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Sarah Ansari

Professor of History

Expertise: Population displacement and refugee crisis; migration more broadly.

I am strongly committed to raising awareness and action regarding the complex historical issues involved in population displacement, both past and contemporary. Much of my recent research has focused on the largest population upheaval of the twentieth century, namely that associated with the partitioning of British India that took place alongside independence from colonial rule in 1947, and particularly on the long-term impact on the lives of the millions of people who were displaced, and the diaspora communities that it also helped to produce.

In this connection, I have worked with the Partition Heritage Project and the Partition Education Group to encourage greater exploration of Partition in UK schools as well as to encourage awareness of Partition’s legacies among the UK public more generally.

My latest book (co-written with fellow historian William Gould) Boundaries of Belonging: Localities, Citizenship and Rights in India and Pakistan (CUP, 2019) highlighted the common experiences that took place on both sides of the new borders that divided South Asians after 1947.

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Yiannis Anagnostopoulos

Senior Lecturer in Financial Management

Themes: Thriving communities

Expertise: Financial regulation, agency theory and agency relationships in financial markets, democratisation in finance

I am intrigued by the democratisation in finance movement aiming to recalibrate the ways of how businesses are motivated and organised, as well as revamping the old ways of thinking about market forces. My latest research deals with the emerging philosophy in the new financial ecosystem that Banking as a Service (BaaS) today is seen as ‘doing business to do good’ and supports how people do life.

I collaborate with a variety of stakeholders and emerging financial technology businesses embraced by consumers, competitors and incumbents where the barriers around financial services companies are collapsing, where new providers enter and alternative types of financial services are provided in society to reach an ever growing clientele. My research also partially addresses financial inclusivity as modern financial services are becoming more customer centric, but they strain to attend to the needs of particular customer segments such as people with no access to financial services (i.e. bank accounts) or in developing economies.

Rebecca Bolt

Lecturer in Financial Accounting

Themes: Thriving communities

Expertise: Stakeholder inclusivity and engagement, sustainability and social and environmental accounting and reporting

I am interested in how organisations engage with their stakeholders on their social and environmental activities and impacts, and the implications of engagement for stakeholder (dis)empowerment. My recent work explores materiality processes as spaces of engagement and the potential for alternative, emancipatory approaches to stakeholder inclusivity within social and environmental accounting and reporting contexts.

I am also interested in the roles storytelling and other creative mechanisms may have in making and giving sense to complex concepts within these contexts. I welcome the opportunity to work with organisations and also and NGOs and grassroots community groups who would like to develop or explore creative approaches towards inclusive stakeholder engagement practices.

Alan Bradshaw

Professor of Marketing

Themes: Thriving communities, Greener futures

Expertise: Marketing, consumer research

My research problematises basic assumptions regarding consumer attitudes towards climate change and I do not take it for granted that people really do want to save the world. Rather, engaging with the field of pscyhoanalysis and reviewing end-of-the-world-as-spectacle artefacts, like Hollywood movies, a more complex and troubling analysis is possible.

I ask: what if the contradictory and partial solutions to climate change correspond with a general ambivalence in our psyche that explains other modes of self-destruction and self-abuse. These murky parts of consumer desire that relate to disaster was further explored in my recent co-edited book The Dictionary of Coronavirus Culture. I have published these ideas in academic journals and media outlets, such as The Guardian.

Paul Caussat

Lecturer in International Business

Themes: Thriving communities

Expertise: International business, multinational enterprises, diversity in organisations, historical research methods

My research aims to explore how multinational enterprises interact with local communities by creating norms and practices (in the areas of employment, diversity/equality or sustainability) that they diffuse across borders (especially in the Global South). My work leads me to engage with subsidiary managers and employees, but I also aspire to develop connections with local community organisations, such as trade unions, non-governmental organisations and training/educational institutions.

