Deborah Knowles

Deborah Knowles serves as Assistant Head of the School of Organisations, Economy and Society within Westminster Business School at the University of Westminster. Her multifaceted roles include Course Leader for the BA (Hons) International Business degree, Module Leader for three undergraduate modules across all levels, and Module Leader for the postgraduate "Managers and Organisations" module in the MA Management program. She also supervises MA and PhD theses while actively conducting research.

Her educational background includes a PhD (2000) and MA (1993) from Anglia Ruskin University, PGCE (1980) from Leeds University, and BA (1978) from Leeds Polytechnic. As a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, she demonstrates commitment to pedagogical excellence.

Knowles' research centers on gender in organisations, women's entrepreneurship, and qualitative research methods, with groundbreaking work establishing psychogeography as a legitimate business research methodology since 2008. Her current Strategic Research Fund project "Interpreting the silence of Women: Gender and the Publication of Letters to the Financial Times" examines gendered voice in media.

• Gender representation in business ownership narratives
• Feminist applications of psychogeography
• Qualitative methodological innovation
• Women's entrepreneurial success metrics
• Media voice disparity analysis
• Urban space in organisational studies

Her publication trends reveal consistent exploration of gender dynamics through innovative qualitative lenses, particularly psychogeography and literary analysis. Recent work integrates fictional narratives (Joyce's Ulysses) and historical parallels (Defoe's Plague Year) into organisational studies, demonstrating interdisciplinary creativity.

Awarded Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Knowles maintains active research funding through university strategic grants. Her current project on Financial Times letters exemplifies ongoing institutional support for gender-focused research.

As a thesis supervisor for MA and PhD students including Vasilii Penny (completed doctoral research on innovation in shared leadership teams), she contributes to academic development. Her teaching spans undergraduate modules "Introduction to Management," "Organisational Behaviour," and "International Business Dissertation," plus postgraduate "Managers and Organisations" instruction.

Knowles collaborates within the Entrepreneurship Research Group and Centre for Employment Research, where her psychogeographical approach informs collective methodologies. Current projects exploring media representation and crisis response demonstrate the group's interdisciplinary reach.