cryptocurrencies. My future research plans are in the areas of liquidity and the coronavirus and on the association between liquidity and asset pricing.

Shared Values Approaches: developments of the WeValue and ESDinds based portfolio of approaches. These have signficant overlaps with topics in a variety of disciplines and subjects such as sustainable development; sustainability assessments; social innovation; social design; values-based design; urban design; rating place; transitions; transformational learning; tacit knowledge; translation of tacit to explicit; Nonaka's SECI; organisational change; climate change adaptation planning; ecosystem services; land remediation decision making; sustainable indicators; action research; participatory evaluation; amplifying voice.

I also do research in behaviour change for recycling, using residential compounds in China a 'living labs' to systematically develop  new frameworks for designing recycling schemes, and thus linking related empirical and theoretical concepts.

Research interest are macroeconomics, with a particular focus on banking, financial markets, foreign exchange and international capital markets.  In addition, I am interested in the instability of financial markets, the effects of speculation and the way that these forces can affect macroeconomic outcomes. I have research on the identification and measurement of speculation.  I have used a number of mainly timeseries techniques in this research, including Structured Vector Autoregression, Hidden Markov Models and Event Studies.    

Dr. Catherine Kelly is a geographer with research interests in sustainability, tourism and wellbeing. Her lecturing, research and practices cross a range of these broad categories. Catherine's research areas have varied over her academic career - starting with rural geography, then moving into the field of heritage studies and then tourism (cultural, heritage, wellness and sustainable tourism specifically); with a more recent emphasis on the importance of 'blue spaces' for human wellbeing. She is interested in the importance of water-based 'therapeutic landscapes' for physical, psychological and social wellbeing. Catherine's research also looks at how wellbeing can be used to advocate for personal relationships with the coast and its stewardship/environmental conservation. She is interested in access to the sea - in physical, social and cultural terms. Since joining the School of Business and Law, Catherine is also interested in the role of the Blue Economy in tourism development and sustainable business practices.

Catherine's work on Blue Spaces has received widespread media attention resulting in interviews for the BBC, Guardian newspaper, Independent, and a range of high circulation magazines and podcasts. She is a regular invited speaker at public events and festivals in the UK and overseas. She sits on the newly created UK national Blue Space Forum for the Environment Agency.

My research is driven by my interest in understanding the twin challenges of environmental protection and economic development, especially where the two intersect. I am interested in questions of natural resource management, including the economic and policy instruments that are required to incentivise such management.

I have extensive experience in the Latin America and Caribbean region focusing on the management of forest, mineral and water resources. I also have interests in understanding the impacts and effectiveness of global and regional emissions trading schemes and have undertaken research on both the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). I am interested in how engagement with the private sector can help to address local, regional and global resource management issues.

I have experience in a range of primary data collection techniques including survey design, interviewing and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data using a range of software packages. I have worked as an independent consultant for NGOs, industry associations and international research agencies on projects relating to climate change, policy design and low-carbon development. I have published on subjects including REDD+, energy investment and mining.

Paul Levy has been a member of CENTRIM since it was founded in the 1990s. His research interests include innovation management, the management of change, creativity and team collaboration. In particular his more recent research has focused on digital innovation, the skills of digital management and mastery, the rise of disruptive innovation including cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technology. He has also undertaken research into how small to medium sized enterprises innovative on and offline, engaging in projects examining the potential of drop-in action learning to stimulate innovation. Recently he was also involved in research that focused in digital transformation working with an in-depth case study approach in the I.T sector.

My research interests lie primarily in the field of labour economics, socio-economic development and applied econometrics, with a particular emphasis on the economic and social aspects of labour migration. My research focuses on three areas: 1. undocumented labour migration; 2. precarious and atypical forms of employment; 3. migration and regional development. I am interested in both applied and theoretical research in these areas and has conducted a range of research consultancies for the Development Centre of OECD, the Council of Europe, the Organisation for International Migration (IOM) and national bodies.

In November 2019, my project proposal on 'the impact of migrant remittances on promoting small and medium-sized enterprises in home countries' was approved for funding of a PhD studentship by the South Coast Doctoral Training Partnership:https://www.brighton.ac.uk/research-and-enterprise/postgraduate-research-degrees/funding-opportunities-and-studentships/2020-scdtp-migrant-remittances.aspx

In October 2017, I completed a project, concerning atypical and precarious forms of employment in Greece, in support of the impact assessment on the review of the Written Statement Directive (Directive 91/533/ECC), commissioned by PPMI - Public Policy and Management Institute, Vilnius, Lithuania. The study is available at: http://bit.ly/WSD-PPMI

I sit on the coordinating committee for Bulgaria in the longitudinal SHARE study - Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (http://issk-bas.org/share-survey-wave-7/).

