Dr Martina McGuinness

Management School

Senior Lecturer in Risk Management

A photo of Martina McGuinness
Profile picture of A photo of Martina McGuinness
m.mcguinness@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 3381

Full contact details

Dr Martina McGuinness
Management School
Room D023
Sheffield University Management School
Conduit Road
Sheffield
S10 1FL
Profile

After working in industry as an insurance broker and liability investigator, Martina returned to academia to complete a PhD at the University of Leeds. She is Senior Lecturer is Risk Management & Strategy in the Enterprise, Strategy and International Business subject group.

She is an experienced academic who has held a range of leadership roles in the Management School; Departmental Learning and Teaching Champion, Head of Division, and Divisional Director for Research. Martina is currently the Programme Director for Postgraduate Research with oversight and responsibility for the Management School’s doctoral researcher community of approximately 160 PhD students.

Martina has been Principal Investigator/ Co-Investigator on grants totalling in excess of £10M. These have ranged from ESRC funded seminar series through to large consortia addressing UKRI cross-cutting themes. In these projects she has collaborated across institutions and disciplines to conduct research which actively engages with stakeholders and generates impact through developing evidence based interventions and tools, including practitioner guidance.

Martina has taught strategy, crisis management and international business at all levels as well as delivered executive teaching in the UK and internationally. As module leader, she has been responsible for the curriculum design, planning and co-ordination of teaching and assessment. She has developed these skills further in programme director roles (UG/PGT/PGR) where she has led programme review and curriculum redesign.   

Research interests

Martina is an applied researcher with key strengths in interdisciplinary working and research-led impact through active engagement with private and public sector stakeholders. Her research interests centre on institutional perspectives on strategic risks and disruptions faced by organisations and implications for decision making and resilience. This overarching perspective drives three research strands on (i) climate change risks (flood and drought) (ii) business continuity management and (iii) corruption. Her research has been published in a range of high quality academic journals.

Her approach is based on the belief that the challenges and wicked problems which face society and organisations are most effectively addressed through collaborative research which spans disciplinary boundaries. Martina’s research has been supported by grant funding from a range of sources (EPSRC, NERC, ESRC, and the White Rose Consortium) with collaborators from across the social sciences, engineering, plant sciences and the arts and humanities.

Publications

Journal articles

Chapters

Conference proceedings papers

Presentations

  • Choudhary S, Bhaumik S & McGuinness M Investigating forces for change affecting corporate sustainability: global megatrends and future scenarios. RIS download Bibtex download
  • McGuinness M & Marchand RD Exploring the use of social media in UK Higher Education contingency management. SMERST 2013: Social Media and Semantic Technologies in Emergency Response. RIS download Bibtex download
  • McGuinness M & Demirbag M Effects of corruption on MNEs' reinvestment decisions. Washington, D.C. RIS download Bibtex download
Grants

Selected recent research funding

  • ‘Earthquake resilience in Nepal: Impact enhancement through inter-community learning and a TV documentary’, ESRC-DFID Joint Fund, £93,205, 2020-21. Grant Reference: ES/T015934/1.
  • ‘Resilience in Nepal: Bridging the gap between policy discourse and lived realities’, ESRC-DFID Development Frontiers, £239,563, 2017-18.  Grant reference: ES/R00514/1.
  • ‘Social media and community disaster resilience: a process based study of South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue’, White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership, 1+3 ESRC Collaborative Award, 2017-2021, with South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service.
  • ‘Increasing Civil Society’s Capacity to Deal with Changing Extreme Weather Risk: Negotiating dichotomies in theory and practice’, ESRC Seminar Series £29,811, 2016-19. Grant reference: ES/N008944/1.
  • ‘DRY: Drought Risk and You. ‘Developing a drought narrative resource in a multi-stakeholder decision-making tool for drought risk management’, NERC £3,035,463, 2014-19. Grant reference: NE/L010453/1.
  • ‘Planning for floods and droughts in the face of climate change – a continuum approach’, Policy Placement Fellowship with the Environment Agency, NERC £82,509, 2013-15.
  • ‘SESAME: Organisational operational response and strategic decision making and long-term flood preparedness in urban areas’, EPSRC £1,049,917, 2012-2016. Grant reference: EP/KO12770/1.
  • ‘In search of resilience: exploring shifting paradigms of contingency management’, ESRC £17,600, 2010-13. Grant reference: RES-451-26-0901.
Teaching interests

Martina enjoys teaching students across UG and PGT levels as well as executive learners. She has taught strategy, crisis management and international business across all levels and research training to PGRS.

Student enquiry guides her approach to learning and three tenets underpin her learning and teaching practice: experiential learning; critical reflection and, helping students to become effective independent learners. Effective, and enjoyable, learning in business and management should integrate academic perspectives with ‘real world’ practice to allow learners to develop their criticality, enhance their problem solving and build the skills to be reflective management practitioners.

Her teaching practice has been recognised with a Senate Award for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (Sustained Excellence category) from the University of Sheffield.

In addition to a Postgraduate Certificate in Learning & Teaching in Higher Education, Martina has completed a M.Ed (2005) as part of her continuous professional development. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (awarded by Advance HE) and a Certified Business and Management Educator (awarded by the Chartered Association of Business Schools).

Martina has acted as external examiner for UG and PGT programmes for a number of UK universities (including Leeds, Essex and Nottingham) and she has also examined PhD and DBAs in the UK and internationally.

PhD supervision

PhD supervision

Martina has supervised a number of PhD students to successful completion. She is currently supervising four PhD students:

  • De Little, J., ‘Planning for resilience under multi-stakeholder risk management: can publics manage water risks?’ TWENTY65/ Faculty interdisciplinary PhD studentship, Department of Urban Studies/Management School. 
  • Hadid, O. ‘Strategic fit between supply chain strategy and sustainability’, funded by the Princess Sumaya University for Technology, Jordan.
  • Ricketts, A., ‘Social media and community disaster resilience: a process based study of South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue’, funded by ESRC White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership, 1+3 ESRC Collaborative Award, 2017-2021 (Management School/Information School)  
  • Skordia, M. ‘Managing high institutional complexity: CEO positivity and paradox mindset’.

Her research supervision has been recognised in the University of Sheffield annual #SuperVisionaries Name and Acclaim campaign (2019 and 2020).

 She is interested in supervising PhD students in the following areas:

  • organisational risk and resilience
  • business continuity management
  • flood/drought risk management
  • corruption