The College of Business, Arts and Social Sciences launched its two College Research Centres - the
Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Research Centre and the
Global Lives Research Centre - on 3
rd May in the Eastern Gateway Auditorium.
Keynote addresses were provided by Professor Nicola Ansell (Global Youth? International Welfare Regimes and Shifting Generational Relations in Rural Southern Africa) and Professor Habin Lee (Sustainable Logistics and Supply Chains in Big Data and AI Era).
Research Cluster leaders Grahame Fallon, Bidit Dey, Ourania Filippakou, Monomita Nandy and Manoj Dora joined Centre Director Professor Catherine Wang to discuss the activities and developments taking place within Entrepreneurship and Sustainability, whilst Photini Vrikki, Sara de Benedictis and Andra Ivanescu joined Centre Director Dr Meredith Jones to introduce the Global Lives clusters and latest initiatives.
The event culminated with a networking lunch, giving attendees the opportunity to discuss new interdisciplinary project ideas with colleagues from across the College.
The Centre for Entrepreneurship and Sustainability (CES) aims to lead and promote interdisciplinary research on entrepreneurship, sustainability, creativity and innovation. The focus is on how individuals, businesses and societies can tap into creative and entrepreneurial flair to develop innovative solutions, in order to not only create economic value, but also solve social and environmental problems. Our six inaugural research clusters focus on a range of topical issues, including social entrepreneurship, ethnic minority entrepreneurship, the impact of big data and artificial intelligence on entrepreneurship and sustainability, institutional impacts on entrepreneurship and innovation in emerging market economies, innovation and sustainability in a circular economy, and promoting students’ creativity and entrepreneurship through mindfulness practice. CES encourages scholars and business leaders to engage in interdisciplinary dialogues. Through collaborative research, CES engages in knowledge creation and transfer as well as knowledge co-creation with multiple stakeholders on contemporary entrepreneurship and sustainability issues.
The Global Lives Research Centre aims to lead and promote topical, innovative and interdisciplinary research. The focus is on life in contemporary worlds, especially in terms of how bodies, identities, technologies, media, and environments intersect to create new modes of being. Our four inaugural Clusters demonstrate this intertwining beautifully, with researchers exploring what it means when creatives and celebrities ‘get political’, the socio-cultural implications of immersive media, ways that research can be expressed through games, and ways that birth is being ‘performed’ differently in contemporary media. The Centre encourages researchers to engage across disciplines but also outside of academia, especially with artistic and activist spheres and with the cultural industries. In February we hosted ‘The Body and Human Rights’ Symposium with the Knowing Our Rights research project, and the Britain in Europe think tank, drawing together feminist theories of the body and legal rights scholarship to look at issues including abortion, torture, asylum, food, and gender.