My research focuses on the nature of knowledge and learning in organisations and seeks to link this to questions about innovation and change. I am particularly interested in the social practices of producing, negotiating, and using knowledge within varied organisational settings, but especially project-based, network, and temporary forms of organising. My research draws strongly on practice-based theories, emphasising knowledge and learning as active accomplishments emerging from specific social settings that have important implications for how practices are shaped. Investigating the boundaries between different knowledge communities and how these are constituted, reproduced, crossed, challenged, and redrawn is a key element of this. The settings for my research have been many and varied, ranging from car factories to sewage plants, power stations to animation studios, offshore oil and gas platforms to humanitarian aid projects, road maintenance depots to aerospace companies, big rail construction projects to small firm action learning networks. Despite (or maybe because of) this diversity, the thread running through my research has been an enduring interest in the social and political dynamics of knowledge and practice and how these unfold in different contexts.

Sushil’s research is in the area of international trade and development. It covers broadly: (i) Trade in primary commodities such as coffee and tea, with a focus on problems faced by commodity producers. (ii) Agricultural trade, with focus on consequences of trade barriers. (iii) International development issues such as Fair Trade, CSR, social enterprises, Environmental improvement initiatives, SMEs, and food security. The research aim is to analyse the interaction between international trade, ethical trading and economic development – it is mostly applied and issue-driven with a strong policy focus. His ongoing research projects include study of non-tariff measures in agriculture trade, market concentration in coffee markets, social enterprises and voluntary social standards.

Marina is an internationally renowned policy, planning and sustainable development expert and Professor of Tourism and International Development at Brighton School of Business and Law, which is an Affiliate Member of the UN World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO).  

She is a geographer with a background in economics, considerable experience of high-quality research, consultancy, PhD supervision, teaching and curriculum development and a keen interest in interdisciplinary research.  

Between 2017 and 2021, she plaid a key strategic role as Academic Lead for the University of Brighton's Responsible Futures Agenda, an initiative aimed at fostering innovation through impactful interdisciplinary research and consultancy collaborations, at local, national and international level. This laid the ground of the current Global Challenges Agenda.  

Marina has advised on numerous international cooperation and research assignments funded by International Development Organisations (IDOs) including The World Bank, the European Union, The UN (UNESCO, UNIDO, UNWTO), the Commonwealth Secretariat, the millennium Challenge Corporation as well as National Ministries, Tourism Boards, Regional Development Agencies and NGOs. Such work has provided the basis of very impactful work (see: REF2014 and REF2021 Impact Case Studies). Examples of other projects undertaken by her are available here.   

Amongst her most recent achievements are:  

- 2023: Selected Member of The World Economic Forum Global Future Council for Sustainable Development;

- 2022: Elected Fellow of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism;  

- 2021: Appointed Alternate Member of the UNWTO World Committee on Tourism Ethics (2021-2025); and  

- 2018 to 2021: served as UK national Research Exercise Framework (REF2021) panelist for UOA C24: Sport, Tourism and Leisure.  

She is known globally for her excellence in leading and collaborating with multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder and multi-cultural teams and for her commitment to generating new knowledge on ways in which tourism can play a key role in sustainable development by stimulating local economies, conserving the environment, developing peoples and changing lives.  

Her research spans across 3 main areas, including:   

- Sustainable Tourism Development for Resilient Communities - i.e., the complexity of tourism development in the Global South; niche (tourism) product development; the impact of heath crisis on tourism communities (Ebola, COVID); healthy lifestyle tourism clusters; Local, National and IDOs' interventions for resilient communities; travel philanthropy.  

- Innovation, responsible entrepreneurship and sustainability in tourism - i.e. British Council project on Innovationa for African Universities;  circular economy, contemporary arts and community development, contemporary arts for sustainable development in Africa.  

- Policy, Planning and Governance - i.e., master-planning; training needs analysis and capacity building; responsible leadership; participatory and community centered development. 

My research spans a variety of topics that integrate finance, technology, and human/organizational behaviour. In that regard, I have an inter-disciplinary perspective covering digital transformation strategy, financial innovation, technology adoption and decision-making by incumbent financial services institutions, fintech companies as well as end-users.

My peer-reviewed publications focused on understanding of how new technologies (such as mobility, big data and AI) and regulations (such as GDPR, PSD2) are reshaping the financial services business models, and their impact on (i) firm performance, (ii) financial literacy, (iii) financial inclusion and (iv) technology adoption.

My research in progress focuses on Fintech particularly on ICOs as a means of entrepreneurial finance and impact of fintech on enhancing access to finance particularly for SMEs. I intend to expand my research portfolio in these areas as well as in productivity gains of open banking, which offers an open innovation context for banks to innovate with fintechs.

