Research Environment

The semester-on-semester-off teaching arrangement gives our Early Career Researchers the time and space to develop their research. The research centres have also played an important role in attracting new colleagues to the School – a critical mass of researchers in related areas provide excellent mentorship to those starting out in their careers.

Dedicated research time is facilitated through workload models so that staff can devote 40 per cent of their time to research. Staff are entitled to apply for sabbatical leave of one semester normally after six semesters or one year after six years. Staff are actively encouraged and supported financially to visit major overseas research universities.

Staff in the School have been supported to have sabbaticals at leading institutions such as Australian National University, Brown University, Duke University, ESC Rennes, Harvard Business School, Harvard School of Public Health, Max Planck Institute (Bonn), Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, Pompeu Fabra University, University of California Davis, University of Cape Town, University of Heidelberg, University of Massachusetts, University of Melbourne, University of Victoria, and Yale University.

A major University investment in QBS research is being used to support PhD scholarships, incoming visiting scholars, and outgoing visits by QBS staff.    

Active weekly seminar series are run by each research centre and department. These are essential parts of building our research environment and ensuring its sustainability and vitality. Speakers at seminar series are a mixture of internal and external academics. In the most recent REF period, the School hosted a total of 201 seminars by external international scholars such as Barbara Czarniawska (University of Gothenburg), Peter Conti-Brown (Wharton), YousseffYoussef Cassis (EUI), David Canning (Harvard), Greg Clark (UC Davis), William Goetzmann (Yale), Zorina Khan (Bowdoin), Peter Koudijs (StanfordErasmus Rotterdam), Sibylle Lehmann-Hasemayer (Hohenheim), Eric Hilt (Wellesley), Naomi Lamoreaux (Yale), and Mary O’Sullivan (Geneva), Lee Parker (RMIT University), John Roberts (University of Sydney), and John Sherry (Notre Dame).

Dissemination and feedback on working papers is facilitated by the QBS Research Paper Series. The editor of the series and a subject expert give feedback on all papers submitted to the series before they appear online. Since 2018 the QBS working paper series has been hosted by SSRN.

Impact support and advice for staff is provided by a dedicated Impact Officer from the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, working alongside the School’s Director of Research Impact and Engagement, and a School Impact Champion. The School Advisory Board has also played an important role in facilitating pathways to impact for colleagues in the School.

Support for Early Career Researchers

• A research start-up package of £4,000 is given to each ECR when they join to help pump prime their next research project.
• The School’s workload model gives ECRs a 50% reduction in teaching and administration in year 1 and a 25% reduction in year 2 of their appointment. This is designed to give them time to develop their research pipeline.
• A mentor as well as a personal development reviewer are assigned to each ECR to help guide ECRs with their research strategy. In addition to this formal mentorship, the research centres and disciplinary groups through their regular meetings provide ECRs with feedback on their research ideas and early drafts of their work.     

To embed students into the research culture, PhD students have funding to present their work at workshops and conferences. The research centres include PhD students in all their activities of the centre and have opportunities to meet all visiting seminar speakers. 

Students are encouraged to work closely with their supervisory team by co-authoring journal articles – in this most recent REF period 17 papers were published where students had co-authored with their supervisor(s).

A key aim of our PhD programme is to place students in academic and research positions. To that end, as well as embedding them into our research culture, we also help them acquire teaching skills. 50% of students who graduated in the current REF period have ended up in academic positions.

Our students in recent years have been placed at institutions such as Aston University, De Montfort University Leicester, the Dublin Institute of Technology, Glasgow University, Higher School of Economics in Moscow, London School of Economics, Newcastle University, Nottingham University, Queen’s University Belfast, State University of New York, Ulster University, and University College Cork. The majority of those who do not go into academia have commenced research positions in organisations such as the CBI, Financial Conduct Authority, Invest NI, Ministry of Defence, and RTÉ.

QBS PhD students can also avail of the University's Graduate School skills development programmes such as the postgraduate researcher development programme, the peer mentoring scheme, and the development of enterprise and innovation.

The new QBS Student Hub represents an investment of £30 million in the School. It features open plan office space for postdoctoral researchers, seminar and workshop spaces and common spaces for socialising and networking with academics, PhD students and industry partners. 

Our Research Centres have actively sought greater gender balance in their seminar programmes to improve the availability of role models and networking opportunities.

Find out more on our Gender Equality Initiatives

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