We welcome enquiries from prospective doctoral researchers about potential PhD projects across our five research themes: Circular Economics; Futures of Work; Skills, Training and Pedagogic Practice; Supply Chain Analytics; and Sustainable Consumption.
By undertaking a PhD with the Centre for Business and Society, you'll become a vital part of an active community of supervisors and peers across our Cambridge and Chelmsford hubs, with access to the Centre's seminar programme and its partnerships with businesses, unions, government and communities.
There are two routes into doctoral study with the Centre. In either case, we recommend that you identify and contact a potential supervisor before submitting a formal application for our School of Management PhD or School of Economics, Finance and Law PhD.
If your research interests align with one of our themes, we welcome proposals of your own design. We advise you to read our theme pages and the profiles of Centre members, and contact a potential supervisor to discuss your ideas before you apply.
Our pre-defined projects, listed below, have been developed by Centre members in areas where we have supervisory capacity, established expertise and, in several cases, existing partner relationships or data access. Applying for a pre-defined project means the supervisory team is already in place and the research questions are already framed, though there is scope to shape the project with your supervisors once you begin.
Please note: these projects do not carry funding. They are open to self-funded applicants and to those holding, or applying for, an external scholarship or sponsorship. To find out more about your funding options, including fully-funded studentship opportunities periodically offered by ARU, see our finance guide for postgraduate researchers.
Supervisor: Dr Marijana Baric ([email protected])
Location: Cambridge
Research theme: Futures of Work
Artificial intelligence and algorithmic systems are increasingly used not only to automate tasks but to manage people, such as allocating work, monitoring performance and mediating decisions once made by human managers. Debate has centred on job displacement and dataset bias; far less attention has been paid to what algorithmic management does to the employment relationship itself, and to whom. This project asks how AI-enabled management reshapes the reciprocal obligations that constitute the psychological contract, and whose experience of work it serves, and whose it penalises.
Algorithmic systems also encode a normative ‘ideal worker’, implicitly available, consistent and neurotypical, against which difference registers as underperformance. The research examines how gender and neurodivergence, and their intersection, shape workers’ experience of surveillance, metrics and task allocation: how caring responsibilities, masking or non-standard working patterns are read by systems built around a narrow norm, and with what consequences for procedural fairness, voice and wellbeing.
Grounded in social exchange theory, organisational justice and the literatures on gendered organisations and neurodiversity, the design is envisaged to be qualitative or mixed methods.
The ideal candidate will have a background in HRM, organisation studies, the sociology of work or a cognate social science, competence in qualitative methods, with an interest in technology, inequality and wellbeing. Lived or research experience of neurodiversity or gender scholarship is welcome but not required.
Applicants are encouraged to contact the principal supervisor, Dr Marijana Baric, to discuss ideas for proposals in advance.
Supervisor: Dr Outi Blackburn ([email protected])
Location: Cambridge
Research theme: Circular Economics
The transition to a circular economy (CE) requires organisations to coordinate complex material, information and value flows across organisational boundaries. Drawing on circular economy (CE), ecosystem, platform governance and technology perspectives, this project will investigate whether and how quantum computing could contribute to the development and orchestration of industrial-scale circular ecosystems and, more broadly, to the CE transition.
The project may study potential applications in material identification and “matching”, traceability, forecasting, reverse logistics, scheduling and multi-objective resource allocation (and beyond). The proposal may also focus primarily on quantum computing, compare quantum approaches with more established technologies, or explore how quantum computing interacts within a digital platform ecosystem.
The project is expected to adopt a sequential research design, which may be wholly qualitative or combine qualitative, quantitative and computational methods. Applicants should clearly explain the research problem, aim and main research question, empirical setting, initial theoretical framing and methodological design, and indicate the intended theoretical and practical contributions.
A suitable applicant will be curious, analytical and interested in the circular economy and emerging technologies.
Applicants are encouraged to contact the principal supervisor, Dr Outi Blackburn, to discuss potential research ideas before submitting an application.
