Business MPhil/PhD

PhD year by year

After receiving your application, we try to establish if we have the necessary expertise to supervise your project and we begin to form a supervisory team for you. This will normally consist of a Director of Studies (DoS), who will be your lead supervisor, and at least one other supervisor, who will offer you additional support and guidance throughout your studies. If, following a successful interview, you are offered a place as a full-time student, your programme of study will look something like this:

Part time students follow the same structure as full-time students but normally complete the PhD over a period of five to six years. Part-time students take two modules in each of their first two years, and will normally transfer to PhD in their fourth year.

Benefit from a professional and challenging relationship with your supervisory team, drawn from experienced academics working at the forefront of their disciplines.

Supervisors

Please click on the name of the supervisor to follow a link to their webpage. We recommend contacting a potential supervisor with your research outline before submitting a formal application, please read our guidelines for writing your research outline first.  Please only contact one supervisor. If another supervisor is better suited to your project, we will redirect your query.

Dr Scott Andrews
Expertise: Leadership, case study research methodologies, case based teaching & participant centred learning in management education 

Dr Sajad Rezaei
Expertise: Interactive & Digital Marketing; Sustainability and Responsible Business; Business Innovation and Strategy; Consumer Behaviour.

Dr Jane Keenan
Expertise: Accounting and Financial Management, Corporate Finance and Employment legislation and how this affects companies competitiveness.

Dr Robin Bell
Expertise: Entrepreneurship/small business; international business and management; cross-cultural communication.

Dr Kay Emblen-Perry 
Expertise: Sustainable management including environmental management and justice, social responsibility and economic sustainability.

Professor Jan Francis-Smythe
Expertise: Occupational psychology and HR: selection and assessment; career development and appraisal; training; employee relations and motivation; organisational development and change; leadership; counselling and personal development. 

Dr Laila Kasem
Expertise: International business; international marketing; strategy; organisational learning and cross-cultural consumer behaviour.

Self-funded project: Exploring the Career Choices of Recently-Arrived Refugees in the UK

Dr. Barbara Menara
Expertise: employee engagement, job satisfaction, turnover, workplace wellbeing, professions, quantitative methods, panel data analysis

Dr Paulo Mora-Avila
Expertise: Consumer psychology, corporate reputation, branding, and cross-cultural & cross-generational behaviour.

Dr Pamella Murray
Expertise: Leadership; teamwork; coaching and mentoring.

Dr Lynn Nichol
Expertise: Work based learning; professional identity; narrative research/ethnography; psychological contract/survivor syndrome/downsizing; learning and development; careers; employee relations; faith based organisation.

Dr Richard Nicholls
Expertise: Services marketing; customer-to-customer interaction; ageing service customers; customer misbehaviour.

Dr. Cedric Nikko
Expertise: Creativity & Leadership, People Management, Organisational Behaviour, Global Challenges – SDGs, Strategic Management, Strategic Operational Management, Corporate Sustainability & Responsibility (CSR)

Dr Catharine Ross
Expertise: Diversity in organisations; workplace culture and politics; sociology of the professions; workplace diversity and equality; employee relations; management development; careers.

Self-funded project: Exploring the Career Choices of Recently-Arrived Refugees in the UK

Dr. Oluwole Shokunbi
Expertise: Employee Engagement, Human Resource Management, Leadership and Management Development, Change Management, Organisational Behaviour, Capacity Building in the Private, the Public and the third Sectors

Dr Abdulmaten Taroun
Expertise: Project management; operations management; decision-making and risk analysis; risk management; enterprise risk management (ERM); quality management; construction management; performance management; sustainability and sustainable development.

Dr Vessela Warren
Expertise: Innovation management; knowledge management in innovation; new service development (NSD) processes; innovation and sustainability; barriers and enablers to service innovation; strategic innovation; the role of the networks into the innovation process; service design; service co-creation; servitization.

Dr Helen Watts
Expertise: Customer retention, membership services, consumer psychology, occupational psychology, quantitative methodologies, qualitative methodologies, mixed method designs.

Dr Ria Wiid
Expertise: Contemporary marketing communications, authenticity and inside out branding.

All students engage with our Researcher Development Programme (RDP). The RDP aims to develop and enhance the skills, both generic and specific, that you will need to complete your research degree but also to become an effective researcher. The RDP is organised around thematic clusters, consisting of modules, and workshops, delivered face-to-face by subject specialists from across the University and the dedicated Researcher Development Team, or online through our virtual learning environment.

As part of the RDP, you will complete a Postgraduate Certificate in Research Methods (PG Cert). All students must complete the PG Cert in order to progress on their MPhil/PhD Programme. The PG Cert is strongly focused on developing your programme of research, starting from establishing your development needs, and preparing you for the planning and subsequent delivery of your programme of research.

Full-time students will complete the PG Cert in 12 months and part-time students in 24 months.