Julie Clare Roberts

Julie is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Management and HRM, Glasgow School for Business and Society at Glasgow Caledonian University. She is Programme Leader for the Business Management degree (year 3&4). Her teaching currently relates to the management of innovation & creativity and operations management. Julie’s PhD is in the area of Open Innovation. In addition, she has a multidisciplinary background with an MSc in Technology Management from University of Manchester and a BSc (Hons) Medical Biochemistry from University of Glasgow. Before joining GCU in August 2013 she has worked as a Knowledge Transfer Officer, supporting University research and commercial activities. Julie brings industry experience to her role having undertaken a project management position in medical diagnostic company Randox Laboratories in Northern Ireland, where she worked for five years before joining the Higher Education sector in 2006.

Julie has conducted a number of research projects related to student experience including; assessing students functional writing skills (Caledonian Scholar), use of exam exemplars for direct entry students, use of technology to support developing a social network during induction and recently a 2020 student experience scholarship on the link between student attendance and achievement. Julie is also a Postgraduate Research Tutor (PGRT) for the department, as well as being responsible for supervision of a number of doctoral research students in inter-disciplinary areas. To date; she has supervised 6 doctoral students to completion of their doctoral studies (4 PhD, 2 DBA) in the areas of; Entrepreneurial Education in Iran, Converged Service Models within UK Higher Education, Asset Based Community Development and Economic Democracy, Breast Cancer & Exercise, Open Models of Social Innovation and Social Influence & Employee Participation with Enterprise Social Media.

Julie is currently supervising another 6 students in areas of; empowerment of female entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial networks and access to finance, learning development and artificial intelligence, creativity and resilience, management practice and errors in sonography and wearable technologies.

Julie is primarily a qualitative researcher and works across interdisciplinary areas in business management as well as health and life sciences to investigate societal issues – Julie sees herself as a flexible researcher engaging in multiple disciplines. She collaborates across schools within her own institution, currently engaging in research related to understanding creativity in pre-school children, related to developing resilient citizens of the future. She is also leading an international collaboration between GCU, Birmingham City University and The Institute for Technical Logistics in Hamburg on the impact of Brexit on European Supply Chains.
Julie engages in research related to social innovation, working with 3 colleagues in GSBS to understand failure in rural social enterprises. She has engaged in research via a Research and Knowledge Exchange (RAKE) ESRC sponsored grant awarded by the Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ISBE) entitled Putting Value on Innovation through an Asset Based Community Approach: Action Research on the Grow Trust. Her innovation voucher with Neilston Community Development Trust investigated an Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) approach to supporting communities.

In her teaching, Julie is keen to enable her research to impact her teaching and support students to gain real world experience, in line with the universities goal of imbedding the principles of responsible management education (PRME) across her teaching. She is currently leading a 2020 Student Experience Scholarship project investigating the impact of student attendance on their academic performance, to understand if our current delivery models support today’s student needs. She has engaged in 3 Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) projects with collaborations between GCU students and students in Kansai, Japan and New York, USA related to innovation and international trade.

In the creative sector Julie has been involved in collaborative research across 7 international partner organisation on the Interreg European funded project, 4HCREAT, led by GCU to investigate a quadruple helix approach to stimulate innovation in Cultural & Creative SMEs in the Atlantic areas, with a focus on developing innovative solutions for Generation Z.

Julie has recently led on a Knowledge Transfer Partnership project with a company exploring the transformation of a company’s business model and leading on a Management practice innovation voucher on reimagining library service provision.