Supervisors: Prof Manoj Dora ([email protected]); Dr Vikram Ramakrishnan ([email protected]
Location: Cambridge
Research theme: Circular Economics; Sustainable Consumption; Supply Chain Analytics
Agri-food supply chains face increasing pressure to reduce waste, improve resource efficiency and remain resilient to environmental, economic and operational disruptions. Although circular economy practices offer pathways to retain value and reduce dependence on virgin resources, their adoption often requires changes in technologies, organisational capabilities and collaboration across multiple actors.
Potential research questions include:
Applicants may develop one or more of these questions or propose a closely related topic. The research may adopt qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods, including case studies, interviews, surveys, participatory value-chain mapping and/or simulation modelling. The methodological design should be appropriate to the selected question and empirical context.
The ideal candidate should have a background in operations or supply chain management, sustainability, circular economy, industrial engineering or a related field, together with a sound understanding of research methods; if not, though, the understanding of research methods can be developed with time and help/support will be provided. The project should offer scope to advance theory and generate practical guidance for businesses and policymakers seeking more circular, resilient and data-informed food systems.
Applicants are encouraged to contact Professor Manoj Dora to discuss potential proposals before applying.
Supervisor: Dr Hassiba Fadli ([email protected])
Location: Cambridge
Research theme: Circular Economics
The successful transition towards a circular bioeconomy depends not only on technological innovation but also on the ability of stakeholders across the bio-based value chain to understand, adopt and implement new bio-based products, processes and services. While considerable attention has been given to technological development, less is known about how education and capacity building can accelerate the adoption of circular bio-based innovations among businesses, public authorities, educators, communities and consumers.
This PhD project will investigate how educational and knowledge exchange strategies can support knowledge exchange, capability development and behavioural change across the bio-based value chain. The research will explore how different educational approaches – including experiential learning, Living Labs, professional development, digital learning, stakeholder collaboration and community engagement – can strengthen the adoption of bio-based innovations and support the transition towards a sustainable circular bioeconomy.
The project aims to develop an evidence-based educational framework that identifies the learning needs of different value chain actors and proposes effective strategies for building the knowledge, skills and collaborative capabilities required to support innovation adoption. Applicants are encouraged to examine one or more stages of the bio-based value chain and explore how education can facilitate collaboration between researchers, SMEs, industry, policymakers, educators and citizens.
The project may adopt qualitative, quantitative or mixed-methods approaches, including case studies, interviews, surveys, educational interventions, action research or Living Lab methodologies.
Applicants should have a background in education, business, supply chain management, sustainability, innovation management, environmental sciences or a related discipline. An interest in interdisciplinary research and stakeholder engagement is desirable, while previous experience with qualitative or mixed-methods research would be advantageous.
Applicants are encouraged to contact the principal supervisor, Dr Hassiba Fadli, to discuss ideas for proposals in advance.
Supervisor: Dr Paul Higgins ([email protected])
Location: Chelmsford or Cambridge
Research theme: Skills, Training and Pedagogic Practice
The global proliferation of management professions (e.g., in HRM, consultancy, project management) raises a series of questions concerning societal function, institutional status, international commensurability, and workplace relevance. Critical debate has centred on whether managerial professions ‘hollow out’ traditional collegiate values, how managerial professions secure public legitimacy, the workplace relevance of professional standards, and the homogeneity of associational claims internationally. Such debates create important opportunities to advance theory and practice across management domains.
Potential research questions include (but are not limited to):
Applicants are encouraged to develop one or more of these themes within a single management profession, across management professions, and/or in an international comparative context. They can also propose a closely related topic within the broader field of professions.
Applicants should have a background in business/management studies, sociology, or a related discipline. They should have a good understanding of documentary and survey methods, and, where relevant, international and comparative research design. Applicants must be able to network with professional associations, professional service firms, and/or large employer organisations to negotiate research access.
Applicants are encouraged to contact the principal supervisor, Dr Paul Higgins, to discuss ideas for proposals.
