Sabrina Thornton

Dr Sabrina Thornton is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the Sheffield University Management School, serving as the current MBA Programme Director. Previously, she held roles as Senior Lecturer and MBA Director at Huddersfield Business School. Her academic journey follows an eight-year industry career in a global marketing consultancy.

Her research focuses on interdisciplinary areas spanning marketing, strategy, and innovation, with two core strands: strategic business networks and innovation, and methodological applications of qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). Key interests include inter-organisational relationships, business-to-business (B2B) analytics, and innovation in network contexts. She has published in leading journals such as Journal of Product Innovation Management and Industrial Marketing Management.

Teaching activities include leading the MGT6228: Marketing Consultancy Challenge module, emphasizing strategic marketing, research methods, and sustainability. Her pedagogical approach integrates industry insights and contemporary global challenges to foster student development. She actively engages in editorial roles for Industrial Marketing Management and serves on the Behavioural Research for Inclusivity, Sustainability and Technological Transformation (BRISTT) research group.

Her professional activities include grant leadership, such as the British Academy/Leverhulme-funded project investigating innovation success through network-oriented behaviors. PhD supervision focuses on business relationships, organizational networking, and methodological applications of QCA, social network analysis, and statistical modeling.

Dr Thornton holds a PhD in Business and Management from Manchester Business School, alongside advanced degrees in marketing and management from institutions in Taiwan, including a MSc in Fashion Marketing and BA in Marketing and Distribution Management.