Christopher Houghton

Research Student

Christopher Houghton is affiliated with The Open University's Department of Public Leadership and Social Enterprise.

You can email Christopher Houghton directly; but for media enquiries pleases contact a member of The Open University's Media Relations team.

Biography

Prior to his pursuit of his doctoral studies at The Open University, Christopher, on completion of his Masters in Mathematics at Durham University, undertook a career in the Military lasting over 20 years. During this time his expertise grew beyond his foundation as a logistician to cover crisis response, strategic and change management as well as international relations. He has worked globally, finishing his military career as the Senior British Liaison Officer within the French Air and Space Force. Whilst Christopher has maintained a continued link with academia gaining post graduate qualifications in logistics, leadership and most recently in strategic management and international relations during his time in Paris the return to pure academia is a return to an unfamiliar yet exciting environment.

Current Research

Defining a capitals approach to evaluating the socio-economic benefits of space exploration

Working from the Faulty of Business and Law, in conjunction with the OU’s Astrobiology Research Cluster, Christopher’s project is investigating the use of capitals to examine the impact of the space sector. As space exploration enters its fourth epoch, involvement in the industry is becoming financially viable to a wider group of stakeholders. This expansion is pushing the frontiers across many fields with breakthroughs quickly becoming an essential component of our daily lives. Conventional evaluations are often dominated by monetary measures. Despite their significance, impacts not easily reduced to monetary terms are often undervalued or even ignored; his project seeks to close this gap.

The intent is to undertake a theoretical investigation and empirical study into how such a framework can be constructed and applied to space related programmes. Employing a mixed-method approach, a case study will be used to both explore the limits and refine the proposed theoretical framework. There is an expectation to find complex relationships between the capitals with key themes being exposed and the value of these capitals varying depending on the field and agent in question.