Bob Doherty

Bob Doherty is Dean and Professor of Marketing in the School for Business and Society, University of York and principal investigator on a large 5-year interdisciplinary research programme on transformations to regenerative food systems ‘FixOurFood’, funded by the Transforming UK Food Systems Programme (UKRI).

Bob received his PhD titled ‘Resource Advantage Theory in Fair Trade Social Enterprises’ from Liverpool John Moores University. Bob spent six and a half years at Liverpool Business School (Liverpool John Moores University) as Senior Lecturer in Social Enterprise and Corporate Responsibility, where he led the Social Enterprise Research Group and associated postgraduate programmes. From 2010-2012 Bob was Head of the Business School at Liverpool Hope University.

Bob specialises in research on hybrid organisations namely the marketing and management aspects of fair trade organisations and social enterprises. Recently his research interests have developed to look at resilience in food systems. Bob is a member of the organising committees for both the International Social Innovation Research Conference (ISIRC) and the International Fair trade Symposium (FTIS) and has chaired and hosted both these conferences in recent times. Bob is also founding and emeritus editor of the Emerald publishers Social Enterprise Journal. Bob is also a regular reviewer for the Journal of Business Ethics, International Journal of Management Reviews and Organization Studies. Prior to moving into academia Bob spent nearly five years as Head of Sales and Marketing at the Fairtrade social enterprise, Divine Chocolate Ltd.

Bob was also seconded into the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) between April 2019-March 2022. He was appointed to the Systems Research Programme in the Chief Scientists Office to work on food systems policy making and evidence building. He has provided oral and written evidence to a range of UK Government select committees, government reports and policy documents on food, the environment and trade.