Dr Norin Arshed

Personal statement

Norin joined Strathclyde University in August 2023 and is Professor, Chair of Entrepreneurship and Innovation and is the Director of Research for the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship. She is an economist by background with professional experience both in the public and private sectors. Norin’s work focuses on enterprise policy. She is also interested in how entrepreneurs and SMEs experience and use such policy initiatives. She has been exploring women’s enterprise policy, unconventional entrepreneurship, scale-ups, the entrepreneurial ecosystem and contextual entrepreneurship. Much of her work draws on institutional theory. Norin has recently been awarded a Leverhulme Fellowship to work on “Cultivating entrepreneurship for women leaving the criminal justice system.” She has been successful in attracting grant income from various funding bodies which include the Scottish Universities Insight Institute, Society for the Advancement of Management Studies, British Academy, Carnegie, Innovation Caucus (UKRI), and ESRC, as well as funding awards from the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament.

Previously, Norin was an Impact Assessor for REF 2021 Sub-panel 17: Business and Management Studies. As a direct result of her work in women’s enterprise, Norin was appointed as an Independent Government Advisor to the Scottish Government’s Minister of Business, Fair Skills and Work (2019-21). She was also awarded a Scottish Parliament Fellowship to undertake a Scotland-wide research project on how women entrepreneurs are coping in the pandemic (2021-22). Furthermore, she held an appointment as a subject expert on the external Peer Review Group at the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (2020-23). Norin’s current external roles include being the Research Director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 89Initiative, a think tank created by the London School of Economics. Further to this she is a member of the advisory board for Innovation Caucus (ESRC and Innovate UK) and Innovate UK’s strategy working group.