Dr Sophie Alkhaled
Senior Lecturer in EntrepreneurshipProfile
Dr Sophie Alkhaled is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Entrepreneurship. She is the Director of the Academy for Gender Equality and Social Justice Research in Organisations in LUMS. Sophie’s research focuses on the intersectionality of gender, entrepreneurship, empowerment and poverty alleviation, and their collective impact as a catalyst for social change and sustainable development amongst refugee, migrant and marginalised communities, particularly in Middle Eastern contexts. Sophie has published in leading journals, including Journal of International Business Studies, Organization Studies, Gender, Work and Organization, Research in the Sociology of Organizations and Entrepreneurship and Regional Development.
Sophie serves as Associate Editor at Gender, Work and Organization and a member of the Editorial Review Board for Organization Studies. She is also lead Guest Editor on the Organization Studies Special Issue “Nomadic Life and the Ethico-Political Implications of Organizing in Forcible Migration”.
Sophie has achieved large European grants, including the European Commission (2016-2020) where she worked with over 20 project partners from Europe and the Middle East and North African region. Her research on SIMRA focused on investigating social innovation as a means of poverty alleviation for socially disadvantaged women in rural areas of North West England. She was also Co/Investigator, and later took over as Primary Investigator, on the European Commission’s (2020-2024), focusing on the development, implementation, evaluation and monitoring of Gender Equality Plans in Business and Management Schools, with international partners in the UK, Greece, Sweden, Belgium and Lebanon. As part of the TARGETED-MPI project, as well as Lancaster University and LUMS’ mission to incorporate Equality, Diversity and Inclusion across teaching and research, Sophie co-developed the “LUMS Gender Equality Report” and led her team in the creation of “The Guide to Developing a Gender-Aware and Inclusive Curriculum”, and “The Guide to Integrating Gender-Awareness and Inclusivity in Research and Innovation”.These have been embedded within LUMS; and the wider university’s Curriculum Transformation Programme.
As a legacy of TARGETED-MPI, Sophie is the Founder and Director of the Gender Equality Observatory in LUMS. Sophie holds numerous Equality, Diversity and Inclusion roles, including the LUMS representative on the Athena Swan, Race Equality Charter and Disability Confident initiatives. She is also the LUMS EDI Representative on the
Sophie teaches entrepreneurship, management, social innovation, sustainability, and qualitative research methods across undergraduate, postgraduate, EMBA and MBA programmes. She is also engaged in cross-disciplinary PhD supervision of students from the Departments of Entrepreneurship, Marketing and Sociology. As a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Sophie has a particular passion for research-based teaching and convenes the module “Gender and Entrepreneurship in a Global Context”, for which she has won two awards: The British Academy of Management’s Management Education Practice Award (2019) for ‘Recognising the Excellence and Innovation in Teaching and Education Pedagogy and Practice’, and the Lancaster University Management School Dean’s Award (2019) for mainstreaming gender and diversity in LUMS’ programme portfolio through challenging conventions, embracing different perspectives and critical thinking across LUMS’ teaching, research and knowledge exchange community. She has also been part of the team in the Department of Entrepreneurship and Strategy who received , in recognition of her contribution to the Entrepreneurs in Residence programme.
Sophie has been invited as keynote speaker at various events and conferences. Most recently, she was invited by Prof Monder Ram at the Centre for Research in Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship at Aston University, UK, to give the keynote speech at their 20th Anniversary Conference 2024 'Researchers Perspective: The Road to Engaged Scholarship’. Herkeynote title was “Refugee Entrepreneurship Research: Reflections from a decade in the field”. She was also invited by Professor Natalia Vershinina to join the keynote panel at the RENT Conference 2024 in Nante, France, alongside Professors Dimo Dimov and Sophie Bacq. The conference theme was ‘The Multiple Faces of Entrepreneurship: Embracing the Diversity of Ambitions, Processes and Practices Worldwide. Sophie’s keynote title was “‘Entrepreneurship-as-Survival’: A gendered-approach to researching refugee entrepreneurship”. Sophie has also been invited by Prof. Patricia Lewis and Prof. Thanos Papadopoulos to join the keynote panel: ‘Overcoming Borders through Refugee Entrepreneurship’at the British Academy of Management Conference in September 2025.
PhD Supervision Interests
I welcome PhD students who are interested in researching gender, organisations and entrepreneurship.
01/09/2020 → 31/10/2024
Research
01/09/2020 → 31/08/2024
Research
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Prize (including medals and awards)
Prize (including medals and awards)
Prize (including medals and awards)
Academy for Gender and Social Justice Research in Organisations
Academy for Gender and Social Justice Research in Organisations, Centre for Scholarship and Innovation in Management Education
- Academy for Gender and Social Justice Research in Organisations
- Centre for Scholarship and Innovation in Management Education
- Pentland Centre