Senior Research FellowUniversity

Full time, permanent contract

About the Role

As an Senior Research Fellow in Business Transformation, you will develop an independent and collaborative research agenda that advances knowledge and delivers real-world outcomes in business transformation and innovation—particularly where AI and digital technologies reshape organisations, sectors, and value creation.

You'll be an ambitious, research-active academic with a passion for connecting scholarship with practice and impact.

You will bring:

A PhD with a post-doc experience in a relevant field (e.g., business/management, information systems, innovation, operations, strategy, entrepreneurship, socio-technical studies).

A strong profile in research areas such as:

AI-Empowered business transformation (GenAI, decision intelligence, process automation)

Digital platforms & ecosystems, venture building, scaling

AI and Data-driven operations, service transformation, responsible innovation / governance

Industry transformation (manufacturing, services, SMEs, public sector etc.)

AI-in-Research Statement (required, max. 1 page, appended to your CV). Describe how you use agentic or developer-grade AI tools (e.g. Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or equivalent) in your own research. Please cover the headings below. If you have built your own skills, agents, orchestrations or research pipelines, include a link to a Git repository (GitHub, GitLab or similar) if you are able to share it; private repositories may be shared with the panel on request. Do not include confidential, personal or unpublished partner data. Applications without this page will not be shortlisted.

Use of chat-based or workspace AI assistants alone (e.g. ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or their team/work editions) does not meet this criterion, however frequent or advanced. Your AI-in-Research Statement must show evidence of building or configuring, not only prompting.

A proven record of high-quality publications (ABS 3 and above) with a clear trajectory toward international research excellence.

Methodological capability (qualitative, quantitative, mixed methods, computational, or design science) suitable for high-quality research and publications

Experience of collaborative and externally funded research projects.

Strong teaching and supervisory skills, with enthusiasm for mentoring students and early-career researchers.

Excellent communication, networking, and partnership-building abilities across academic, industry, and policy communities.

A proactive, collegial approach aligned with CBIT’s entrepreneurial and impact-oriented culture.

You will join a forward-looking centre within a globally engaged business school, where innovation, interdisciplinarity, and measurable impact define our mission.

For an informal discussion about this role, please contact Professor Xiao Ma, Director of CBIT at [email protected]

For more details, please take a look at the role profile. We'll still consider applications even if you don't meet every single one of the requirements, so don't be put off if you don't match them perfectly. To ensure the diverse needs of our team are met we actively encourage secondments and offer flexible part-time working patterns - we're focused on finding the right person for the role.

Please note: shortlisted candidates will be asked to give a short live, screen-shared demonstration at interview of how they use AI in addressing a challenge — using their own tools.

interview date: 14th January 2027

£49,127 to £58,624 per annum