Julie Roberts PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in Innovation & Creativity and Operations Management in the Department of Management and HRM, Glasgow School for Business and Society, Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU). She has a BSc in Medical Biochemistry, an MSc in Technology Management, a PhD in Open Innovation and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).

Julie is primarily a qualitative researcher and works across interdisciplinary areas in business management as well as health and life sciences to investigate societal issues – Julie sees herself as a flexible researcher engaging in multiple disciplines. She collaborates across schools within her own institution, currently engaging in research related to understanding creativity in pre-school children, related to developing resilient citizens of the future. She is also leading an international collaboration between GCU, Birmingham City University and The Institute for Technical Logistics in Hamburg on the impact of Brexit on European Supply Chains.

Julie engages in research related to social innovation, working with 3 colleagues in GSBS to understand failure in rural social enterprises. She has engaged in research via a Research and Knowledge Exchange (RAKE) ESRC sponsored grant awarded by the Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ISBE) entitled Putting Value on Innovation through an Asset Based Community Approach: Action Research on the Grow Trust. Her innovation voucher with Neilston Community Development Trust investigated an Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) approach to supporting communities.

In her doctoral work, Julie investigated Open Innovation mechanisms in the Scotland’s Medical Technology sector and developed a Technology Valorisation framework to support businesses to be more systematic in engaging in open innovation and thus capturing more value from the process. 

Julie actively supervised doctoral students and has supervised 6 students to completion (4 PhD, 2 DBA) in the areas of; Entrepreneurial Education in Iran, Converged Service Models within UK Higher Education, Asset Based Community Development and Economic Democracy and Breast Cancer & Exercise, Open models of Social Innovation.

In her teaching, Julie is keen to enable her research to impact her teaching and support students to gain real world experience, in line with the universities goal of imbedding the principles of responsible management education (PRME) across her teaching. She led a 2020 Student Experience Scholarship project investigating the impact of student attendance on their academic performance, to understand if our current delivery models support today’s student needs. She has engaged in 3 Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) projects with collaborations between GCU students and students in Kansai, Japan and New York, USA related to innovation and international trade.  She is currently researching on critical incidents which impact on learning behaviour and is co-investigator on a Strategy for Learning Innovation fund project looking at learning during lockdown and post-lockdown. 

Julie’s has an industry background working in a Medical Diagnostic company in product development, technical support and project management for a number of years before joining the higher education sector as a Knowledge Transfer Officer. She is industry focused and actively engages in knowledge transfer via innovation vouchers. She was a Business Advisor on Open Innovator for the Cultural Enterprise Office for 4 years and has participated in their short life working group on Education for graduates in the creative sector.

In the creative sector Julie was involved involved in collaborative research across 7 international partner organisation on the Interreg European funded project, 4HCreat, led by GCU to investigate a quadruple helix approach to stimulate innovation in Cultural & Creative SMEs in the Atlantic areas, with a focus on developing innovative solutions for Generation Z.

Julie regularly presentsher research at conferences and contributes to peer-reviewed journals, as well as book chapters on her research areas.