Sara Ekberg

Dr. Sara Ekberg is a Lecturer in Entrepreneurship at Griffith University's Department of Management (Business School). She holds dual PhDs in Business Administration (Jönköping International Business School, Sweden) and Communication, Media and Journalism (Queensland University of Technology, Australia). Her research focuses on organizational adaptation to challenges, entrepreneurial ecosystems, and innovation in crisis contexts. She received the Oskar Sillén Award (2017) for her doctoral work on digitization's impact on newspaper organizations.

• Education:
  • PhD Business Administration (Jönköping University, 2017)
  • PhD Communication, Media and Journalism (Queensland University of Technology, 2018)

Her research interests include entrepreneurship training for university staff, pandemic-driven business model innovation in hospitality, and leadership approaches to employee wellbeing. She supervises doctoral candidates exploring topics like rural migration drivers, cross-cultural mental health in entrepreneurship, and post-COVID work-life balance.

Recent work highlights include studies on institutional voids in emerging markets (2024), pandemic-era hospitality innovation (2022), and STEAM educators' adoption of enterprise pedagogies (2022). She leads funded projects such as the Clinical Entrepreneurship Change Agents Program (2022–2025) and the Australia-Japan Foundation's Making the Future Change Agents program (2021–2022).

• Awards:
  • Oskar Sillén Award (2017)

Dr. Ekberg actively supervises six doctoral candidates and has led over $400,000 in externally funded research. She collaborates with industry partners to develop entrepreneurial training programs for SMEs and educators.