Norin Arshed joined the University of Dundee in October 2017 and is Professor, Chair of Entrepreneurship and Associate Dean of Research in the School of Business. She is an economist by background with professional experience both in the public and private sectors. She has various roles within the Business School and the University which include: Lead for the Entrepreneurship Group for the Business School; Public Engagement Officer for the Business School; KTP Lead for the Business School; and Lead for the University of Dundee in The Scottish University Scale-up Consortium.

Areas of expertise

Norin’s work focuses on enterprise policy, especially the role and contribution of those linked to enterprise policy formulation (ministers and civil servants) and policy implementation (national, regional and local economic development agencies). She is also interested in how entrepreneurs and SMEs experience and use such policy initiatives. Recently, she has been exploring women’s enterprise policy, scale-ups, the entrepreneurial ecosystem and contextual entrepreneurship. Much of her work draws on institutional theory.

Following an early career in banking and government as a senior economist Norin has undertaken consulting and research projects for industry and different governments, working alongside Ernst & Young, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (Japan), Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) (London) and the Scottish Government.

Norin has published in highly rated journals such as Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Regional Studies, Small Business Economics and International Journal Management Reviews. In addition, she has edited two books on entrepreneurship and research methods.

Norin has been successful in attracting grant income from various funding bodies which include the Society for the Advancement of Management Studies, British Academy, Carnegie and ESRC, as well as internal university awards.

Impact and Knowledge Exchange

Norin has been appointed as 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 (2019-2020). She has also recently been awarded a Scottish Parliament Fellowship to undertake a Scotland-wide research project on how women entrepreneurs are coping in the pandemic. Furthermore, holds an appointment as a subject expert on the external Peer Review Group at the Department for Business,

Energy & Industrial Strategy (which involves providing an independent and transparent assessment of the quality of their evaluations prior to publication).

Her other external roles include being the Research Director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 89Initiative, a think tank created by the London School of Economics based in London. Further to her external roles she is a member of the advisory board for Innovation Caucus (ESRC and Innovate UK) and Innovate UK’s strategy working group.

She is also the external examiner at the University of Glasgow for the MSc FinTech programme.

Research themes

· Entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity

Norin is module co-ordinator for:

BU31004 – Doing Business in Scotland

and module lead for:

BU52040 - Practicing entrepreneurship

BU52041 - Understanding entrepreneurship in a global context