Paris Chronakis

Lecturer in Modern Greek History

Themes: Thriving communities, Sustainability and creativity

Expertise: Urban history, history and memory of interreligious coexistence and conflict, displacement and resettlement

I am intrigued by the close relationship between history, memory, and community in multiethnic urban environments. My own research focuses on cultures of coexistence in the past and the deleterious effects of divided memories in the present and seeks to help strained urban communities thrive by building a sustainable future on a resilient memory.

My experience includes serving as a specialist speechwriter to the mayor of Thessaloniki, Greece, and working with heritage, educational, and civil society stakeholders to advance intercultural understanding. My work-in-progress recovers the adaptability of multiethnic urban elites in the post-imperial Eastern Mediterranean of the early twentieth century.

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Jennifer Cole

Lecturer in Global and Planetary Health

Themes: Reducing health inequalities, Greener futures, Thriving communities

Expertise: Biological anthropology, planetary health, critical health geopolitics, global health

My work is highly interdisciplinary across the fields of human, global, planetary, eco and one health, focusing how environments impact on human health across the lifecourse. (Un)health environments can be natural environments, urban environments, political ecologies or historical legacies of colonialism, repression or conflict.

My experience includes over a decade working at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, a policy think tank, and as Public Health Advisor to the Rockefeller Economic Council on Planetary Health at the Oxford Martin School, Oxford University. I am a member of the Planetary Health Alliance and a World Health Organization accredited Infodemic Manager.

José-Rodrigo Córdoba-Pachón

Senior Lecturer in Business Information Systems

Themes: Thriving communities, Greener futures

Expertise: Creativity, systems thinking, food waste

I am interested in studying complex situations arising in the intersection of sustainability and digital innovation. I am passionate about the use of creativity and systems thinking ideas or methods to intervene and collaborate with other professionals in such situations.

Currently I am working with academics and practitioners to generate a blue print to help university campuses promote circular economy ideas in their accommodation and catering services.

Dr Ruth Cruickshank

Humanities Representative, Living Sustainably Catalyst

Themes: Thriving communities, Reducing health inequalities, Greener futures, Sustainability and creativity

Expertise: ‘Leftover’ meanings in food; global production and consumption of food; eating disorders (notably the discourses around OSFED, the most prevalent yet least known eating disorder)

I am passionate about revealing the unthought-of constructs of power; effects of trauma and exploitation; and critical potential bound up with representations of food, drink and their production and consumption. My work is at thenexus of literary and cultural criticism and comparative, food studies and the medical humanities, examining discourses and literary, philosophical and visual texts.

My latest book is Leftovers: Eating, Drinking and Rethinking with Case Studies from Post-war French Fiction and I am currently working on the politics of not knowing and of representation of eating disorders, and supervising PhD projects on interrogating representation of meat substitutes and diasporic Desi foodways.

I also publish on documentary aesthetics and postcolonial global food chains; intertextual geopolitics and gastrodiplomacy; understanding of alterity revealed by comparing structuralist and poststructuralist thought involving food; relationships between globalisation, cultural capital and symbolic violence; and questions of recycling and cultural production.

I am a founder member of The Food Group at RHUL, co-organising events raising awareness of the intersection of sustainability and culture, Inedible, Unpalatable and Indigestible and Food and Drink on the Brink.

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Amany Elbanna

Reader in Information Systems, School of Business and Management

Themes: Thriving communities, Greener futures

Expertise: Sustainable digital transformation, new ways of working, sustainable working and living with emerging technologies

I am passionate about digital transformation that works for organisations, people and society. My work focuses on real-world issues, challenges and problems and current technologies. It is appreciative thriving to discover how digital transformation can be part of the solution, what works in what context and for whom. It finds evidence and insights to help shape local solutions that tackle challenges and improve outcomes for organisations, people and society.

My business experience includes serving as a consultant to business. My forthcoming book, Digital Transformation: Theories, Practices and Challenges (Sage, 2023), addresses success in achieving sustainable digital transformation.