Deborah Knowles is Assistant Head of the School of Organisations, Economy and Society within Westminster Business School. 

She divides her time among this position and her other roles of:

• Course Leader of the BA (Hons)  International Business degree
• Module Leader of three modules studied by students on the BA (Hons)  International Business degree (one at each level).
• Module Leader of the postgraduate module "Managers and  Organisations" studied by students on the MA Management degree.
• Supervisor of projects and theses at MA and PhD level. 
• Researcher

Education

PhD, 2000, Anglia Ruskin University 

MA, 1993, Anglia Ruskin University 

PGCE, 1980, Leeds University 

BA, 1978, Leeds Polytechnic

Professional memberships

Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy 

Deborah's main research interests lie in the areas of: gender in organisations, women's entrepreneurship, and qualitative research methods.

She was the first academic to show how psychogeography might be used as a qualitative data collection method in business and management research with a conference paper in 2008 and a journal article in 2009. 

Deborah is the Principal Investigator in a  current research project entitled, "Interpreting the silence of Women: Gender and the Publication of Letters to the Financial Times", which is funded by the university's Strategic Research Fund.  

Journal Articles

Phillips, M. and Knowles, D. (2012) ‘Performance and Performativity: Undoing Fictions of Women Business Owners’, Gender, Work and Organization, Vol. 19, No. 4, pp. 416-437.  

Knowles, D. (2009) ‘Claiming the Streets: Feminist Implications of Psychogeography as a Business Research Method’, Electronic Journal of Business Research Methods, Volume 7 Issue 1, pp. 47-54.

Knowles, D., Mughan, T and Lloyd-Reason, L. (2006) “Foreign Language Use among Decision-Makers of Successfully Internationalised SMEs: Questioning the Language-Training Paradigm”, Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, Vol. 13, No. 4, 620-641.

Selected Conference Papers

Ruth, D., Hindley, C. and Knowles, D. (2017) “A day in the life of ...:  Ulysses in Dublin”   , Paper presented at the European Group for Organizational Studies Conference, Copenhagen, July 2017. 

Ruth, D., Hindley, C. and Knowles, D. (2017) “The use of Fiction in Management Research: The Journey of Ulysses”, Paper presented at the16th European Conference on Research Methodology for Business and Management Studies, Dublin, June 2017.

Knowles, D., Snijders, S., Clarke, L., Michielsens, E. and Goodacre, H. (2017) "Manmade Media? The Muffled Voices of Women", Paper presented at the 10th Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Conference", Brunel University, London, June 2017. 

Knowles, D., Hindley, C. and  Ruth, D. (2016) “Psychogeography in a Time of Calamity – Deriving with Defoe”, Paper presented at 15th European Conference on Research Methodology for Business and Management Studies, Kingston on Thames, June 2016.

Hindley, C., Ruth, D, and Knowles, D.  (2015)“The Wonder of Wandering: Dérive as Open Space Learning”, Paper presented at the APROS EGOS Conference , University of Technology, Sydney, Australia, December 2015. 

Hindley, C., Ruth, D, and Knowles, D.  (2015) "Paths of Inquiry: Dérive and the Research Space as Sensuous Collage”, Paper presented at the APROS EGOS Conference , University of Technology, Sydney, Australia, December 2015. 

Hindley, C., Knowles, D. and Ruth, D.  (2015) “Psychogeography for Student Researchers: a case for the derive”, Paper presented at the 14th  European Conference on Research Methodology for Business and Management Studies, June 2015.

Knowles, D. (2012) "The Practice of a Psychogeographical Research Approach in studying Organizational Change", Paper presented at the 11th World Congress of the International Federation of Scholarly Associations of Management, Limerick, Ireland, June 2012.

 Knowles, D. (2011) ‘It’s Only Words: Content Analysis of Fraudulent “419” Emails’, Paper presented at the British Academy of Management Conference, Aston University, Birmingham, 13-15 Sept 2011.

Knowles, D. (2009) ‘Access all Areas? Insider Research Access for Part-Time Post-Graduate Students’, Paper presented at the British Academy of Management Conference, Brighton Centre, 15-17 Sept  2009.

Knowles, D. (2008) ‘The Strolling Study: Psychogeography for Organisational Researchers’, Paper presented at the   British Academy of Management Conference, Harrogate, September 2008.

For details of all my research outputs, visit my WestminsterResearch profile.