Prospective PhD students interested in any of the following topics are welcome to brief their research ideas before making a formal application: Digital Strategy, Open Strategy, Open Innovation, Strategy as Practice. Other areas related to my research interests as described or evident from my publications are also welcomed.

Dr Robert Demir is a Lecturer in Strategic Management at Lancaster University Management School. He received his PhD from Stockholm University School of Business where he also taught strategic management, innovation, international business, and accounting. His research interests revolve around the practices and processes of strategizing and specifically the open, collaborative modes of strategic activity, the materiality of strategy work, and the transfer of practices across national and organizational boundaries. He is also interested in behavioural and cognitive dimensions of strategy practice, and management practice innovations. He has studied these topics across a wide range of industries, such as aluminium profiles, automotive parts, banking, bearings, and IT consulting.

He currently acts as principal or senior researcher in research projects on the strategic management of high-growth firms, management practice innovations, and the organizing of digitalization in industrial firms. His research has appeared in journals like British Journal of Management, International Business Review, and Qualitative Research. He has also acted as track and session chair in several international conferences (e.g., AIB, AOM, EAMSA, Nordic Academy of Management, SMS) and has also participated as principal researcher and international collaborator in several projects funded by the Swedish Central Bank’s Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences, Vinnova (Sweden’s Innovation Agency), Jan Wallander and Tom Hedelius Foundation, Ragnar Söderberg Foundation, Peter Wallenberg Foundation, to name a few. He has also acted as a speaker on the digitalization of industry in several industry-specific conferences as well as for business managers in Swedish multinational corporations.

Dr Demir has received several nominations and distinctions for his research activities such as nominations for best paper awards in conferences like the Academy of Management Annual Conference (2012), Strategic Management Society Annual International Conference (2012, 2013, and 2015), and Outstanding Workshop Paper at the 2004 Euro-Asia Management Studies Association conference. In 2010, he was awarded the Wallander post-doctoral scholarship to distinguished young researchers in the field of business administration for his doctoral thesis “Strategy as Sociomaterial Practices; Planning, Decision-Making, and Responsiveness in Corporate Lending”. In 2011, his thesis was also recognized as the best doctoral dissertation of 2010 at Stockholm Business School (Stockholm University) and was nominated for the best doctoral dissertation award of the year in the Social Sciences faculty, Stockholm University.