Also in the news
Marketing research funding
Dr Matthew Alexander (Department of Marketing) has been awarded research funding from the British Academy of Marketing for a project titled "Tackling Toxic Engagement: Investigating Adolescent Well-being in Digital Spaces”. In collaboration with Dr Jaylan Azer (University of Glasgow), the project explores the forms, motivations, and psychological impacts of toxic digital behaviours among adolescents, using netnography, experimental methods, and digital ethnography. The project aims to generate actionable insights for policymakers, educators, marketers, and digital platforms to support safer and healthier online environments for young people.
Dr Amira Mukendi (Department of Marketing) and co-investigator, Dr Catherine Chavula (Department of Computer Science and Information), have been awarded research funding from the Academy of Marketing for a project titled “Bad Brands: Exploring the Role of Brands in Social Media Firestorms.” Using netnography, the project aims to have an impact in the beauty industry and social media marketing.
SEED programmes continue
Students on the Growth Advantage Programme (GAP) and Help to Grow: Management programme celebrated graduations in June.
GAP Cohort 8 started at the end of February 2025 and concluded on June 12. The group closely supported each other throughout their months of peer-to-peer learning, fully committing to growing their businesses as a collective. Shortly after the programme concluded, it was announced that participant Jonathan Burridge’s business Utopi had secured £5m investment from the Scottish National Investment Bank.
The next cohort is due to run September 2025 – January 2026.
Help to Grow: Management Cohort 19 came to an end on June 18. This cohort ran on a condensed schedule to finish up before the school holidays (with 12 modules completed across nine weeks rather than the usual 12). It was a tight-knit cohort and SEED received lots of positive feedback about the delivery team, as well as on the shortened nine-week approach. Cohort 20 will begin in August 2025 and Cohort 21 will follow in October 2025.
Best Paper Award for Management Science
A paper co-authored by Hanane El Raoui, John Quigley, and Rachel Sales has received the Sullivan Best Paper Award at the 2025 Flexible Automation and Intelligent Manufacturing (FAIM) Conference, held in New York.
The paper “A Decision Support Model for Efficient Garment Reprocessing for a Sustainable Circular Business Model” is the result of a successful collaboration between Strathclyde and co-authors from the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Napier University, and industrial partner ACS Clothing.
TU Braunschweig Visit
The Department of Management Science and National Manufacturing Institute Scotland (NMIS) recently hosted a visit from Professor Thomas Spengler and Dr Yannik Graupner from TU Braunschweig.
The visit marks the start of research collaboration between Professors John Quigley and Keith Ridgway exploring re-risking the transition to green steel. While here, they explored potential collaborations with various academics from across Strathclyde Business School.
Dr Graupner will be visiting SBS for an extended two-month research visit from August to October.
International talks on employment
Professor Colin Lindsay of the Scottish Centre for Employment Research and Department of Work, Employment and Organisation gave the keynote lecture at the University Forum for Human Resource Development Conference in Belfast on June 13.
His keynote focused on the need for employers to invest in job quality as a route to enhanced productivity and employee wellbeing.
Professor Lindsay also gave an invited talk to staff and business partners at the Ron Joyce Centre for Business Studies, Mount Allison University, Canada on July 14. His talk focused on "Crafting Dynamic and Innovative Workplace Futures". Professor Lindsay argued that people managers and workplace partners have a crucial role in improving job quality, promoting innovation and fostering dynamic capabilities.
Academic appointed as global data expert
Dr Steven Owens, Department of Accounting and Finance, has been appointed as a GIS/satellite data expert to the FAIME database. This database connects experts with indigenous and other communities affected by mining throughout the world. This has come about through his work with Dr Brian Garvey, Department of Work, Employment and Organisation, supporting indigenous and traditional communities in the Brazilian Amazon - work supported by the Financial Regulation Innovation Lab in the Accounting and Finance department.
Steve said, “We are focussing on assessing the impact of corporate activity and feeding that data back to financial services so that they can make better informed decisions.”
Steve has also recently won IAA funding to work with a company (https://www.biofarm.co.uk/) exploring how AI and satellite data can be used to monitor biodiversity in line with the Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) regulation. The project will kick off in August for three months. UKRI impact acceleration accounts (IAAs) are strategic awards providing funding to research organisations to use creatively for a wide range of impact activities.
Best paper award
Professor Matt Hannon and Dr Iain Cairns are two of the co-authors on a paper that has been honoured with the Best Paper Award from the Energy Research & Social Science journal. The paper is entitled Developing a relational approach to energy demand: A methodological and conceptual guide and was co-written with academics from the Sustainability Research Institute, University of Leeds; the School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Leeds; and the Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex.
Paper presentation on fair work
Professor Colin Lindsay and Johanna McQuarrie of the Scottish Centre for Employment Research and Department of Work, Employment and Organisation presented a paper on "Fair Work as a route to employee work engagement" at the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) Conference on July 11.
BBC expert appearance for WEO lecturer
Dr Kendra Briken, Department of Work, Employment and Organisation was an expert guest on the BBC’s Kaye Adams show on July 29 along with Steven Drost, Honorary Professor at the University of Edinburgh and one of the founders of CodeBase, the UK’s largest tech incubator, as well as law student Grace McCabe. They were discussing AI and the National Supercomputing Centre being created at Edinburgh University, the future jobs that might be created as a result and the potential issues and problems it could cause for the labour market.
ICAS prize awarded to Strathclyde student
BA Accounting student Craig Differ is the winner of the 2025 Charles Scott Prize from ICAS for 2025.
