Shobana Nair PartingtonView profile
Associate Professor
Dr. Shobana Nair Partington serves as Head of the Department for Operations, Technology, Events, and Hospitality Management at Manchester Metropolitan University's triple-accredited Business School, leading a team of 60 academic staff serving over 2,000 students. With over 20 years of academic leadership experience, she also holds strategic university roles as Academic Co-Chair for the Race Equality Charter and Academic Co-Director for Accreditation. Her international teaching engagements span Switzerland, Bulgaria, and Malaysia, reflecting her global perspective on business education. Her educational foundation includes a Master's degree in Economics from the University of Leeds, funded by a Foreign and Commonwealth Office scholarship, and doctoral research at Manchester Metropolitan University supported by the Low Pay Commission. These qualifications underpin her evidence-based approach to labor market analysis. Shobana's research centers on systemic inequalities in hospitality employment, with particular focus on pay practices, working conditions, and minimum wage impacts. Her work bridges economic theory and practical industry applications, examining how structural factors shape employee experiences in service sectors. She integrates psychological safety frameworks with innovation studies to develop actionable insights for organizational change. Analysis of her publication trajectory reveals persistent themes in hospitality labor economics, with evolving emphasis from foundational minimum wage studies toward contemporary investigations of psychological safety and innovation. Her research consistently connects policy implications with operational realities in hotels, cruise ships, and tourism enterprises. Her scholarly contributions have been recognized through: Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy Fellowship of the Institute of Professional Development As an academic supervisor, she has guided six PhD candidates to completion on topics ranging from hotel information systems to tourist transport experiences. Her department drives innovation through the Digital & Technology Solutions degree apprenticeship and applied research initiatives that help businesses adapt to technological disruption. She actively serves on the Chartered Association of Business Schools' Learning, Teaching and Student Experience Committee and as a Senator for the Institute of Professional Development. The department operates as a dynamic hub for industry-engaged scholarship, with faculty from diverse nationalities developing curricula that integrate digital fluency, data analytics, and creative problem-solving. Their research directly informs sector practices while addressing critical challenges like student award gaps and workplace inclusion through the Race Equality Charter framework.