Tijana is an internationally established interdisciplinary scholar whose research projects, publications and interests predominantly lie within the themes of visual research methods; heritage, tourism and national identity; tourism, leisure and art; visual cultures of travel, tourism and leisure; tourism marketing; and representations of places, cultures and identities in promotional materials and popular media. 

Her PhD, which she completed in 2009, focused on the relationships between World Heritage, tourism and national identity at the Acropolis in Athens, Greece. In addition to a range of other publications, a number of which stem from her PhD, Tijana has also co-edited several book length publications including An Introduction to Visual Research Methods in Tourism (2012, with D. Chambers), Narratives of Travel and Tourism (2012, with J. Tivers), Travel, Tourism and Art (2013, with J-A. Lester), Tourism Research Frontiers (2015, with D. Chambers) and two journal special issues Gender and Tourism (2018, with D. Chambers) and Visual Methods in Event Studies (2019, with T. Pernecky). Inspired by the power of visual and creative research outputs in reaching audiences beyond the academic, Tijana has also produced two academic documentaries: Visiting the Athenian Acropolis (2008, PhD film) and Of Holidays and Olives (2006, with Y. Karagiannakis), both of which have been shown at film festivals, public screenings and used for teaching in a number of countries. 

Tijana is currently the Chair of the Geographies of Tourism and Leisure Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of Britich Geographers, as well as the co-editor of the Routledge book series titled Current Developments in the Geographies of Leisure and Tourism (with J.-A. Lester). She is also a regular reviewer for a number of leading journals in her fields of studies as well as a member of Editorial boards of Tourist Studies, Tourism Geographies, International Journal of Tourism Cities, Consumer Behaviour in Tourism and Hospitality and the Finnish Journal of Tourism Research. She also leads the Tourism, Hospitality and Events Research and Enterprise Group at the University of Brighton. 

Julian's current interests involve business sustainability from the six-point perspective (financial, social, intellectual, human, manufacturing, and environmental), social capital, value creation and strategy all within the UN sustainable development goals framework. 

Julian also has research experience in informal economies in developing and developed countries.

I’m an economic sociologist excited by the impact of technology on society, education and business. My joint research project into the Fully Functioning University was awarded Researchers of the Year 2017 by Professor Mark Cowling, Brighton Business School Head of research. The findings have been published by Emerald as part of their Great Debates in Higher Education series.

I research the history and role of higher education, graduate employability and how graduates might best be served by university. I am interested by the role social media, big data and internet technologies in how society works and how business is conducted.

My research focusses on the role of absorptive capacity to upgrade and upskill the workforce in the light of rapid technology changes and to address aspects of the smooth transition of the workforce into Industry 5.0 (a human-centric evolution of Industry 4.0). Her research interests lie in understanding the cognitive anthropology associated with the changing technology trajectory, knowledge management methods of responsible enterprises, investigation of entrepreneurial behaviour concerningthe change management that is associated with upskilling employees, data-driven problem-solving approaches to entrepreneurial developments and assessment of the innovative capabilities of responsible enterprises as the scope of innovation widens.

George has led research on innovation and entrepreneurship. His research includes themes such as managing open innovation in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs); linking SMEs with the research base; enabling business development and innovation activities through peer-to-peer learning networks; empower SME growth through innovation coaching; innovation  for non-high tech SMEs; new product development strategies for SMEs; managing and supporting innovation in Social Enterprises; and the life cycle for SMEs. 

George has also worked in various other innovation areas of research such as innovation policies benchmarking, business processes engineering for SMEs and scenario foresight for innovation.

Contemporary art champions, SMEs productivity and tourism development in West-Africa: Looking beyond the commercial value of the “artefact”.

My study will identify innovative, socially responsible, sustainable and ethical pathways to contemporary arts and community-based tourism development and productivity in West-Africa.

African Contemporary arts is increasingly contributing to business innovation and socially responsible entrepreneurship at grass root level. The role of champions, beyond their immediate artistic engagement is evident on Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, Cote D’Ivoire and Mali.

 My research aims at developing critical understanding of the “value of arts” beyond the commercial meaning of the term, and the role of champions in the development of the creative sector SMEs (i.e. galleries, fairs, museums, studios) and value chain connection with the tourism sector in West-Africa.

I am a PhD student at the University of Brighton, United Kingdom. I hold a MSc in the field of Marketing and a Bachelor degree with emphasis in Marketing from Kuwait University My research interests involve  digital marketing communications, integrated marketing communications and marketing research.More specifically; Relationship marketing in social media , eloctronic Word of Mouth and customer engagement in social media. I am intrested also in marketing consultantation for small business startups.

Phenomenography

I am a first-year postgraduate research student at the University of Brighton. My main research area includes liquidity and financial stability. In addition, I have a keen interest in topics related to asset pricing particularly the use of a blend of econometric models and liquidity measures to determine asset pricing. 

Sarah Waddington Azambuja MSc. 

