Alison Hirst

Dr. Alison Hirst is a qualitative researcher at Anglia Ruskin University, affiliated with the School of Management within the Faculty of Business and Law. She teaches and supervises research on organization studies, with a focus on spatiality, materiality, and gender dynamics in workplaces.

• PhD in Business and Management (University of Nottingham, 2011)
• MPhil in Critical Management (Lancaster University Management School, 2003)

Her research explores how organizational spaces shape identity and agency, emphasizing gender and materiality. She employs ethnographic, interview-based, and visual methodologies. Recent work examines the interplay between spatial design and corporate philanthropy. Publications highlight the unintended consequences of flexible workspaces and spatial power structures in edgelands.

Alison has secured grants including an ESRC +3 doctoral grant (£36,300, 2006–2009) and a co-investigator role in Peterborough’s £3M Future Cities project (2015–2016). She serves on the Editorial Board of Organisational Studies and is a member of the British Academy of Management.

Her teaching spans undergraduate and postgraduate organizational behavior, with a focus on research methods for dissertations and doctoral studies. She supervises PhD projects on stigmatized places and workplace influence on corporate philanthropy. Media coverage of her work includes national radio interviews on gender and open office spaces.