Keith Schofield

Telephone: 0121 204 4649

Email: k.schofield@aston.ac.uk

Dr Keith Schofield is Deputy Dean: International in the College of Business and Social Sciences; he has responsibility for domestic and international recruitment, portfolio review and development, and international partnerships across the College's three Schools. He is a Senior Lecturer in the Work and Organisation Department of Aston Business School, specialising in the application of psychology to organisations, following a qualitative ethnographic perspective. 

A chartered psychologist and management education professional, Keith is an experienced project manager and programme director, working both regionally and internationally, managing partnerships and relationships at all levels.

Senior Lecturer, Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, UK (2017-Present)

MBA Director, Huddersfield Business School, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK (2014-2017) 

Lecturer in Psychology, Dublin Business School, Dublin, Ireland (2013-2014)

Incubation Centre Manager, inc. enterprise, Leeds, UK (2012-2013)

The Aston Edge (Executive MBA)

Organisational Behaviour (Executive MBA)

Assessment, Performance, and Reward (MSc Work Psychology and Business)

Strategy, Change, and Leadership (MSc Human Resource Management and Business)

2014 to date - Chartered Psychologist, British Psychological Society 

2018 to date - Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

2018 to date - Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute 

2015 to 2018 - Fellow of the Higher Education Academy 

2022 - Global Executive MBA (KEDGE Business School)

2022 - MEd Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (Aston University)

2015 - PgCert Higher Education (University of Huddersfield)

2014 - PhD Organisational Psychology: “People Learning in Organisations: A Socio-Cultural Approach” (University of Huddersfield)

2014 - MSc Psychological Research Methods (The Open University)

2008 - BSc Psychology (University of Huddersfield)

A chartered psychologist, Keith’s research interests remain on understanding organisations from a psychological perspective. His PhD focused on undertaking a qualitative ethnographic research project to understand the situated and constructed nature of knowledge within a debt collection organisation. The power of an ethnographic approach in this research enabled the intricacies of social interaction and the nuanced nature of participation in the case study organisation to be deconstructed to develop an understanding of the learning process. 

Keith has undertaken research on the way knowledge is situated within an organisational context and how employees are able to access this. Combining perspectives from business, psychology, sociology and anthropology, the core of Keith’s research has involved constructing organisations within a communities of practice framework to explore the tacit and subjective way that people engage with practices at work. Specifically, Keith has been interested on the nature of identity as a mediator of individual participation and so individual and organisational success. 

Keith’s research takes a social constructionist perspective with a preference for qualitative methodologies to gather rich and nuanced data about organisations in order to understand the learning process. Placing importance on the role of context and relationship as fundamental to the process of participation within organisations, Keith’s research seeks to explore the intricacies of the relationship between person, context and knowledge.

2020-Present

Paul Jones - DBA: Individual Perspectives on Engaged Scholarship: Reforming Professional Development From The Bottom Up (Aston Business School)

2018-Present

Sapheya Aftimos - DBA: Talent Management of Expatriate Academics: Case Study of Higher Education Institutions in Kuwait – University XYZ (Aston Business School)

2020-2022 

Alison McPherson - PhD: An empirical investigation of the relationship between moral character, character strengths, virtues, moral personality, and individual ethical decision making in the workplace. 

2016-2019

Mehdi Ould Kherroubi Hacine-Bey - PhD: The co-construction of multi-ethnic occupational communities under unsafe and hard physical work conditions: The case of railway maintenance teams in in Brussels (University of Huddersfield)