Prof Dodd will collaborate on The Ink Way project, a structured writing intervention designed to enhance writing skills within the School of Business.
Prof Sarah Dodd from the renowned Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, University of Strathclyde Business School, is the latest addition to South East Technological University (SETU) Waterford’s UK joint professor programme.
In cooperation with Prof Felicity Kelliher, RIKON research group, Prof Dodd will collaborate with the School of Business, SETU Waterford, on The Ink Way project, a structured writing intervention designed to enhance academic writing skills and pursuit of publication within the School.
The Ink Way
The Ink Way is a 24-month action research project that will combine support for individual writing trajectories and staff-specific projects, with the collective writing of a research article on The Ink Way. The project uses advanced, critical approaches to authoring place, including hands and feet-on engagement with Waterford’s Greenway and Blueway, as participants are invited to walk the pathway, exploring the stories, legends, journeys and connections of Ireland’s Ancient East.
“Reclaiming stories, and re-imagining pathways, offers an authentic, natural re-opening to the world. It provides a deeply embedded foundation for future research which rises to the environmental and societal challenges of our crisis society in a transformational and collaborative fashion,” explained Prof Sarah Dodd.
Opportunity to provide genuine support
Speaking of the new partnership, Prof Felicity Kelliher said “I’m delighted to work with Sarah on this project. We are both passionate about supporting research, not only in Enterprise and Small Business Development, but among our wider collegial community. The Ink Way offers us an opportunity to provide genuine support to colleagues in developing our writing skills and pursuing publications, but it should also lead to other outputs, including research notes on structured writing interventions and materials and processes for future iterations. This approach compliments the School and SETU research goals.”
UK joint professor programme
The UK joint professor programme, launched in 2021, aims to assign eminent UK-based research professors to each School within SETU Waterford to enhance the university’s international partnerships, encourage and continue collaborations and grow research capability and capacity. Prof Dodd joins four professors from University of Warwick, Newcastle University, University of Sunderland and Kings College London as part of the initiative.
Prof Sarah Dodd Bio
Prof Sarah Dodd has over 30 years experience in the enterprise and small business field, and is especially interested in how enterprise, society and the natural environment interact, and current work focuses on nature-based solutions, at hyperlocal levels, to the grand challenges of today’s crisis society. Sustainability of people, and planet, has been a major theme in her research, and she is currently engaged in studying academic wellbeing, as well as transformative enterprise education and development.
Based at Strathclyde University’s Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, Sarah co-designed and co-led the Hunter Centre’s renowned Growth Advantage Programme. Professor Dodd also spent 20 years of her career in Athens. Here, she co-launched both Greece’s first degrees in Entrepreneurship, and the country’s first (and only surviving) university centre for enterprise and development: AHEAD.
Sarah has also worked at Aberdeen University, and Robert Gordon University (Aberdeen), and is considered a founding member of the Aberdeen School of Social Constructivism in entrepreneurship. Prof Dodd spent time too at CEEDR, the Centre for Enterprise and Economic Development Research, at Middlesex University, where she further developed the policy-focused aspects of her work, as in an OECD policy brief.
Before becoming an academic, Sarah worked in University-level training and development, community business, computer marketing, start-up training for the unemployed, and, whilst studying, as a nanny, a soldier, a cook, a driver and a foredeck hand.