Supervisor: Dr Paul Higgins ([email protected])
Location: Chelmsford or Cambridge
Research theme: Skills, Training and Pedagogic Practice
In advancing ‘professionalising’ claims, accountancy bodies typically emphasise that Chartered members have command of both practical and theoretical knowledge, engage in ethical conduct, serve the public interest, and act in a socially responsible way. However, scandals that highlight the highly partisan role of accounting and accountants, as well as failures in accounting education, routinely problematise such claims.
In seeking to rebuild confidence in accounting and its jurisdictions, relevant institutions claim a commitment to developing reflective accountants through educational processes that focus on sound educational principles, ethics, professional scepticism, and lifelong learning. These promises presuppose that students on professional accounting courses are exposed to such values and that Chartered accountants behave accordingly.
To advance theory and practice, applicants are encouraged to demonstrate how the accountancy curriculum and governing professional bodies cover theories, principles, and practices designed to engage students and practitioners in ethical conduct, serve the public interest, and act in a socially responsible way. Potential PhD projects can cover single-country studies or adopt an international comparative approach.
Applicants should have a background in accountancy, business/management studies, or a related discipline. They should have a good understanding of documentary and interview methods, and, where relevant, international and comparative research design. Applicants must be able to network with professional associations, professional service firms, and/or large employer organisations to negotiate research access.
Applicants are encouraged to contact the principal supervisor, Dr Paul Higgins, to discuss ideas for proposals.
Supervisor: Dr Paul Higgins ([email protected])
Location: Chelmsford or Cambridge
Research theme: Circular Economics
Public services hybridity (PSH) research is conventionally demarcated into organising and financing silos, examining the impact of blending different sectors and social actors to provide a growing range of publicly funded services, such as hospitals, prisons, and libraries. However, whereas organising-focused PSH research lacks substantive evidence of material impacts, its ‘financial’ counterpart relies heavily on reductionist performance metrics with scant regard for symbiotic or conflicting values.
This PhD project requires applicants to re-synthesise the organising and financing domains of PSH scholarship to address the allocative, distributive, and societal impacts often neglected in conventional PSH research and applied corporatisation. The resulting synthesis is intended not only to provide a PSH research toolkit for policy, research, and practice, but also to enrich the holistic learning experience for public management students while broadening practitioners’ skills and knowledge.
Applicants should have a background in public management, business/management, or accountancy. They should have a good understanding of new public management, institutional hybridity, and critical realist methodology. Applicants must be able to conduct a systematic (organising and financing-led) review of the PSH terrain and design relevant quantitative and qualitative methodologies for research application. Applicants must be able to network with relevant public, private, and third-sector organisations to negotiate research access.
Applicants are encouraged to contact the principal supervisor, Dr Paul Higgins, to discuss ideas for proposals.
Supervisor: Dr I-Shuo Chen ([email protected])
Location: Cambridge
Research theme: Futures of Work
Work engagement is important for employee wellbeing and effective functioning, yet sustaining it has become increasingly challenging as employees navigate changing work demands and increasingly blurred boundaries between work and non-work life. Existing research has mainly concentrated on resources located within work, while giving less attention to how employees may proactively create and mobilise resources through leisure.
Leisure crafting captures the purposeful way individuals shape their leisure activities to pursue personal growth, recovery, connection or meaning. This project broadly examines how leisure crafting relates to work engagement across different work and life contexts.
Applicants may develop the project around a range of questions, including the processes through which leisure experiences influence working life, the conditions under which leisure crafting is more or less beneficial, and whether these relationships differ across occupations, employment arrangements, cultural settings or workforce groups. Related employee outcomes and contemporary work contexts may also be incorporated where theoretically justified.
The project must adopt a quantitative design. Possible approaches include surveys and diary studies. The precise theoretical framing, research questions, context and methodology will be developed by the applicant.
The ideal candidate will have a background in organisational behaviour, HRM, management, psychology or a related field, with an interest in employee wellbeing and the work-nonwork interface.
Applicants are encouraged to contact the principal supervisor, Dr I-Shuo Chen, to discuss potential research ideas before applying.
