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Professor Louisa Huxtable-Thomas

Professor Louisa Huxtable-Thomas

Professor, Business

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Welsh language proficiency

Intermediate Welsh Speaker
Office 325 - 325
Third Floor
School of Management
Bay Campus
Available For Postgraduate Supervision

About

Louisa is a Professor in the School of Management and leads on engagement and impact, as well as coordinating our Executive Education provision. She is also the Enterprise, Partnerships and Innovation lead for the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. Combining theories and empirical knowledge gleaned from the fields of business, social science, education and psychology, Louisa’s research interests relate to how people’s behaviours, either as leaders, entrepreneurs or policy makers have an influence on economic and societal welfare. As such, she has a keen interest in the concepts of equity, equality and the role of diversity and inclusion in the workplace. She was appointed co-chair of the University's Mary Williams group in 2022.

Originally an environmental biologist, Louisa had a varied early career encompassing work in biodiversity, environmental consultancy, policy making at Regional and Local Government level as well as business support and incubation. Louisa’s doctoral research brought all of this prior knowledge together and identified the ways in which businesses can successfully participate in environmental policy making.  After completing her PhD in 2009, Louisa’s research interest increasingly moved towards business and management, rather than environmental policy, but always in parallel to practical projects that worked directly to assist the economy of Wales.  Louisa has played a key role supporting businesses through projects such as incubation, innovation and commercialisation as well as early stage R&D. Not limiting herself to the field of entrepreneurship, Louisa has also worked with academics in fields as diverse as healthcare, e-marketing, education, low carbon energy, information systems, manufacturing and tourism. Most recently she has been working with colleagues in the Malaysian Ministry for Entrepreneur Development and Cooperatives to drive cross-border trade and international relationships.

Areas Of Expertise

  • Entrepreneurship
  • Leadership
  • Entrepreneurial leadership
  • Innovation systems
  • Collaboration
  • Affordances
  • Pedagogy
  • Higher Education

Career Highlights

Teaching Interests

Louisa’s teaching focus is on entrepreneurship, small business management, leadership and strategy. Louisa is responsible for design and teaching of the introductory module for entrepreneurship, available for all students at Swansea. Her teaching interests also extend to the role of peer learning in post-graduate research.

Research Collaborations