About
As a Principal Teaching Fellow, Karen is involved in developing, delivering and evaluating the learning, teaching and student experience, as a senior member of the Digital and Data Driven Marketing department. She teaches on a range of Undergraduate and Postgraduate programmes, with a particular passion for encouraging colleagues and students to engage with businesses, to develop live client learning opportunities. Since 2020, Karen has been a 0.5 FTE member of the University Strategic Major Projects team, as a Curriculum Designer for the Reducing Curriculum Complexity project. She has also worked alongside CHEP colleagues in the "Enhancing Academic Support and Delivery" project, leading a worksteam developing training materials and raising awareness of the benefits of peer-to-peer (student to student) in-curricular activity.
Karen's research interests include branding, service sector, employability enhancement, enterprise education and mindset improvement.
Research
Research groups
Research interests
- Branding
- Research Methods
- Small business marketing
- Employability
- Enterprise education
Current research
Karen has published and is developing further papers, using both qualitative and quantitative methods, to evaluate approaches which support students to develop and enhance their employability confidence and entrepreneurial capabilities, whilst in higher education, using the AGILE mindset reflective tool.
Karen has presented papers and leads professional development workshops at ABS, BAM and HEEG, as well as the Academy of Marketing, EFMD and RENT conferences in the UK and Europe.
Affiliated research group:
Business Education Research Group (BERG) http://www2.port.ac.uk/portsmouth-business-school/research/research-groups/business-education-research-group/?_ga=2.74878678.532057708.1546891517-755985949.1546891517
Publications
Pagination
Teaching
Karen has an interest in design thinking, research methods and international export marketing. She is currently teaching on a range of UG and PG modules, including digital marketing, as well as being a Module Leader for services marketing and consumer behaviour modules.
Karen takes particular pleasure from supporting Dissertation students to flourish. Her passion is encouraging colleagues and students to engage in live client project based learning, as this is an excellent opportinity to apply learning directly to a real business issue and support local, national and international firms to improve their marketing activity.
Biography
Karen grew up in Oxford and moved down to the South Coast around 30 years ago. After studying international business with foreign languages and Marketing, she worked up from executive, to marketing management roles with IBM and an international marine technology firm. An opportunity to apply her industrial experience in a teaching role became available at the University of Portsmouth, where she was promoted from Lecturer, to Senior, then Principal Lecturer over 10 years, including Programme Leader, Curriculum Design and Employability and Enterprise Coordinator Faculty level roles (business school).
After 14 years in higher education, Karen began studying a Master's, then started a PhD as a mature student, and has continued her passion for developing others as well as herself, by taking on the exciting new challenge of working at University of Southampton in 2019.
Since joining Southampton, she has worked in various roles including Employability and Enterprise Lead (SBS), Curriculum Designer (Reducing Curriculum Complexity Project - central university strategic major priority), Peer to peer interaction workstream lead (CHEP staff development) and Green Student project. She continues to share her research and teaching practice through conferences, guest speaker events and publications.
Prizes
- How AGILE am I? An initial analysis of terms used in student reflective narratives to express their enterprise learning and employability development (2019)
- Best PGRS Presentation Prize "Understanding Enterprise Learning and Employability Development through Student Reflective AGILE Narratives" (2019)