Supervisor: Dr Nadeem Khalid ([email protected])
Location: Cambridge
Research theme: Futures of Work
Who gets to become an entrepreneur, and who supports them, is changing fast. Digital platforms, social media, and now generative AI are reshaping how founders learn, find guidance, and reach markets. Many entrepreneurs no longer rely only on personal mentors. They follow, imitate, and learn from figures they never meet, a form of para-social mentoring delivered through social media, podcasts, and AI tools.
These pathways can widen inclusion for underrepresented founders, such as women, senior entrepreneurs in the silver economy, and disabled entrepreneurs. They can also deepen exclusion, encourage over-reliance, and affect well-being through pressures such as fear of missing out (FOMO).
This project will investigate how AI and para-social mentoring shape inclusive entrepreneurship. It will explore who benefits, how AI literacy and inclusive service design influence outcomes, and what these digital pathways mean for founder well-being. The work connects current debates on inclusion, mentoring, AI, and the future of entrepreneurial work.
The study can be quantitative (survey based, with scale development and structural modelling), qualitative (interviews, narratives, or netnography), or mixed methods, depending on the candidate's strengths.
The ideal candidate will have a background in business, management, entrepreneurship, or a related social science, a good grasp of empirical research methods, and an interest in AI, inclusion, and mentoring. Familiarity with survey design and analysis (for example SPSS, AMOS, or SmartPLS) or with qualitative methods is desirable.
Applicants are encouraged to contact Dr Nadeem Khalid to discuss and refine their ideas before applying.
The supervisor's current research includes funded work on digital mentoring, inclusion and well-being among female senior entrepreneurs in the silver economy, and recent publications on inclusive service, digital inclusion, and AI in learning:
Khalid, N., Paraskevopoulou, A., Baric, M. and Ali, S. (2026) 'Redefining service convenience: developing and validating the inclusive service convenience (INSCON) scale', Journal of Services Marketing, 40(4), pp. 559-575. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/JSM-04-2025-0286
Baric, M., Khalid, N., Paraskevopoulou, A. and Ali, S. (2026) 'Digital pathways to inclusion: the role of social media usage and FOMO in shaping service inclusion and disabled tourists' well-being', Journal of Services Marketing. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/JSM-05-2025-0345
Zahid, H., Danish, M., Ali, S., Huo, C. and Khalid, N. (2026) 'Generative AI chatbots in higher education: addiction, cognitive offloading, and the role of AI literacy', Interactive Learning Environments. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2026.2677727
Supervisor: Prof Chris Land ([email protected])
Location: Cambridge
Research theme: Futures of Work
The dominant image of the ‘future of work’ today is one of AI, of full-automation, innovation and job risk. Promoted by consultants, governments, business leaders, investors, and technology developers, this digitalised future of work imaginary presents a seemingly weightless future, where ‘work’ is intellectual, augmented by AI, and the heavy work of actually making things is carried out by robots.
Against this, a counter image has emerged, in which the analogue and material reappears in the form of craft and artisanal production. Etsy makers, craft brewers, artisanal distillers and food trucks have all been studied as part of this countervailing imaginary of the future of work, sometimes referred to as ‘neo craft’ work.
This project will use qualitative methods, including participant observation, to study work in the artisanal and craft sectors, researching companies from industries like clothing manufacturing, textiles, metalworking, and repair work. The project will map articulations of craft as an alternative, analogue future of work, in the construction of counter-hegemonic future-of-work imaginaries and compare these with the realities of work in these sectors.
The ideal candidate would have a background in either business/management studies, sociology, social-psychology, anthropology, human geography or a related social science. They should have a good understanding of empirical research methods and some knowledge of contemporary debates in the sociology of work and/or organisation studies. They must have excellent communication skills, and be able to network with businesses to negotiate research access.
Applicants are encouraged to contact the principal supervisor, Prof Chris Land, to discuss ideas for proposals in advance.
