Skoll Centre Fellows

Abrar is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow and Research Fellow at Saïd Business School researching on topics of global environmental change, climate finance and corporate purpose. He is affiliated with Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute (ECI) and is a Fellow of Green Templeton College. Abrar is currently on a prestigious three-year British Academy Fellowship at Oxford, investigating the ways in which dedicated climate funding, such as the Green Climate Fund, and emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence and distributed ledgers, shape implementation and diffusion of climate action in Pakistan and emerging economies. He was on the core research team for a pioneering Oxford collaboration with EY Global, to understand how and why C-Suite and Boards from large global MNCs are again focused on corporate ‘purpose’ in a turbulent global economy. The findings contribute to a global research initiative on corporate transformation to meet the challenges of the early 21st century.

Akshay Mangla’s expertise is in comparative political economy, governance and development, with a regional specialisation in South Asia. A political scientist by training, Akshay’s research seeks to understand the causes and consequences of state capacity and institutional reform in developing countries. His ongoing projects investigate how governments and non-state actors work collectively to implement public policies and services in India.

His first book, Making Bureaucracy Work: Norms, Education and Public Service Delivery in Rural India investigates why and how state agencies implement universal primary education programs (more or less) effectively in India. Alongside his role at Saїd Business School, Akshay is a Research Fellow at Green Templeton College. Prior to joining the University of Oxford, Akshay taught on the Harvard Business School faculty, as an Assistant Professor in the Business, Government and International Economy Unit. 

Alex Nicholls is the first tenured professor in social entrepreneurship appointed at the University of Oxford. He is also a Tutorial Fellow and Member of the Governing Body at Harris Manchester College. In 2004, he was the co-founder of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship - for which he helped raise the core funding - as well as the co-founder of the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. He is the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, which he founded in 2010. Alex is the co-author of a major research book on Fair Trade (with Charlotte Opal, Sage, 2005) and the editor of the first scholarly collection of papers on social entrepreneurship (Oxford University Press, 2006, 2008). In 2015, he published a further co-edited volume on social finance and a new book on social innovation with NESTA. 

In 2019, Alex published a book examining the economic underpinnings of social innovation in the European Union, based upon CRESSI.

Aoife’s research focuses on understanding what systemic environmental challenges such as the climate crisis, and associated system transitions, mean for business. Aoife holds a joint appointment between the Smith School and Saïd Business School. Aoife was previously a senior researcher at the Group for Sustainability and Technology (SusTec) at ETH in Zurich. She received her PhD from the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge and her MA from the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.

Bridget is an economic anthropologist and Senior Research Fellow at Oxford Saïd, where she is Director of the global research Initiative, Ownership Project 2.0: Private Capital Owners & Impact. Bridget received her PhD in Economic Anthropology from Johns Hopkins University, where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and a Fellow of the Institute for Money, Technology, and Financial Inclusion. With a focus on economic topics in South Asia, she was a Fulbright Scholar to Bangladesh, Fellow of the American Institute of Bangladesh Studies and Language Fellow of the American Institute of Indian Studies to support Bengali language proficiency via full-time language study in Kolkata, India. Bridget was previously a fellow in residence at the WZB (Centre for Social Science Research) in Berlin and has served on the World Economic Forum's Global Futures Council for Development Finance.

Juliane is Professor of Management Studies at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. Juliane' research draws on insights from organisation theory, political philosophy and process studies to explore, broadly speaking, how transnational governance institutions emerge and evolve as a result of the interactions of multiple stakeholders to promote more just and sustainable forms of globalisation in global supply chains, but also organisations in general.

Karim is a practitioner, educator, and researcher in impact measurement and impact investing. Karim has worked with prominent private, public, and social sector organisations on evaluating the impacts of grant-making and impact investment strategies of individual programmes, complex portfolios and ecosystem-level initiatives in developed and emerging markets. He was the Co-Chair of the Impact Measurement Task Force convened by the Government of Ontario, and a member of the Impact Measurement Working Group of the G8 Social Impact Investment Task Force. Karim was previously Advisor to the Rockefeller Foundation on social impact measurement, and he co-founded the Topical Interest Group on Social Impact Measurement at the American Evaluation Association. Karim was previously co-founder of Purpose Capital (now Rally Assets), where he established and led its Impact Advisory practice. Karim is a senior fellow with the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, leading capacity development programming for non-profits and charities on impact measurement.

Marc Ventresca is an economic sociologist in the Strategy, Innovation and Marketing Faculty at Saïd Business School and a Governing Body Fellow of Wolfson College. Marc's areas of expertise include market and network formation, entrepreneurship, governance, and innovation and technology strategy. His research and teaching focus on the formation of markets and networks in business and social settings. Specifically, he researches how markets are built and the actors who build them. He is also an expert in the areas of governance, innovation and technology and how they interact with markets and networks.

Marc is involved with a number of entrepreneurship and innovation initiatives within Oxford. He is academic director for the ‘Science Innovation Plus’ initiative, which is a partnership between Saïd Business School and the Division of Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences.

Mary is Senior Fellow in Management Practice. At the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, she has also served as Senior Research Fellow and Founding Programme Director of The Ownership Project and is currently a Skoll Centre Fellow and Co-Director of the Oxford Leading Sustainable Corporations programme. Mary is a Senior Associate of Oxford Net Zero, a member of the Jury of the IMD-Pictet Sustainability in Family Business Award, has also served as a World Economic Forum Global Futures Council Fellow and is Chair of the Board of B Lab UK. Her research explores how business is affecting our world, and how leaders build strategy around the public good. She has a longstanding research interest in women in business. 

Her co-authored volume on sustainability leadership is slated for publication in 2023, and she serves as an advisor to several businesses on sustainability and impact strategy.

Matthew Amengual is Associate Professor in International Business. He is a political scientist by training and is a part of the International Business group. Matthew Amengual’s research explores the political economy of promoting economic development that is both equitable and sustainable. His recent work seeks to understand how the institutions that regulate labour standards in global value chains evolve and influence outcomes for workers and firms. His first book, Politicized Enforcement in Argentina: Labor and Environmental Regulation was published by Cambridge University Press. He is writing a second book that develops a theory to explain different outcomes that arise when firms face demands by societal actors unmediated by state institutions. 

Paulo holds a joint appointment between the Department of Engineering Science and Saïd Business School. His primary fields of expertise are entrepreneurship, sustainable development, systems change, and innovation management. The emphasis of his work is on transforming unjust systems through entrepreneurship. He formerly served as Postdoctoral Researcher at the Skoll Centre and as an Assistant Professor at Durham University. Outside academia, he worked as an entrepreneur and as a consultant to large companies, governments, and intergovernmental organisations. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge, as a Gates Scholar. 

He has been granted the IBM Business of Government Award, the Green Talents Award from the German Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Oldham Award from the University of Sussex, and has received multiple scholarships for his studies, such as from the Gates Trust, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and the Brazilian Council for Science and Technology.