Working Groups

Eric's research is cross-disciplinary in nature and sits at the intersection of strategic management, organisation theory and entrepreneurship. He is also Professor of Strategy at St Hugh’s College, University of Oxford.

Before joining Oxford, Eric was a visiting faculty at Stanford University and the Samuel and Pauline Glaubinger Chair of Entrepreneurship at Indiana University.

Eric's Strategic Management Journal article, 'Optimal Distinctiveness: Broadening the Interface Between Institutional Theory and strategic Management' and his solo-authored book, Optimal Distinctiveness: A New Agenda for the Study of Competitive Positioning of Organizations and Markets are widely regarded as foundational contributions to the burgeoning literature on optimal distinctiveness.

His second stream of research focuses on how societal-level institutions, such as patriarchy, racial and ethnic segregation, religious diversity, and social class, shape entrepreneurial actions and performance, with broader implications for organisations’ role in addressing grand social challenges.

Eric's research has been published in leading management and entrepreneurship journals and is widely cited. He won the Academy of Management Emerging Scholar Award in Entrepreneurship in 2019 and the Strategic Management Society Emerging Scholar Award in 2022, making him the first scholar who has been recognised by top early career awards in both strategy and entrepreneurship.Eric's research is cross-disciplinary in nature and sits at the intersection of strategic management, organisation theory and entrepreneurship. He is also Professor of Strategy at St Hugh’s College, University of Oxford.

Before joining Oxford, Eric was a visiting faculty at Stanford University and the Samuel and Pauline Glaubinger Chair of Entrepreneurship at Indiana University.

Eric's Strategic Management Journal article, 'Optimal Distinctiveness: Broadening the Interface Between Institutional Theory and strategic Management' and his solo-authored book, Optimal Distinctiveness: A New Agenda for the Study of Competitive Positioning of Organizations and Markets are widely regarded as foundational contributions to the burgeoning literature on optimal distinctiveness.

His second stream of research focuses on how societal-level institutions, such as patriarchy, racial and ethnic segregation, religious diversity, and social class, shape entrepreneurial actions and performance, with broader implications for organisations’ role in addressing grand social challenges.

Eric's research has been published in leading management and entrepreneurship journals and is widely cited. He won the Academy of Management Emerging Scholar Award in Entrepreneurship in 2019 and the Strategic Management Society Emerging Scholar Award in 2022, making him the first scholar who has been recognised by top early career awards in both strategy and entrepreneurship.

Professor Edgar Meyer joined the University of Birmingham in October 2023, following nearly two decades across various Schools in the UK.

Edgar has a broad range of interest, with much of his work in leadership and teamwork in health and social care settings.  More recently this has included work on leadership in hybrid teams.

He has researched and published also in the area of digital pedagogies, focusing on how pedagogical decisions are made for quality online learning design, and by whom.

I am head of the Department of Computer Science at UCL (since 2024). Previously, I was Director of the Centre for Medical Image Computing  2015-2024. I initiated the Microstructure Imaging Group and the Progression of Neurodegenerative Diseases initiative. I am theme lead for the UCLH Biomedical Research Centre Healthcare Engineering and Imaging theme. My core expertise is in computer science, computational modelling, computer vision, machine learning, and imaging science. My first degree was a BA in Mathematics from Oxford completing in 1993. I then studied for MSc and PhD in Computer Science at UCL, completing in 1997. After a post-doc at the University of Pennsylvania, I returned to UCL as a lecturer in 2000 and I have been Professor of Imaging Science since 2009.

Bige is an Associate Professor of Financial Economics at the Saïd Business School of the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Kellogg College at the University of Oxford.

She is a Research Affiliate in the Financial Economics programme of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). From 2017 to 2020, she was an Economic Advisor to the Financial Conduct Authority.    

She holds PhD in Economics from Yale University with specialisations in financial markets and econometrics. Econometrics is a sub-field of economics which uses big data, mathematics and statistical inference to quantify economic phenomena.  

Achilleas Boukis is an Associate Professor in Marketing at the University of Birmingham. Achilleas received his PhD from Strathclyde University (2014). His interests include branding, technology and employee-customer interactions in service industries like hospitality and sharing economy. Achilleas has published ‎his research in academic journals such as Journal of Business Research, Tourism Management, Psychology & Marketing and European Journal of Marketing.

Dr. Jiahua Xu is a Lecturer in Financial Computing at UCL, where she teaches Blockchain Technologies and Machine Learning in Finance. She is an award-winning researcher at the university's Centre for Blockchain Technologies, and serves as the Programme Director of the MSc Emerging Digital Technologies under the Computer Science Department. Dr. Xu teaches FinTech courses at various institutions, including EPFL, London Business School, EDHEC Business School, and Center for Latin American Monetary Studies. She visited and has ongoing research collaboration with Harvard Business School, Imperial College London, and Vienna University of Economics and Business. Her research interests lie primarily in blockchain economics, behavioural finance, and risk management. She has published academic papers in top tier conferences in computer science as well as renowned journals in economics and finance.

Seung Joo is an Associate Professor of Finance at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.

He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley, where he was a Regents’ fellow. Before then, he studied at Seoul National University in Korea, obtaining his BS in Physics and MA in Economics.

From June 2016 to May 2019, Seung Joo took a leave from his PhD programme to serve in Republic of Korea Army as first lieutenant.

Dr. Shuyang Li is an Associate Professor in Business Analytics at the University of Birmingham. Her research focuses on the socio-technical dimensions of emerging technologies, exploring how advanced data analytics and management information systems impact on organisational practices.

Tomaso Aste holds is a professor of complexity science at University College London (UCL), where he is also founder and Scientific Director of the Centre for Blockchain Technologies (UCL CBT), head of the Financial Computing and Analytics Group, and vice director of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Financial Computing & Analytics.

Shumiao Ouyang is an Associate Professor of Finance (without tenure) at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford and a Tutorial Fellow in Management at Wadham College.

Shumiao earned his Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University, an M.S. in Finance from Peking University, and a dual B.S. in Biology and B.A. in Economics from Tsinghua University.

Since 2018, he has been collaborating with prominent BigTech firms such as Ant Group and Alibaba, leveraging his expertise to further understand the evolving landscape of finance and technology.

Professor Karen Elliott is a socio-technologist and entrepreneur committed to ongoing research towards establishing an equitable digital society—sustainable and responsible outcomes for business, society, and the planet. Karen adopts an innovative approach in examining the wider academic and social impact of Digital Technologies, Sustainability, Online and Societal harms through the lens of Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR). CDR is a mechanism with a manifesto to assist leaders and managers think about their use of data and digital technologies within and by their organisation across the social, economic, and environmental domains. She is a HEA Fellow with a proven track record of obtaining and leading large scale UKRI funded multidisciplinary research projects (£7.5m) and associated academic publications, editorships and reviewing (inc.UKRI applications). Furthermore, supporting the reduction of the digital divide in the UK as an Ambassador for the Digital Poverty Alliance and as a member of the Prime Ministers Champions Group for Dementia.

Carolyn Phelan is an Associate Professor at UCL. Following a successful career in the mobile phone industry working as an engineer and manager, she returned to academia to explore a long-time interest in quantitative finance. Since completing her PhD in 2018 she has worked at UCL in the Financial Computing and Analytics group, teaching various modules linked to their Finance masters programmes. These include courses on financial institutions and markets, machine learning and financial engineering. In addition, she runs the summer project programme for these masters and, over the last 5 years, has matched over 500 students with industrial partners.