Academic Background

Sarah has undertaken two undergraduate courses (FdA and BA Hons) in Events and Hospitality management, at the University of Chichester and the University of Brighton.  She has an MSc from the University of Brighton, in International Hospitality Management.  She is currently a postgraduate research student at the University of Brighton.

Research Interests

Her research interests include workplace well-being, work life balance and emotional labour.  For her PhD thesis, she will be studying "burnout" syndrome; the feeling of being emotionally spent, and its impact upon individuals perceived well-being. This will be studied within the context of the hospitality industry.  

Professional Background

Sarah has a background of hospitality management within the Brighton area, including hotels, bars and restaurants.  She is currently the director and co-founder of Bon Vivant Ltd, a mobile catering company serving French street food throughout Sussex and the South of England.

Akinyo Ola is a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Brighton Business School. He is an ACCA Chartered Accountant and a Performance Management Professional with diverse experiences in private and public sector organisations. He is currently researching on Improving Project Capabilities within the UK public sector.

Lucy  is a research student at the School of Sport and Service Management, University of Brighton. She completed her undergraduate studies  in International Business Management (2012) and Master’s studies in International Event Management (2014) and currently pursuing her PhD at the University of Brighton

With six years of experience as an educator, Lucy takes pride in teaching in international settings. Her teaching expertise and research interests include International Event Management, Sport Management, Hospitality Management, Tourism management, Risk and Crisis Management

Contribution to the body of knowledge:

Lucy aspires to have her research develop and add to the theories relating to the unique contribution to the productivity of human capital in a culturally diverse dominated hospitality industry. The research is to add knowledge to the existing gap on human capital. There is abundant debate on human capital in a nationalistic context but little has been discussed about the global demographic trend where migration has brought about experts in the hospitality field from across the world. On top of the research is to underscore the underpinning drivers of innovation as a function of human diversity and co-creation. By nature, the hospitality sector hosts guests from various nationalities. In this regard, it is only logical to establish whether diversity should be engrained in the hospitality industry to meet the diverse and unique needs of the diverse guests/customers. Its her aspiration to develop a framework upon which talent arising from migrant experts can be tapped to engineers innovation both in service and products in the hospitality industry.

Research interests:

Lucy’s research interests is to widely explore the subject area (Human capital and migration) within the current and past debates in academia in order to align the research focus in a manner that prioritises the research journey effectively. Lucy also looks forward to contextualise and commit to a time framed journey which will make it possible to successfully accomplish the research within the set timeline.

I am currently a PhD student at Brighton Business School, under the supervision of Dr George Tsekouras and Dr Aline Figlioli. My research, fully funded by the Royal Thai Government Scholarship, is to focus the importance and role of science park in the innovation ecosystem.

According to my background, I graduated in material science and worked as a research assistant in the scientific community for a year prior to study innovation management in the UK in 2018. This served me to realise how important science and technology contributing to national development in many aspects. Therefore, I particularly interested in the science park's role to promote and support scientific and technological inventions through the process of research commercialisation.

I am an early adopter of Innovation Management( Technology Marketing, Partnerships, Business Development and Customer experience). I believe strongly that the adoption of Innovation ecosytems and emerging digital technologies have a significant impact on firm innovation performance

My research is on Innovation Management as related to Change management, Entrepreneurship and  the impact  of emerging digital technologies like artificial intelligence, Internet of things and Industry 4.0 on firm performance .

My earlier research was on the Factors that affect the overall evaluation of brand extensions ( The case of the UK mobile  Telecommunications Industry into Internet Service Brand Extensions- Study of UK Telecom operators, i.e. Three, Tmobile, Orange, O2, Vodafone and their brand extensions.

Ololade has a mindset of applying academic findings to the business world to create an impact continually and is also a fellow of the Chartered Instituite of Marketing.

My research topic is the Adoption of an Innovation Ecosystem of emerging digital technologies( Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things , Industry 4.0) and the impact on Firm Innovation Performance

Rageshree is pursuing her PhD in Innovation Management. 

Her Research studies the role of Absorptive Capacity to enable a labour efficient IoT(Internet of Things) implemented market. Apart from being an active researcher ,she has also worked with the DRIVA project in the University of Brighton as a Research Fellow for Data Science and Visualization (School of Computing, Engineering and Maths). DRIVA (Digital Research & Innovation Value Accelerator) is a £1.3m University of Brighton research project funded by the European Structural Investment Fund and Arts Council England that aims to provide technology SMEs, creative arts practitioners and cultural organisations supported and authorised access to Gatwick Airport’s big data. She Brings with herself rich and valuable experience in Data Analytics and Business Intelligence Skills. Now she enjoys imparting Lectures in the various departments of the Business School Brighton like Entreprenuership and Strategy, Economics and Operations Management along with her active research work.