Stephen Dobson
- Position: Associate Professor in Creativity and Enterprise
- Areas of expertise: Trustee on the Board of the Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ISBE). Interested in creative enterprise, creative places, entrepreneurship, and cultural & creative industries.
- Email: S.Dobson1@leeds.ac.uk
- Phone: +44(0)113 343 2424
- Location: 1.13 School of Performance & Cultural Industries
- Website: Twitter | LinkedIn | Researchgate
Profile
Prior to joining the University of Leeds, I worked as a Senior Research Fellow at Coventry University’s International Centre for Transformational Entrepreneurship (ICTE) and for six years at Sheffield Business School - firstly as a Research Fellow and then as a Senior Lecturer. 2011-2015 I was the UK representative on the management committee of the European Academy of Management (EURAM). I was Programme Manager for the Africa Institute for Transformational Entrepreneurship (AITE) (Coventry University) and worked extensively with partners from Ghana, Nigeria, Sudan, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Kenya to deliver business incubation management and training as well as a ‘train the trainer’ programme for the British Council’s Entrepreneurial Africa initiative. Currently I work extensively in Vietnam and have delivered two Higher Education Parthership projects with Vietnamese university partners. I am the Book Reviews Editor for the International Journal for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (IJEI) and sit on numerous editorial boards including, International Journal for Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research (IJEBR) and Historic Environment: Policy and Practice. External examiner for the University of Ghana, and for the City University of Hong Kong.
Responsibilities
- Director for International Activities
Research interests
My research interests span a number of areas relating to cultural and creative industries and entrepreneurship including: entrepreneurial identity, the creative workplace and leadership for fostering innovation and creativity, critical management, cross-disciplinary creativity, and digital enterprise. At the wider scale I work through the lens of landscape, space/place/identity and entrepreneurial urbanism. This work focuses on the democratisation of space and the appropriation of degraded and abandoned spaces, fringe landscapes, and derelict space as opportunities for creativity, enterprise, and urban regeneration, creative clusters, and creative labs. In 2018 I co-edited a Special Issue of the International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation (IJEI) called ‘The Playway to the Entrepreneurial City', which explores themes such as the work/play dichotomy as well as urban space for informal events and performance and the reuse of public space for fostering creativity and business incubation.
My PhD in Urban Planning is from the Department of Landscape, School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield and I am interested in the linkages between urban space and the performativity of the city through cultural practices and that of urban policy/planning practices, to support entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystems. I am a member of the Centre for Cultural Policy (https://cultural-policy.leeds.ac.uk/).
<h4>Research projects</h4> <p>Any research projects I'm currently working on will be listed below. Our list of all <a href="https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/dir/research-projects">research projects</a> allows you to view and search the full list of projects in the faculty.</p>Qualifications
- BA (Hons)
- MSc
- PhD
- PGCERT in TLHE
Professional memberships
- Regional Studies Association
- Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship
Student education
Programme Leader for the MA Culture, Creativity and Entrepreneurship https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/courses/f018/culture,-creativity-and-entrepreneurship-ma
Programme Leader for the BA Theatre and Performance with Enterprise https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/courses/i264/theatre-and-performance-with-enterprise-ba
Module Leader for MA Creativity and Innovation Management
Module Leader for MA Enterprise and Consultancy Practice
Module Leader for BA Enterprise Project
Research groups and institutes
- Centre for Cultural Policy