Research Overview

Sophie is an Associate Professor in Entrepreneurship at the Department of Entrepreneurship and Strategy. She holds a BSc (Hons) in psychology and an MSc in Management from Lancaster University. Sophie earned her PhD in Management Studies, entitled ‘Women’s Entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia - Bargaining with a Patriarchal Society’ from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, United Kingdom, in 2013. In 2014 she took up a postdoctoral fellowship at the Centre for Entrepreneurship at Stockholm Business School in Sweden, before commencing her lectureship at Lancaster University in 2016.

Sophie has a keen interest in transnational feminist perspectives, methodology and the ethics and politics of knowledge-making in the social sciences. Her research focuses on the intersectionality of gender, entrepreneurship, empowerment and poverty alleviation, and their collective impact as a catalyst for socio-political change and sustainable development in a global context. Within this research area, Sophie has worked on women’s entrepreneurship as empowerment and emancipation in the contexts of Saudi Arabia and Sweden. She is currently focusing on Syrian women refugees’ cultural heritage entrepreneurship through craftwork as a means of economic survival and cultural revival in the contexts of Jordan, the Zaatari Refugee Camp and the UK.

Sophie has achieved numerous small and large grants, and worked on cross-disciplinary projects, including on the European Commission’s H2020 SIMRA project (2016-2020) with over 20 project partners from Europe, the Middle East and North African region. Her research on SIMRA focused on investigating social innovation as a means of poverty alleviation for socially disadvantaged women in rural areas of North West England. She is currently a co/investigator on the European Commission’s H2020 TARGETED-MPI project (2020-2024), focusing on researching gender equality in higher education institutions and research organisations to implement Gender Equality Plans in business schools across the UK, Greece, Sweden, Belgium and Lebanon.

Sophie has a passion for teaching courses on gender, work and organisation, and on research philosophies and method to undergraduate, postgraduate and MBA students. She is currently the course convenor for Gender and Entrepreneurship in a Global Context and Entrepreneurial Mindset. Subsequently, she has won two awards: The British Academy of Management’s Management Education Practice Award (2019) for ‘Recognising the Excellence and Innovation in Teaching and Education Pedagogy and Practice’, and the Lancaster University Management School Dean’s Award (2019) for mainstreaming gender and diversity in LUMS’ programme portfolio through challenging conventions, embracing different perspectives and critical thinking across LUMS’ teaching, research and knowledge exchange community.