Our expertise

Professor Mark Rubin has undertaken research projects with several international mining companies to reduce dangerous risk taking, improve miners’ mental health, and understand the causes of on-site sexism.

His specialism is intergroup relations, and he will focus on contemporary challenges in behavioural science as well as leading an extended project module, in which students take a deep dive into a particular issue.

Dr Karolina Nieberle’s research informs how to build, support and sustain successful leadership processes in teams and organisations. She has worked with individuals and teams from a variety of organisational contexts, including business, education, arts and culture to develop their potentials in leadership, collaboration and wellbeing at work.

With Dr Nieberle’s specialism in leadership, followership and identity, she will lead the programme’s Leadership module.

Dr Andrew Marcinko’s work focuses on diversity and inclusion, sustainability and authenticity in organisations.

He is also active as a consultant, having worked with numerous businesses and organisations, including Panasonic, NatWest, Squire Patton Boggs, Birmingham City Council, Jacobs Engineering Group, Hearst Magazines, ScreenCloud, the US Naval Submarine School and the United Nations.

Dr Marcinko leads the Managing Diversity in Organisations module.

Dr Rohan Kapitany specialises in experimental and quantitative methods. His interests lie at the intersection of beliefs, groups, and motivation – why we believe what we believe, who we believe it with, and how it influences our behaviour. These topics are viewed through a lens of cultural evolution – the idea that psychology and the output thereof have been shaped by environmental and social contexts over time.

Methods and analytics are central to Dr Kapitany’s scholarly practice, and with this expertise he will lead the Applied Data Science module.

Dr Chuma Owuamalam’s research focuses on understanding how social identities and inequalities that exist in societies shape the outcomes of people from a variety of backgrounds (including race, gender and sexual orientation).

With extensive experience designing, programming, and analysing behavioural science intervention studies, Dr Owuamalam will lead the programme’s Research Method module.

Dr Vladimir Ponizovskiy uses computational methods to study the ways in which stories motivate human behaviour. He consults for the European Commission, Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe and other intergovernmental organisations on the topics of media, persuasion, and value framing of political topics.

Dr Ponizovskiy leads the Communication and Influence module.

Professor Mario Weick has worked with national and international organisations in the areas of leadership and skills development, risk perception and decision making, change management, and staff wellbeing. His academic research combines social, cognitive, and organisational psychology.

Professor Weick is leading the dissertation module, which allows students to apply their knowledge and skills to address a real business need.

Dr Trevor James is education focused and began his career teaching business English to managers and medical students in different countries. His PhD is in behavioural science, specifically nudging prosociality and charity using intergroup processes and message framing.

He has over 10 years’ experience teaching applied social psychology and research methods at elite Russell Group institutions. Dr James also sits on the Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity Board for the British Psychological Society where he advises on organisational processes.

Dr Bruce Rawlings’ research uses developmental, cross-cultural, and comparative methods to study cognition, with a particular focus on the psychology of cultural evolution. He is particularly interested in innovation and creativity, and how these constructs develop in children, what makes people more or less creative and innovative, and how humans differ from other animals in our capacity for innovation and creativity.

Dr Leanne Trick’s work focuses on mental health, particularly the intersection between mental and physical health. Dr Trick has undertaken research projects with people who have various chronic physical illnesses to better understand how mental health conditions develop and identify ways in which treatments could be improved.