PhD Entrepreneurship

Our Integrated PhD Entrepreneurship provides a route to doctoral study if you do not have a Masters degree, or have little to no research training. It enables you to spend your first year completing a full-time Masters-level qualification, which will equip you with the business knowledge and research skills needed to begin PhD study the following year. Your PhD will then be studied full time, over the next three years. You can choose to follow a traditional thesis approach, where you write a dissertation, or follow a 'three paper' thesis, where you produce three research articles, framed by an introduction and conclusion. Your supervisors support you to submit these papers to conferences and for publication in international journals, so you can begin to build you research portfolio well before graduation. This PhD will give you the opportunity to engage with debates surrounding entrepreneurship, such as knowledge production, organisational development and innovation in the new economy. Our PhD candidates explore issues such as: entrepreneurial disengagement co-creation in social entrepreneurship cognitive entrepreneurship and over-optimism Our Strategy, Operations and Entrepreneurship Group, based at our Southend Campus, are a group of international researchers with an entrepreneurial focus. The group organises regular research seminars, giving you the chance to hear cutting-edge research and network with scholars from the School and the wider academic community. Their research is multi-disciplinary and falls within two broad and interrelated streams – management science and entrepreneurship and SME management. Current research projects include exploring “Autism and the world of work” – looking at the challenges faced by individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder in the workplace and how they can be offered better support and understanding; and “Accelerating women's enterprise” – research in partnership with the Accelerating-womens Enterprise (AWE) project exploring the challenges and barriers faced by disadvantaged women entrepreneurs. You study at Essex Business School (EBS), the largest department at the University of Essex, at our Southend Campus. We are a business school with an international outlook. Our doctoral students join us from all over the world and we are committed to the UN Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME). We encourage you to develop connections with practitioners and policy makers and draw on these insights to develop new approaches to the study of entrepreneurship and innovation. We also offer you opportunities to work alongside social enterprises to inform your doctoral research. If you already have a Masters degree or previous relevant research training, we also offer a PhD Entrepreneurship that you can study on a full-time or part-time basis.