The Academic Team

Role: Professor of Business Economics & Director of MBA Programmes

Role: Lecturer

Dr Sarmad Alshawi has more than 20 years of academic experience and currently teaches on the MBA programme at the Brunel Business School, Brunel University (UK).  Dr Alshawi is an active member of research groups at Brunel, with multi-discipline research in the areas of Business Intelligence and Data Management, CRM, E-government, E-health and Air Transport Information Systems. Dr Alshawi has written in internationally refereed journals, spoken at conferences word-wide, and has guest-edited special issue journals. He has participated in several research projects, with the latest being the EPSRC funded MATCH healthcare project.

Role: Lecturer

Dr Abrahim Althonayan (BSc, MSc, PhD) is a Lecturer of Strategic Management at Brunel Business School. He is a member of the Centre for International Business and Strategy in Emerging Markets (CIBSEM). Abrahim is Director of International Business Development. He is also active in the Executive development at BBS.

Role: Senior Lecturer

Mr John Aston is a financial specialist within the Business School as well as being the Subject Group Head for Business.  He has worked extensively in both the public and private sectors.  He has worked as both the Financial Director and Assistant Secretary to the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy.

Role: Senior Lecturer and Director of Postgraduate Studies

Ana Cristina Costa (PhD) holds an MSc degree in Social and Organizational Psychology from the ISPA Institute, University of Lisbon in Portugal, and a PhD in Trust in Organizations from Tilburg University in the Netherlands. She is Senior Lecturer Human Resource Management - Organizational Behaviour and has CIPD Academic membership. She has taught a variety of classes including Organizational Behaviour, HRM, Knowledge Management, Research Methods, Teamwork and Conflict Management on a range of undergraduate and postgraduate including MBA and PhD courses.

Her research interests include Trust in Organizations, HRM, Social Capital and Teamwork, and Innovation and Knowledge Management in Organizations. Ana Cristina is co-founder of the Innovation Collaborative Research Network (www.icrn.org.uk) funded by The Leverhulme Trust which investigates creativity and innovation at work and their effects on job performance, HRM, and employee well-being across Europe in collaboration with Maastricht University (The Netherlands) and University of Valencia (Spain). She is currently visiting Associate Professor at the Research Institute of Personnel Psychology at University of Valencia in Spain.

Ana Cristina is a member of several editorial boards and has been guest editor of special issues for Journals such as Group and Organization Management, International Sociology and Social Science Information. She currently serves as Associate Editor for the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology.

Role: Lecturer

Dr Aida Hajro is Lecturer in International Business at Brunel University Business School. In addition, she is the Deputy Director of the Brunel MBA programme. She previously held positions at Middlesex University in London and Vienna University of Economics (WU) in Austria. She earned an MSc degree in International Business from Vienna University of Economics (WU) and the University of Texas in Austin. She holds a PhD degree from the Vienna University of Economics (WU), where she has previously worked as assistant professor at the Research Institute for European Affairs.

Her research interests include cross-border mergers and acquisitions, multinational teams, knowledge transfer and organisational learning. Dr. Hajro is member of the editorial board of the European Journal of Cross-cultural Competence and Management (EJCCM). For her research she has been awarded the Maria Schaumayer PhD Dissertation Award, the Stephan Koren Award for the Best PhD Dissertation of the Vienna University of Economics (WU) completed in 2007, and the European Institute of Advanced Management Studies Best Student Paper Award. She has also been the Academy of Management International Management Best Paper Finalist in 2009, 2010 and 2012.

Dr. Hajro has taught a variety of classes in German and English including Foreign Direct Investment, Transnational Management, Cross-cultural Management, Economics, Research Methods, International and Comparative HRM, and International Business.

Role: Senior Lecturer

Dr Dimitrios N. Koufopoulos holds a B.Sc. degree in Business Administration from the Athens University of Business and Economics and an MBA and PhD degree from Cardiff University. He is Fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants, Member of the Chartered Institute of Management, Member of the Chartered Securities and Investement Institute, Academic Member of the European Corporate Governance Institute and Research Director of the Hellenic Observatory of Corporate Governance (HOCG, www.hocg.eu)

Role: Senior Lecturer

Dr Savita Kumra (BA (Hons.), MSc (Econ.), PhD, CIPD) is a Senior Lecturer at Brunel Business School. Savita completed her doctorate at Cranfield School of Management where she is a Visiting Fellow in the School of Management. Savita has held academic posts at Oxford Brookes University, Keele University, University of Buckingham and University of Greenwich. Savita is a committee member of the BAM Special Interest Group on Gender in Management, and on the Editorial Board of Gender in Management: An International Journal. She is a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

Savita’s key research interests focus on diversity, the gendered nature of the career development process in the professional services and the importance of developing and deploying key career enhancement strategies, e.g. impression management, and building and leveraging social capital.

