Business and management PhD

The Brighton Business School offers PhD students a research environment focused on the full range of disciplines associated with contemporary business structures and practices.

Our research centre, the Centre for Change, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management (CENTRIM) brings together academic expertise with a long, successful history in business development through international partnerships and consultancies.

Working with partners in industry, academia and government, we strive to produce groundbreaking concepts to explain, harness and improve innovation, entrepreneurship and change management.

Our PhD students are supervised across sets of specialities including:

Economics / finance
Innovation studies
Law
Management studies
Marketing

As a PhD student you will join a department whose work tackles the complex problems facing economies, businesses, and wider society. We are committed to academic research of international excellence, providing scientific evidence and generating new insights into the processes of enterprising and managing innovation and change.

We generate data to test new theories and transfer our findings into boardrooms and beyond. Our research follows high academic standards and is published in international peer-reviewed academic conferences and journals.

We welcome students with business experience that can further enhance our contact with and direct relevance to industry and enterprise. It is also possible to take the PhD directly after undergraduate study and capitalise on academic momentum.

Our doctoral graduates work in academia, consultancy and in the business world internationally.

Apply for your PhD at Brighton Business School

In the application portal you can select Business and management or, if appropriate, one of the school's sub-groups: marketing, law, economics, innovation studies.

Key information

As a Business and Management PhD student at Brighton, you will

attend and present at regular seminar sessions with guests from across the world of business research.
benefit from a supervisory team comprising 2-3 members of academic staff. Depending on your research specialism you may also have an additional supervisor from another school, another research institution, or an external partner from government or industry.
be provided with desk space and access to a desktop PC, either in one of the postgraduate offices on the 6th  floor of the award-winning Cockcroft Building, or within the adjacent Huxley Building.
benefit from access to a range of electronic resources via the University’s Online Library, as well as to the physical book and journal collections housed within the Aldrich Library and other campus libraries.

Academic Environment

The Centre for Change, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management (CENTRIM) provides an opportunity for all postgraduate students to present ‘work in progress’ and network with other researchers. We believe that this interdisciplinary focus provides our students with an appreciation of real-world problems and ensures that they are highly employable. In addition, the Brighton Business School hosts regular events to bring representatives of international business to speak at the University, including law, finance and marketing.

The Brighton Doctoral College offer a training programme for postgraduate researchers, covering research methods and transferable (including employability) skills. Attendance at appropriate modules within this programme is encouraged, as is contribution to the Schools’ various seminar series. Academic and technical staff also provide more subject-specific training.

Researchers within the School are engaged in work across a wide range of topic areas, and thus your PhD research could be based on interdisciplinary supervision across the School.

Some of our supervisors

Dr Jose Christian

Jose supervises PhD students in the following areas: Open innovation, digital entrepreneurship, emerging digital technologies, open source innovation, online communities, and user innovation.Jose has an interest to supervise PhD students focusing on alternative forms of digital innovation. Of particular interest are those that explore the evolution of digital technologies and their development and propagation through informal innovation group.

Dr Aline Figlioli

Aline has the interest to supervise PhD students that explore entrepreneurial ecosystems builders (EEB) design, role, business models and impacts. All types of EEBs are of interest: business incubators, science and technology parks, accelerators, innovation hubs.

The innovation journey and the management of open innovation in startups and scaleups are also of interest.

Dr Sue Greener

My doctorate is in online learning and I continue to develop work in this area of the impact of digital learning technologies on learning design and community building in HE and organisational contexts. I currently supervise 5 PhD students at Brighton in related fields of social media and education, women and leadership, digital divide and the impact of dyslexia on learning in innovative SMEs. I have supervised two successful completions of PhD thesis, one in the field of women's learning environments in Saudi Arabian HE, the other the use of school teachers' acceptance and use of e-learning technologies.

In summary, the fields of supervisory interest are:

Online and blended learning design in HE and in organisational contexts

Social media in relation to learning and community-building

Human Resource Development

Problem-based learning

Action learning

Graduate employability

Prof Andros Gregoriou

I am very interested in supervising students in the fields of liquidity, financial modelling, SMEs and cryptocurrencies. In particular, I am keen on developing new measures of financial stability that can be applied to the impacts of Brexit and the Coronavirus on financial markets.

Prof Toni Hilton

Service-Dominant Logic

Co-creation

Services Marketing

Dr Tim Laing

I currently supervise students in the fields of renewable energy, sustainable production and technology innovation. I am interested in supervising students in the fields of environmental economics, natural resource management, the extractive industries and the material implications of low-carbon development.

Gillian Keenan

Gillian has experience supervising graduate and post-graduate students in Human Resouces related subjects. She is able to supervise students on similiar projects.

Dr Eugenia Markova

My research interests are in the area of labour migration, agency work and regional development, comparative international research, and with extensive expertise in research methodologies and advanced econometric and statistical skills in the analysis of survey data.