Supervisor: Dr Paul Sanderson ([email protected])
Location: Cambridge
Research theme: Sustainable Consumption; Circular Economics
This PhD project explores how trust between UK regulators, innovators, investors, and consumers influences investment in safe, new sustainable technologies. Products using advanced materials, safer battery chemistries, or renewable biological sources require both short- and longer-term risk‑tolerant funding. Yet investment can be held back by regulatory uncertainty, uneven market acceptance, and concerns about product performance. Trust is an important but under‑explored factor shaping how these groups understand risk, regulatory signals, and market potential.
The project also examines the potential of emerging collaborative regulatory tools – such as regulatory sandboxes, innovation hubs and pathways, tech sprints, and hackathons – to strengthen trust, reduce uncertainty, and support investment in sustainable technologies. While these tools are used by a small number of UK regulators, their value in product safety and sustainability contexts is not yet well understood.
You will develop a multi‑layer framework showing how trust flows between regulators, innovators, investors, and consumers, where it breaks down, and how new regulatory tools might improve these relationships. The project will use mixed methods, including interviews, documentary analysis, surveys, and case studies of innovative technologies.
This project is ideal for applicants interested in regulation, innovation, and sustainable investment. Knowledge of systems thinking or institutional theory would be helpful but is not essential. Subject to interest, the successful candidate may be considered for internship, mentorship, and other professional development opportunities with the UK Government Office for Product Safety and Standards.
Applicants are encouraged to contact the principal supervisor, Dr Paul Sanderson, to discuss ideas for proposals in advance.
Supervisor: Dr Sunrita Dhar Bhattacharjee ([email protected])
Location: Cambridge
Research theme: Circular Economics; Futures of Work
Creating economic growth that supports long term development for environmentally sustainable (green) growth is key. However, little is known about how people's jobs, family situations, and inequalities in the labour market will affect and who will benefit from the new opportunities created by the shift to a greener economy.
Despite growing policy attention to green growth and sustainable development for a sustained future, there is limited understanding of how labour market segregation, integration and household dynamics will shape access to the opportunities that might be created by the green transition. Cross country comparisons using creative, innovative and participatory research are welcome in different contexts and sectors, exploring how the green transition affects informal workers, marginalised, and vulnerable communities.
Research exploring how gender, social norms, care responsibilities, household dynamics, spatial inequalities, migration, and labour market institutions influence participation in the emerging green transition is encouraged across different contexts, countries, occupations, and sectors exploring the following (but not limited to):
Applications are expected to have a background in social sciences, sustainable development, business, or other related social sciences. A demonstrable knowledge of qualitative research methods is essential, and experience of using participatory research is desirable (not essential).
Applicants are encouraged to contact the principal supervisor, Dr Sunrita Dhar-Bhattacharjee, to discuss ideas for proposals in advance.
Supervisor: Prof Nektarios Tzempelikos ([email protected])
Location: Cambridge
Research theme: Supply Chain Analytics
In recent years business-to-business (B2B) firms have experienced major technological, environmental and societal changes that have the potential to reshape business practices within and across firms. These forces impact both suppliers and customers and therefore Key Account Management (KAM), which sits at the heart of the interactions and activities between them. For instance, a recent McKinsey report suggests that more than three quarters of buyers and sellers now prefer digital self-service and remote engagement over traditional face-to-face interactions.
Key account managers, who sit at the centre of supplier–customer relationships, are therefore necessarily involved in implementing and adapting to these transformations. These developments create important opportunities to advance both theory and practice in KAM.
Potential research questions include (but are not limited to):
Applicants are encouraged to develop one or more of these themes, or propose a closely related topic within the broader field of KAM.
The project is expected to adopt a quantitative research approach, including hypothesis testing, survey research and multivariate data analysis (e.g. SPSS and Structural Equation Modelling). Applicants are also welcome to undertake systematic literature reviews or bibliometric studies in addition to the collection of primary data.
Applicants should have a good understanding of research methods, particularly quantitative approaches, and an interest in B2B marketing, sales management or relationship marketing.
Applicants are encouraged to contact the principal supervisor, Professor Nektarios Tzempelikos, to discuss potential research ideas before submitting an application.