Dr Alexandra Bristow

Professional biography

Alex's research takes a critical approach to management, work, and organisation. She is particularly interested in:

• complexity, including tensions, contradictions, dialectics, and paradoxes
• political aspects of organisation, organising, and leadership, and their relationship with other organisational issues (change, identity, inclusion, knowledge, learning, expertise, technology)
• careers and, in particular, both doing and researching careers differently
• innovative approaches to research and writing

Current and recent projects include the role of power and politics within the changing nature of academic labour; power and the experiences, trajectories and identities of early-career professionals; the organisational impact of Brexit, Trumpism and populism; the politics of organisational inclusion in populist times; the politics of knowledge and expertise production in the field of management; power, change and learning in public service organisations; postcolonialism and (dis)empowerment; and the politics of activism and craftivism. Alex is a member of the Research into Employment, Empowerment, and Futures centre and the Centre for Policing Research and Learning (CPRL).

Alex has published in high-quality international journals, including Academy of Management Learning and Education, Ephemera, Human Relations, Leadership, Management Learning, Organization, and Organization Studies. She has co-edited the book Doing Academic Careers Differently: Portraits of Academic Life (2023) and contributed chapters to the edited books on The Future of Management Education (2022), The SSCI Syndrome in Higher Education (2014), and The Dark Side 2: Critical Cases on the Downside of Business (2013). Alex's PhD thesis on 'The Production of Objectivity in Organisation Studies: An Analysis of Some of the Field's Leading Journals' is a winner of the Best Dissertation Award of the Academy of Management CMS Division (2011).

Alex has supervised eight Doctoral students to successful completion, with three further supervisions currently in progress. She is also actively involved in the training and development of Doctoral students and early-career academics at institutional, national, and international levels, and was the Deputy Director of Research Degrees for the Faculty of Business and Law 2019-2022. She has contributed to the development of innovative Doctoral programmes, designed and led Doctoral training modules, and developed the FBL Teaching Scheme for PhD students. Alex welcomes interest from potential PhD students in her areas of research, and from current students and supervisors seeking an external examiner.

Alex has taught at all Higher Education levels (PhD, MBA, MSc and undergraduate, including degree apprenticeships), modes of delivery (full-time, part-time, executive, international, face-to-face, distance learning, online, work-based), and cohort sizes. She has successfully designed, validated, delivered and led modules and programmes in a range of subject areas and levels. She has also supervised over 30 postgraduate taught students (MBA and MSc) to successful completion of their dissertations.

Alex's favourite subjects to teach are tensions and contraditions, power and politics, and learning and change in organisations, organisational meta-theory, the philosophical and theoretical foundations of the management field, and management research philosophies. She contributed to the Research Philosophies and Approaches chapters in the 7th, 8th, and 9th edition of the Saunders et al (2016 and 2019) bestselling Research Methods for Business Students textbook. The chapters are freely available on Academia.edu and have been downloaded a combined 5,500 times by students and researchers around the world.

Alex is currently working on the production of B812 People Analytics and Evidence-Based Practice on the MSc HRM programme, and contributing to the FBL Doctoral Training programme.

She has previously led and contributed to modules on the Chartered Management Degree Apprenticeship (CMDA) programme.

Alex is also an external examiner for BSc Business Management at Bayes Business School (formerly Cass), University of London, and for PGT business programmes at Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow.

Alex is a co-founder of the Critical Careers Network (CCN), an international, interdisciplinary community for those interested in researching careers critically and also developing their own or others' careers differently from established mainstream norms. By 'critical' we mean questioning career performativity, functionalism, managerialism, linearity, and individualism, as well as other career norms. The purpose of CCN is to foster collaboration in critical career research and education, and to act as a forum to support career development for those who do not identify with expected career conventions. CCN is open to all academics, activists, and practitioners interested in critical approaches to careers.

Alex is also a founding editor of CMS InTouch, a global digital platform for real-time conversations on critical issues in management and organisations. CMS InTouch works in partnership with the Academy of Management CMS Division and the journal Organization to connect and support critical scholars, activists and practitioners across geographical, political, financial and other boundaries through free and open webinars and online events.

Eventbrite page to register for upcoming events

YouTube channel with recordings of past events

Alex is a member of the International Editorial Board of Organization and has guest co-edited the longest-running Special Paper Series of the journal on 'Populist Responses to Austerity and Cultural Change: Brexit, Trumpism and Beyond'. She is currently co-editing a Special Issue of Management Learning on 'One hundred years of Paulo Freire: Rethinking critical pedagogy, management learning and education' (deadline for paper submissions 1st September 2022), and a book on 'Doing Academic Careers Differently', to be published by Routledge. Alex is also a member of the British Academy of Management Peer Review College.

Alex is an executive member of the Academy of Management Critical Management Studies Division, in the five-year Division Chair track role. In 2022-2023 she is the Main Programme Chair - a role she shares with Ghazal Mir Zulfiqar at LUMS, Pakistan.