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Dr Charles Barthold

Profile summary

Professional biography

Dr Charles Barthold is a senior lecturer at the Open University. Previously, he worked at Kingston University and the University of Leicester. He holds a PhD from the University of Leicester (2015), a Masters in Philosophy from Paris-Panthéon-Sorbonne University and a Masters in Social Sciences from Sciences-po Paris.

Research interests

Charles employs a variety of approaches to organisation studies and leadership in relation to contemporary economic, environmental and social issues. Firstly, he is interested to study how organisations and leadership reproduce power relations. This includes different types of organisational power relations such as organisational control; anthropocentrism in relation to the environment; and organisational logics informed by gender, racialisation and precarious work. Secondly, his project is to analyse how resistance, politics and ethics in organisations can bring about novel forms of democratisation and emancipation. Thirdly, Charles is interested about organisational discourses. Methodologically, his work is qualitative (ethnography, film analysis, discourse analysis) or conceptual. It is linked in particular to studying discourse and visual culture.  Charles is a member of the Research into Employment, Empowerment and Futures (REEF) academic centre of excellence. Finally, Charles is associate editor for Culture and Organization and  one of the editors of MayFly Books.

The work of Charles was published in leading journals such as Organization; Journal of Business Ethics; Business Ethics: A European Review; Critical Perspectives in Accounting; Scandinavian Journal of Management; Gender Work and Organization; Culture and Organization; and Theory, Culture and Society. Charles also published a book: Resisting Financialization with Deleuze and Guattari.

Charles co-organised a ‘Creaturely Ethics, Poetics and Animal Studies’ stream at the 11th International Critical Management Studies Conference (2019). He has currently three PhD students under supervision. Charles is happy to be approached by potential PhD students in his areas of research.

Teaching interests

Charles has extensive teaching experience in a higher education context including postgraduate (PhD, MBA and MSc) and undergraduate students. This includes both face-to-face and distance learning. He has also supervised to completion a number of undergraduate and MSc dissertations; and a PhD thesis.

He  completed a year of production of B870 - Managing in a Changing World, the first module on the new MBA where he authored some of the material on culture and leadership. Charles led the production of the first core module of the MSc HRM: B810 - The Human Resource Professional. He has also participated to the production of the two other core modules of the MSc HRM: B811 - Human Resource Management in context, and B812 - Creating evidence-based value in people management. Charles is chairing the production of B814 - Learning and development at work. He is also the current lead for the CIPD-accredited MSc in Human Resource Management. Furthermore, he is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Publications

An ecofeminist position in critical practice: Challenging corporate truth in the Anthropocene (2022-11)
Gender, Work & Organization, 29(6) (pp. 1796-1814)


Intersectionality on Screen. A coloniality perspective to understanding popular culture representations of intersecting oppressions at work (2022-05-22)
Barthold, Charles; Krawczyk, Victor; Berti, Marco and Priola, Vincenza
Gender, Work and Organization, 29(6) (pp. 1890-1909)


Leadership rebooting: The 19th International Studying Leadership Conference, 15–17 December 2021, brought to you virtually by the Open University (UK) (2021-04-27)
Smolović Jones, Owain; Smolovic-Jones, Sanela; Haslam, Daniel and Barthold, Charles
Leadership, 17(3) (pp. 383-386)


A Machiavellian prince at the Elysée: Virtù leadership and contingency in the populist moment (2021)
Barthold, Charles and Fougère, Martin
Ephemera: theory & politics in organizations, 21(2)


Dissensual Leadership: Rethinking democratic leadership with Jacques Rancière (2020-10-26)
Barthold, Charles; Checchi, Marco; Imas, Miguel and Smolovic Jones, Owain
Organization, 29(4) (pp. 673-691)


Denaturalizing the Environment: Dissensus and the Possibility of Radically Democratizing Discourses of Environmental Sustainability (2020-07)
Barthold, C. and Bloom, P.
Journal of Business Ethics, 164(4) (pp. 671-681)


Onwards to the New Political Frontier: Macron’s Electoral Populism (2020-05-01)
Fougère, Martin and Barthold, Charles
Organization, 27(3) (pp. 419-430)


Etienne Balibar in Conversation: Revisiting European Marxism (2019-12-01)
Barthold, Charles
Theory, Culture & Society, 36(7-8) (pp. 231-247)


For the women - In Memoriam Simone Veil (1927-2017) (2018-11)
Barthold, Charles and Corvellec, Hervé
Gender, Work & Organization, 25(6) (pp. 593-600)


The affordance of compassion for animals: a filmic exploration of industrial linear rhythms (2018-06-29)
Krawczyk, Victor J. and Barthold, Charles
Culture and Organization, 24(4) (pp. 268-284)


Dancing in the office: A study of gestures as resistance (2018-06)
Reinhold, Emilie; Schnugg, Claudia and Barthold, Charles
Scandinavian Journal of Management, 34(2) (pp. 162-169)


Resisting financialisation with Deleuze and Guattari: the case of Occupy Wall Street (2018-05-31)
Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 52 (pp. 4-16)


Corporate social responsibility, collaboration and depoliticisation (2013)
Barthold, Charles
Business Ethics: A European Review, 22(4) (pp. 393-403)


Resisting Financialization with Deleuze and Guattari (2018-06-11)
Barthold, Charles
ISBN : 9781138302723 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : London


Leadership and the promise of democracy (2024)
Barthold, Charles
In: Knights, David; Liu, Helena; Smolović-Jones, Owain and Wilson, Suze eds. The Routledge Critical Companion to Leadership Studies
Publisher : Routledge (In Press)


COVID-19 and Zoonotic Disease: Manufacturing and Organizing Ignorance Within the Animal-Industrial Complex (2022-10-20)
Clarke, Caroline; Barthold, Charles and Cole, Matthew
In: Tallberg, Linda and Hamilton, Lindsay eds. The Oxford Handbook of Animal Organisation Studies (57-C4.P110)
ISBN : 9780192848185 | Publisher : Oxford University Press | Published : Oxford


Emmanuel Macron: a French president whose populist tactics are derailing his own career (2023-05-18)
Barthold, Charles
The Conversation


How you can tell Emmanuel Macron is actually a populist – and why it matters (2020-03-05)
Barthold, Charles and Fougère, Martin
The Conversation