Personal Statement
Dr. Aparna Venugopal is a senior lecturer in Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship at the University of Liverpool Management School, with over a decade of international academic and research experience across the UK, Canada, and India. Her expertise lies in ethical innovation, entrepreneurship education, organizational ambidexterity, and inclusive leadership. Known for integrating paradox theory into strategy and entrepreneurship research and education, she has earned several awards for teaching excellence and has led significant leadership development and executive education initiatives.
Aparna has an undergraduate degree in mechanical (production) engineering, a master’s in business, and a doctorate in management. She was a licensed professional engineer (P. Eng) from the Association for Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of New Brunswick (2019-20).

Prior to joining ULMS, she was a research associate at the Dr. J. Herbert Smith Centre for Technology Management and Entrepreneurship, University of New Brunswick (UNB), Fredericton, Canada. In 2017, she had received the Mathematics of Information Technology and Complex Systems (MITACS) post-doctoral fellowship at UNB.

During her post-doctoral studies, she received the prestigious Queen Elizabeth Commonwealth Scholarship as well. She has secured esteemed research grants such as the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Grant. She has published in Business & Society, Journal of Business Research, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Business Strategy and the Environment, Sustainable Development, and Management Decision among others.

Her research interest revolves around organisational ambidexterity and similar organisational paradoxical tensions and the role of external stakeholders in them, and entrepreneurial intentions and othering and their impact on value and impact generation. Additionally, Aparna fosters an active interest in pedagogical research with an emphasis on reflexive practices in entrepreneurship education.

Aparna is an ad hoc reviewer for Ecological Economics, Journal of Knowledge Management, Organization and Environment, Management Decision, Business Strategy, and the Environment, Sustainable Development, and Journal of Strategy and Management.

Research Overview
Aparna's research primarily revolves around strategic contradictions. Her current work within this broad area focuses on three key themes: organizational ambidexterity; and the dynamics of othering and the distinction between value creation and impact generation. Specifically, within scholarship, her current projects examine strategic contradictions of quiet quitting and managing up, othering and inclusion and its effect on newcomer socialisation strategies; academic identity, explored through the paradoxes of belonging and agency; students' entrepreneurial intentions, shaped by the tensions between autonomy, social recognition, and impact, and finally, the paradox of education and its changing impact on poverty alleviation through time.