Liz is a Senior Lecturer in HRM at the University of Huddersfield. She is a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD. Liz has considerable experience of working in HR, in both Senior HR Business Partner generalist roles and also Learning & Development policy roles, having worked for 17 years in the Retail Industry. Since moving into Academia in 2014, she is currently undertaking doctoral research at the University of Bradford School of Management exploring the role of emotions in the work of HR practitioners.
I am Professor of Retail Studies at the University of Stirling. I was a geography undergraduate at the University of Cambridge, and completed my Ph.D (on retail employment) at the University of Wales. I have been professor of retail studies at Stirling since 1992. I was a Visiting Professor at Florida State University, Tallahassee from July 2000 to July 2001, and Visiting Professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville from June to December 2006. I undertake research into aspects of retailing, mainly for personal curiosity, but also on behalf of public and private clients and for the research councils and other funding bodies, as well as for major retailers. I have authored and edited a number of books, have published over 125 refereed journal articles as well as many practitioner, trade and newspaper pieces. In 2012-2013 I was a member of the External Advisory Group for the Scottish Government’s National Review of Town Centres and also on the Expert Advisory Group reporting to the Scottish Government on the lessons to be learned from the horsemeat scandal. I am currently Chair of the Scotland’s Towns Partnership and Chair of IDS Scotland Ltd, the company set up by the Scottish Government to oversee Scottish Business Improvement Districts. I run a blog on things retail, typically Scottish: www.stirlingretail.com
Professor Liam Kennedy is Director of the Clinton Institute for American Studies at University College Dublin. He has diverse research interests and teaching experiences, spanning the fields of American cultural and media studies, globalisation and Irish-US relations. He is the author of Susan Sontag: Mind as Passion (1995) Race and Urban Space in American Culture (2000) and Afterimages: Photography and US Foreign Policy (2016). He is co-editor of Urban Space and Representation (1999) City Sites: An Electronic Book (2000), The Wire: Race, Class and Genre (2013) and The Violence of the Image (2014), and editor of Remaking Birmingham: The Visual Culture of Urban Regeneration (2004). Professor Kennedy's work is interdisciplinary, blending cultural and political modes of scholarly analysis, and represents American Studies as a valuable framework to study both American domestic and international affairs. He is currently researching a monograph on globalization and American culture, and preparing two edited books - on neoliberalism and American literature and on diaspora and diplomacy.
Leighton is Professor of Economics and Finance. He is Head of Economics Research and Director of the Betting Research Unit and Political Forecasting Unit at Nottingham Business School. Leighton's main teaching is in the area of money, risk, forecasting, efficiency of markets and financial economics.
Luke McNamara is a Professor in the Faculty of Law at UNSW. His primary research fields are criminal law and criminal justice, and human rights law. He is currently researching the impact of criminal law, policing and local government laws on the use of public spaces, focusing on the history and operation of laws concerned with offensive language/behaviour, public intoxication, consorting and busking. He recently completed (in collaboration with Professor Kath Gelber, School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland) an ARC Discovery Project funded study of the impact of hate speech laws on public discourse in Australia.
Dr. Lauren Graham is a development sociologist with a Doctorate in Sociology from UJ. Her research interests are in the application and testing of social and development theories in practice with a focus on youth, children and people with disabilities and their agency in assessing in impacting on human development outcomes. She has strong expertise in evaluation research and is skilled in the use of both quantitative and qualitative research approaches. She is particularly interested in the use of research methods that take account of the voices of vulnerable groups. Lauren manages a range of research initiatives related to youth including our flagship project- the Siyakha Youth Assets project – which seeks to develop knowledge and interventions to support young people to transition to employment. She also supervises posts graduate students and mentors younger researchers. Every time she has an article published Lauren has a moment of pride but she says ‘achieving my PhD and securing a Newton Advanced Fellowship earlier this year, are some of my proudest moments academically’.