I have four PhD completions:

Christopher Monks,' Stakeholder involvement in the selection of biodiversity - focused voluntary Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) standards within the food/agri-business industry'. PhD awarded in July 2019 (lead supervisor)
George Szamuely, PhD by Prior Output,'Bombs for Peace: the war in Yugoslavia'. PhD awarded in December 2016 (lead supervisor)
Eda Gemi, 'Socio-economic Integration of Immigrants in Greece: The Case of the Greater Athens Area'. PhD awarded in July 2015 (lead supervisor)
Maria Elfani, ‘The Impact of the National Minimum Wage on the Non-Wage Benefits of Labour Migrants – Evidence from the UK’. PhD awarded in July 2014 (lead supervisor)

Dr Sushil Mohan

Sushil is an active PhD supervisor and welcomes students that wish to work in the areas of trade and international development such as trade policy, trade barriers, global commodity markets, environmental economics, migration, FDI, ethical trading (e.g. Fairtrade, organics, CSR, social enterprises), SMEs and international macroeconomics.

He has a rich experience in the PhD process and helping students in successful completion of PhD and pursuing their career goals. His most recent and current PhD researchers include topics in the area of trade and economic growth, environment, global oil market, Islamic business, CSR, exchange rate regimes, and areas related to international development.

Dr Alex Newbury

My most recent doctoral student successfully passed her viva in January 2019. Her doctorate assesses the impact of cuts to Legal Aid on the administration of immigration law and asylum cases.

I am now supervising a student examining issues around anonymity for both complainants and defendants in rape trials.

I would be interested in supervising other doctoral students with interests in Legal Aid, or in research areas covering crime, criminal justice, restorative justice, or youth offending.

Tri Nguyen

I am interested in supervising PhD students who want to do research in accounting, auditing, finance, and corporate governance.

Dr Adaeze Okoye

She is currently supervising three PhD students.

She would like to hear from potential postgraduate students interested in legal corporate accountability

Dr Avanti Pinto

I am interested to supervise projects in the area of public economics and international economics, specifically environmental policies/ externalities/ international cooperation on environment and trade issues.

Dr Antonios Platsas

Antonios would be delighted to supervise students in the areas of his research interests, namely Comparative Law, International Law, Commercial Law, European Law and Legal Theory. He holds experience in supervising PhD projects to completion in the MPhil/PhD register, whilst he has also examined PhD work externally.

Dr Claire-Michelle Smyth

Interested in Supervising PhD students in the field of human rights law in particular those with an interest in social and economic rights

Dr George Tsekouras

George has supervised several PhD students on topics including among others: Building innovation capabilities in SMEs through learning networks; the contribution of people with learning conditions to the innovation activities of small businesses; innovation skills and behaviors of employees in high-growth SMEs in the digital technology sector; the role of innovation coaching for innovative SMEs; and the develoment of technology-based start-ups in a developing economy.

George has an interest to supervise PhD students that explore the development of innovation activities and innovation capabilities within SMEs. All types of SMEs (technology-based, high-growth, low-and-medium tech etc.) are of interest. Both challenges of managing the innovation activities and their support are of interest.

Dr Arvind Upadhyay

Dr Upadhyay is supervising two full-time PhD students as their lead supervisor. He welcomes enquiries from potential PhD students in the areas of operations, logistics and supply chain management. He also has a particular interest in innovative empirical methodologies.

For further information on supervisory staff including cross-disciplinary options, please visit research staff on our research website.

Making an application

You will apply to the University of Brighton through our online application portal. When you do, you will require a research proposal, references, a personal statement and a record of your education.

You will be asked whether you have discussed your research proposal and your suitability for doctoral study with a member of the University of Brighton staff. We recommend that all applications are made with the collaboration of at least one potential supervisor. Approaches to potential supervisors can be made directly through the details available online. If you are unsure, please do contact the Doctoral College for advice.

Please visit our How to apply for a PhD page for detailed information.

Fees and funding

Funding

Undertaking research study will require university fees as well as support for your research activities and plans for subsistance during full or part-time study.

Funding sources include self-funding, funding by an employer or industrial partners; there are competitive funding opportunities available in most disciplines through, for example, our own university studentships or national (UK) research councils. International students may have options from either their home-based research funding organisations or may be eligible for some UK funds.

Learn more about the funding opportunities available to you.

Tuition fees academic year 2020–21

Standard fees are listed below, but may vary depending on subject area. Some subject areas may charge bench fees/consumables; this will be decided as part of any offer made. Fees for UK/EU and international students on full-time and part-time courses are likely to incur a small inflation rise each year of a research programme.

MPhil/PhD
	Full-time	Part-time
UK/EU	£4,407	£2,204
International	£14,976	£7,488
International students registered in the School of Humanities or in the Brighton Business School	£13,194	£6,597

Professional doctorate
Full-time	Part-time
N/A	£2,673 (UK/EU)

PhD by Publication
Full-time	Part-time
N/A	£2,204(UK/EU)

Contact Brighton Doctoral College

To contact the Doctoral College at the University of Brighton we request an email in the first instance. Please visit our contact the Brighton Doctoral College page.

For supervisory contact, please see individual profile pages.