Savita teaches Human Resource Management and Organisational Behaviour on a range of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, and has contributed to a number of executive programmes specialising in Women’s Leadership Development for Cranfield School of Management and clients such as the Asian Development Bank, International Power and CERN. She has also undertaken a number of consultancy projects with clients such as Standard Chartered Bank, Asian Development Bank, Clifford Chance, Northern Ireland Staff Commission and Tesco. She is also a regular contributor to women’s corporate networking events, with organisations such as PWc, Deutsche Bank, Rolls Royce and Lloyds TSB.

Role: Professor of Marketing and Strategy and Director of MSc Applied Corporate Brand Management

T C Melewar joined Brunel on the 1st November 2010. He has past experience at Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), Switzerland, Warwick Business School, DeMontfort University and MARA Institute of Technology, Malaysia. He is the Joint Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Brand Management. His works have appeared in the Journal of International Business Studies, Industrial Marketing Management, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Management, International Marketing Review among others.

Role: Professor of Human Resource Management / Organisational Behaviour

Mustafa Özbilgin is Professor of Organisational Behaviour and Human Resource Management at Brunel Business School, Brunel University (London, UK). Drawing on his research on equality, diversity and inclusion at work from comparative and relational perspectives, he has published more than 10 books and large number of journal articles. His most recent book, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (Edward Elgar) brings together papers from over 30 scholars in the field and his other text, Global Diversity Management (co-authored with Ahu Tatli, Palgrave) provides evidence from international field studies. He has authored and edited ten books and published large number of papers in journals such as Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Learning and Education, British Journal of Management, Human Resource Management (US), Journal of Vocational Behavior, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Human Relations, Gender Work and Organization among others.

He is the Editor-in-Chief of the British Journal of Management (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010 to date) and he serves as an associate editor for Gender Work and Organization. He sits on the Editorial Advisory Boards of the Academy of Management Learning and Education (AMLE), Journal of Managerial Psychology and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: an international journal among others.

Having worked at University of Hertfordshire, University of Surrey, Queen Mary, University of London and University of East Anglia over the last 12 years, Professor Özbilgin has held visiting posts at the Cornell University (USA), CEPS-Instead (Luxembourg), Japan Institute of Labour Policy and Training (Japan). He currently holds visiting professorships at the University of Paris (Pantheon-Assass) and Dauphine University in France and St Gallen University in Switzerland.

He is the founder of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: an international conference (EDI). The fourth EDI conference will take place in Auckland, New Zealand, in 2011: www.edi-conference.org

Role: Professor of Operations Management and Acting Assistant Head of School

Professor Amir M. Sharif (PhD, BEng (Hons), FRSA, FInstLM, MCMI, AffCILT) is currently Acting Assistant Head of School and Professor of Operations Management. He has previously been Director of MBA Programmes within Brunel Business School and has lead the Brunel MBA through successful AMBA accreditations. Amir has 10 years of experience working for and consulting to corporations such as JPMorgan, UBS, KPMG, Sony and the BBC in a variety of programme and project management roles. Through this industrial experience as well as academic research background, Amir is also active as a research grant reviewer for numerous national and international funding bodies such as: the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) in the UK, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) in the UK, the Natural and National Science Foundation of China (NNSFC) and the Qatar National Research Foundation (QNRF). Amir was elected to the Peer Review Electoral College of the EPSRC in 2005, and continues to be a serving member. Amir is also a member of the University Senate.

Role: Lecturer

Dr. Singh holds a Ph.D (Econ.) degree with specialisation in International Business. He has previously worked as Senior Research Fellow at University of Reading, Department of Economics. He has also consulted for private and public organisations and was based in Geneva as a full time consultant with UNCTAD in 2003-04. Dr. Singh has published over forty papers and chapters in edited volume on International Business.