This prestigious award recognises academic excellence and potential in the world of finance and accountancy.
Memorial prize for best paper for marketing professor
Professor Iain Davies won the “Dr. Brendan Richardson Memorial Prize” for best paper in responsible and sustainable marketing at the Academy of Marketing for the paper: Davies, I.A., Doherty, B., and McDonagh, P. “The socio-genisis of sustainable cocoa (chocolate) 1991-2025”. Academy of Marketing Conference, University Collage Cork, July 2025.
Strathclyde to host prestigious social sciences conference
A Strathclyde Business School-led team has secured the right to host one of academia's most prestigious social sciences conferences in 2027.
The Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) Conference brings together international scholars in economics, sociology and political science, with the most recent conference gathering more than 1,100 participants.
The Strathclyde bid team was led by Professor Patricia Findlay and Johanna McQuarrie of the Scottish Centre for Employment Research(SCER), supported by SCER and Department of Work, Employment and Organisation colleagues, Professors Colin Lindsay and Dora Scholarios, and other SBS and HASS team members.
Strathclyde will host this hugely important conference in July 2027.
Fair work keynote panel for WEO professor
Professor Patricia Findlay of Scottish Centre for Employment Research and WEO joined a keynote panel at the University Forum for Human Resource Development Conference in Belfast on 12 June. The panel focused on the potential and need for Fair Work in Industry 4.0.
Professor runs Tipping Points conference
Strathclyde Business School’s Professor Iain Black, along with Emeritus Professor Gerard Hastings (formerly of the University of Strathclyde Marketing Department), Dr Anna Wilson from the University of Glasgow, and Stewart Kirkpatrick, a digital campaigning expert (38 Degrees, Open Democracy, Yes Scotland), ran an action workshop at the Global Tipping Points Conference in Exeter (30 June–3 July).
The conference was organised by some of the world’s leading climate scientists - Professor Johan Rockström, Ricarda Winkelmann, and Professor Tim Lenton - and features cutting-edge research on the state of critical Earth systems (Greenland ice sheet, temperate coral reefs, AMOC, Antarctic ice sheet) and how close they are to collapse and tipping into new, unknown states. It also explored, with the help of leading social scientists, international governance figures, third-sector leaders, and campaigners such as Kate Raworth, George Monbiot, Jemilah Mahmood and Sandrine Dixson-Decleve, how to tip social systems towards low-carbon futures.
The conference opened with stark news: it is already too late to save the world’s tropical coral reefs, with some models predicting that only 1% will survive expected rises in ocean temperature and changes in salinity. Conference heard deeply concerning updates about the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) - the ocean current that cycles warm and cold water across the equator and to the Arctic, and which is responsible for the Scotland’s and UK’s relatively mild climate. The latest modelling suggests that when the AMOC shuts down, winter sea ice could reach Scotland. Attendees were left to consider the profound implications this would have on our society and economy.
Despite these warnings, the conference focused on hope and action at scale and speed, seeking answers to how we can tip current social systems - towards, for example, cities dominated by active and electrified public transport, or global and diets that are plant-based and tasty, and affordable.
Recognising that such a positive future threatens the oil and gas industry and its dependent sectors, Professor Black and the team ran an action workshop examining how to increase our understanding of ‘deliberate dampening effects’ - into the tipping points framework and how to recognise and counter the actions and strategies used by fossil fuel companies and their proxies to create negative feedback loops and slow down transitions. The workshop drew on lessons from Professor Hastings’ four-decade career in tobacco control and public health advocacy, much of which was conducted while leading the Centre for Social Marketing in the Department of Marketing during the 1980s and 1990s.
After hearing Professor Hastings describe how climate campaigners and academics must sometimes approach their work as if they are in a “pub fight—Motherwell rules” (a line from The Thick of It), participants worked with Anna Wilson to explore the tactics and messages used by the fossil fuel industry and their proxies. They identified tactics such as co-opting the language of the Just Transition, inserting themselves into conferences and initiatives to slow their progress and messages such as “it’s too late to act,” “it’s too costly,” or “net zero drives up prices during a cost-of-living crisis.” The audience of academics and third sector actors then worked with Stewart Kirkpatrick to develop understanding of message framing and how to conduct campaigns against powerful well-funded opponents, over time. The final exercise focussed on developing counter-messages and counter tactics to those used by the oil and gas industry.
The workshop and its activities will be further developed and will form part of the Positive Tipping Points Toolkit, to be launched in September. Related work from Professor Black will also feature in the updated Global Tipping Points Report, to be launched at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, at the end of 2025.
Economic Futures continues to grow
Economic Futures is a programme of work, hosted by the Fraser of Allander Institute, that seeks to boost the applied capacity and diversity of the economics profession in Scotland.
Our main aim is to provide opportunities to students studying economics and related degrees across Scotland to gain real world experience as an applied economist.
This year we have seven placement students working at organisations across Scotland including the Competition and Markets Authority, Scottish Fiscal Commission, Scottish Parliament Information Centre and The Fraser of Allander Institute.
Our students include: Lise Oakley, Fraser of Allander Institute; Minhaal Khalid, Fraser of Allander Institute; James Dunlop, Fraser of Allander Institute; Megan Howes, Fraser of Allander Institute; Alasdair Campbell, Scottish Fiscal Commission; Sarith Fernando, SPICe; and Patricia Solans Prestamo, CMA.
The FAI looks forward to supporting these students with the rest of their placement.
If you would like to find out more about Economic Futures, including opportunities to get involved, email economicfutures@strath.ac.uk