Southampton Business School has a great heritage, but we are not complacent. We know that the key to our success and future is in our ability to attract, retain and develop talented individuals.
Here are some of our individual’s stories.
I’ve chosen to join Southampton Business School as I was attracted by the school’s focus to deepen understanding of management, entrepreneurship and innovation in the context of the creation of both economic and social value and the high-quality research that is taking place in these areas. I felt that I could find my intellectual home at Southampton and when I joined the school, this impression was instantly confirmed.
Settling in to SBS has been very smooth as I have amazing colleagues whom I can always reach out to for support, feedback and guidance. What I enjoy most about being part of the Business School is the friendly and international environment and the commitment to conduct impactful and leading research and teaching.
My work connects behavioural science with analytics: I employ experiments to understand lay and expert decision making under conditions of radical uncertainty; harvest this understanding to build models of how such decisions should be made; and test multiple models using machine learning methodologies. This approach is enjoying a rare success—our models are accurate and at the same time transparent.
SBS attracts many talented, enthusiastic and motivated students. My PhD students have secured fellowships from institutions such as UC Berkeley and Cornell, won Max Planck Society junior groups and entry professorships in universities such as TU Munich and the University of Southern Denmark (Danish Institute for Advanced Studies), and founded commercially successful start-ups such as Simply Rational (Berlin).
5 years ago, I joined SBS as I was impressed with the many opportunities it offered with pursuing world leading behavioural science. I’ve been able to participate in emerging initiatives across the whole faculty on experimental behavioural research and I feel very happy and well embedded in the research centres.
Joining Southampton Business School was very exciting for me because I always wanted to be part of an institution that promotes collegiality and all-round support for staff. I thought settling in as a new staff member was going to be daunting since most administrative staff were working from home due to covid-19 restrictions. However, my experience was the complete opposite. Every email sent was responded swiftly and where necessary, alternative suggestions were provided.
In less than three months of joining the SBS, I received support to complete a GRI sustainability reporting course and I passed successfully to become one of the few certified UK academics. In addition, I had the opportunity to work with senior colleagues on two internally funded impact projects which afford me the opportunity to grow as an early career researcher in initiating and disseminating high-impact research.
There are also a number of professional development workshops and other bespoke support for researchers including the grant writing courses that are extremely beneficial for my career development.
I was attracted to join SBS because of its reputation as an internationally recognised business school with leading scholars across a wide range of areas within business and management studies.
Working as the MBA Director is a fantastic role within SBS. First of all, I am very proud that our MBA students have a fantastic, exclusive learning space, the MBA Suite, within the Centenary Building. This is a place where not only formal learning in terms of lectures and group work take place, but our breakout areas also allow our students to work collaboratively on team projects and consultancy work. Secondly, I enjoy putting together and working with a truly world-class group of scholars and practitioners who teach on the MBA programme. Within this, I would say that our Leadership Development Programme (LDP) provides a fascinating opportunity for our students to learn from real-world practitioners from varied walks of life and are able to learn and enhance key soft business skills. Finally, our international industry immersion visits are not only rewarding for our students but no less importantly, are great fun. We travel to international locations, work with real-world businesses and at the end of a working day, have some food and a glass of wine together.
I joined Southampton Business School in Oct 2018 as an Associate Professor of Business Analytics and was promoted to full professor in March 2021. The main attraction for me to join Southampton Business School was the good research environment within the Centre for Operational Research, Management Sciences and Information Systems (CORMSIS) which has members from the Business School and School of Mathematical Sciences. I am glad that my expectation about the research environment is correct. Since I joined Southampton Business School, I have been supported by the school and department leadership as well as colleagues within the Business school and CORMSIS. This conducive research environment has enabled me to receive two EPSRC grants within less than a year of joining Southampton Business School. There are two things that I enjoy most from being part of the Business School. First, it is the collegiality of people within my department (Decision Analytics and Risk). Second, our contributions across research, teaching, enterprise and leadership are being valued equally. Hence, it allows people to excel in what they can do best for the school. Last but not least, Last but not least, I believe that those in leadership positions are people-oriented colleagues which has resulted in people-oriented strategies being implemented and planned for the near future. Hence, there is no better time to join Southampton Business School than now.
I have been working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Banking & Finance of Southampton Business School, University of Southampton (UK), since the 25th March 2020. Most recently, I got promoted to Lecturer-B level (with effect from 01 January 2022).
I applied to Southampton Business School, not only because it is one of the leading Russell Group institutions, but also because of my post-PhD interdisciplinary research focus and teaching interests. Southampton Business School is one of the very few academic institutions in the UK & Europe, where faculty members are encouraged to place their feet onto interdisciplinary research and are provided with enough scope of incorporating their own research into teaching. Given the pool of extremely good domestic and international students (across UG, PGT and PGR levels) and the hunger for learning and gaining knowledge of these students, the lecturers are very welcome to venture into such research-led teaching.
However, the most pleasing aspect of SBS is the fact that the Departmental Heads, the Deans, and the Head of School are extremely kind, supportive, and compassionate towards the early career academic professionals. Such a supportive environment immensely motivates an ECA like me to grow (in terms of career progression). For instance, the Business School, in recognition of my academic achievements, had promoted me recently to Lecturer-B on the ERE pathways. The collegiality within the Business School is also extremely good! I am quite pleased to confess that this is the best academic institution I have been affiliated with so far in the five years of my post-PhD academic career.
My name is Reiner Schaefer and this Fall my wife, my two kids and I moved from Calgary (Canada) to Southampton so that I could join Southampton Business School’s department of Strategy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. What primarily attracted me to SBS was the research being conducted and its location. I was particularly impressed with how much interest there was in using business and entrepreneurship to bring about positive social change, and thought that this is something that I would like to contribute to. I also believe that UK and the city of Southampton has a lot to offer myself and my family: it’s English-speaking, has good employment opportunities for my wife, and has excellent medical services (including a children’s hospital) for my family members with complex health problems.
Admittedly, I am still very much in the process of getting settled at SBS, while at the same time helping my family adapt to a new country. Overall, we are happy with how things have thus far unfolded. The members of my department seem like a really good group of people and I have been enjoying learning how universities (and business schools) do things differently than they do in North America. My kids like their school and my wife has already been offered a good job.
The reason that I came to the city of Southampton was, of course, the Southampton Business School, which is a leading Business School, providing all the resources for a successful academic career.
Regarding my relocation to Southampton, it was not an easy process as I expected, due to the high demand for flats and houses, but this phenomenon is completely justified because Southampton is one of the best places to live and work.
Being a member of the Southampton Business School is an enjoyable journey because it provides everything that an academic looks for. Particularly, there is an effective structure and planning in all processes, supporting all the employees in their duties. It provides all the resources (e.g., hardware, databases, facilities, etc.) that are needed for research and teaching excellence. Additionally, the University of Southampton is a multicultural University that fosters creativity and innovation.
I had the privilege of joining Southampton Business School in 2018 as a lecturer in Finance, and in three years have progressed to Associate Professor. I believe SBS is unique in its diversity as there are colleagues from all over the world and even though we are all very different, we work together as a team to support and help each other to grow. Southampton Business School is situated in a nice location, and I really feel like my colleagues are my family who are always ready to help. Our collegiality, mutual respect and support for one another creates a unique environment to work in, which is ideal for researchers. I feel privileged to teach students from across the globe at a Russell Group University.