Formal and Informal Leadership: The Importance of Leading Other

We are pleased to invite you to join the next seminar in the Research Leadership Development Consortium online series.

These seminars are aimed at experienced academics who are currently leading, or aspiring to lead, research projects, teams or departments.

This session will focus on an important element of research leadership, the need to provide formal and informal leadership aimed at developing the people and infrastructure necessary for research to thrive.  We have three great speakers who have had successful careers as research leaders, which have included a commitment to supporting the careers of others. The focus here will be on developing researchers through funded research and consultancy, leading through learned societies, and contributions to national and international research infrastructures. Our three speakers, Prof. Anne Green, Prof. Steve Johnson and Prof. Anne Marie Doherty will share their experiences. We will then break into discussion groups focused on following up on their presentations to consider how we can incorporate into our own research leadership careers. An important element of this session is how to advance individual research careers while building broader support for others.

Schedule: 

10-10.05: Introduction to session (Finola Kerrigan)

10.05-10.15: Anne Green

10.15-10.25: Steve Johnson

10.25-10.35: Anne Marie Doherty

10.35-11.00: Group break-out discussions

11.00-11.30: All group feedback and actions

Speaker bios:

Anne Green is Professor of Regional Economic Development and Co-Director at the City-Region Economic Development Institute (City-REDI) at the University of Birmingham. She has a background of working in multi-disciplinary research centres in universities. She has worked at the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS) at Newcastle University and managed the Wales and South West Regional Research Laboratory when at Cardiff University. She spent much of her career at the Institute for Employment Research at the University of Warwick. She has substantial experience of leading and working on projects on regional economic development, employment and skills issues and has worked with many UK Government Departments and has acted in an advisory capacity to the OECD and European Commission, as well as on Research Council/ Foundation projects. She is a mixed methods researcher with degrees in geography and a strong record of raising funds for impactful policy-relevant applied research and stakeholder engagement.

Steve Johnson is Emeritus Professor of Enterprise at Sheffield Business School, Sheffield Hallam University. He has research interests in the policy impact of entrepreneurship research, the career paths of business school researchers and the role of responsible research assessment in promoting research that has genuine societal impact. Steve has previously held research leadership positions at the University of Hull, Leeds Beckett University and Leeds Trinity University and he spent some time as research director of a small economic and policy consultancy. 

Steve has undertaken applied research and evaluation projects for several UK Government departments and agencies, the Economic and Social Research Council, several charitable organisations and international bodies such as the European Union and OECD. He has been visiting lecturer and researcher at several universities in Poland, including a Marie Curie Skłodowska fellowship at the University of Łódź. His most recent publications focus on decent work in SMEs, responsible research assessment, the role of ‘pracademics’ and the impact of business school research on policy and practice. Steve is a board member of the Institute of Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

Anne Marie Doherty is Professor of Marketing and Director of REF at Strathclyde Business School. She has thirty years’ experience at a range of UK HEIs, holding multiple research leadership roles within her own institutions, as well as nationally and internationally. Professor Doherty was Head of Department of Marketing at Strathclyde from 2014-2020. She is a full panel member for REF2029 C17 Business and Management Studies. She also served as a full panel member for REF2021. She was a member of REF2029 PCE Pilot Panel for Business and Management Studies and is a member of the Business and Economics Panel for the Hong Kong Research Assessment Exercise 2026. She is currently Vice-President of the Academy of Marketing and immediate past Chair of the Academy, having served a 7-year term that resulted in significant transformational change. In 2024 she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award and Fellowship in recognition of extraordinary and distinguished services to the Academy.