Dr Wendy Hein

Overview

Biography

Wendy joined the Marketing group in the Management department at Birkbeck in 2011. Her research focuses on gender and feminist perspectives in consumer research and marketing, social research and sustainability, and innovative research methods across these fields. She is also interested in transformative research and policy interventions in this area.

She regularly presents and publishes her work across conferences and transdisciplinary outlets. This includes early research from her ethnography PhD on young men's consumption practices, research on gender equality and equity in marketing and consumer research (including UN PRME gender equality working group and TCR gender justice work), often through feminist, power and critical studies on men and masculinities lenses. She worked as part of the FP7 TRIGGER project at Birkbeck studying gender cultures within research and science. More recently, she joined the PREPP team (parasiticides & pollution) at Imperial College London, adding social science perspectives to sustainable parasiticide practices.  

At Birkbeck, Wendy is programme director of the MSc Marketing (October and January start). She teaches Consumer Behaviour and on Birkbeck's joint MBA with Central St Martins, various foundational modules and convenes various marketing modules at Birkbeck and University of London. Wendy supervises several PhD students, particularly in the context of gender, identities and feminisms, marketing, consumption and organisations.

Alongside research, Wendy has worked across marketing positions and industries, countries and organisations, ranging from events marketing and PR to working as a marketing executive in international companies such as Ryanair Ltd and data management companies. She was involved in developing and applying ethnographic research for entrepreneurial discovery, and continues her work as a consultant for established and start-up companies, as well as for teaching, education and policy.

Highlights

• Co-ordinator of Marketing (subject discipline) in the gender equality working group, United Nations Principles of Responsible Management (UN PRME)

• Keynote Speech, Responsible Organising Conference, November 2018, Hanken School of Economics, Finland.

• Co-chair of first gender track, Transformative Consumer Research Conference 2015, Villanova University, PA.

• 2015 Recipient of Birkbeck Excellence in Teaching Award (BETA) 

  2023/24 Recipient of Vice Chancellor Teaching Excellence Award (Team Teaching)

Qualifications

• PhD, University of Edinburgh, 2010
• PGCE, Birkbeck University of London, 2012
• BA, Dublin City University, 2004

Web profiles

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Research Gate

Administrative responsibilities

• Deputy Head of PG Programmes, Birkbeck Business School
• Programme Director MSc Marketing
• Co-chair of Athena Swan committee, Department of Management
• Module convenor and lecturer: Consumer Behaviour, Buyer Behaviour, Principles of Marketing, Services Marketing

Professional activities

• Advisory Board member of GENMAC (Gender, Markets and Consumers)

• Policy Board Member of Macromarketing Society, co-chair of gender track

• Member of Association for Consumer Research

• Member of the American Marketing Association

Honours and awards

• Birkbeck Excellence in Teaching Award BETA, Birkbeck, February 2015
• Fellow of Higher Education Academy (HEA), Higher Education Academy, February 2012

ORCID

0000-0002-7830-259X

Research

Research interests

• Gender, relations, feminisms, politics and equity in marketing and consumer research
• Critical, macromarketing and transformative consumer research
• Ethnography, qualitative and innovative methodologies

Research overview

Wendy’s research interests, broadly speaking, focus on marketing and consumer research, and more specifically, on gender, feminism and gender equality as part of this. She has conducted ethnographic work on young men’s consumption practices in Scotland, where she focused on men, masculinities and gender relations connected to consumption, and is currently involved in several projects that relate to gender equity in marketing.

She co-ordinates the marketing subject discipline for the UN PRME gender equality working group, where she works on an ongoing repository of teaching material and various contributions to edited book collections. Together with Elisabeth Hirschman, she co-chaired the first gender/equality track at the 2015 Transformative Consumer Research conference, and was involved in the FP7 Transforming Institutions by Gendering contents and Gaining Equality in Research (TRIGGER) research at Birkbeck. She has published findings and methodological implications from her work, and has presented at international conferences such as Gender, Marketing and Consumer Behaviour, Consumer Culture Theory, Macromarketing and Association for Consumer Research (ACR), and American Marketing Association (AMA) conferences.

Research Centres and Institutes

• Affiliate group member, Birkbeck Institute for Gender and Sexuality Studies
• Steering group member, Birkbeck Institute for Social Research
• Group member, Responsible Business Centre

Supervision and teaching

Supervision

Supervisions within Birkbeck:

1

Wendy is particularly interested in supervising projects that focus on the following broad topics:

Gender, relations, feminism, politics and theory in marketing and consumer research: this may relate to gender issues, such as gender equality, discrimination in both micro and macro settings; power with and through marketing and consumption; the gendered body in marketing and consumption; the construction of gender relations and practices through consumption, and; theorisations and critique of gender (equity/equality) in marketing and consumer research.

Consumer Culture Theory(CCT): this may include topics broadly relating to contextual, symbolic and experiential aspects along the consumption cycle; such as consumer and marketplace cultures; consumer identity projects; sociohistoric pattern of consumption, and; mass-mediated marketplace ideologies and consumer interpretation.

Critical, historical and macro-marketing: including socio-cultural histories of marketing and consumption and their relation to current understandings of markets and marketing; and consumer/marketing roles in system production and re-negotiation (including issues of consumer/marketing ethics, social responsibility and sustainability).

Transformative marketing and consumer research: (how) do marketers/consumers affect lives, environments and broader structures?

Ethnography, qualitative methodologies and alternative representation: includes considerations of the role of emergent technologies, relating to digital, mobile and visual in marketing and consumer research; critical engagement with interpretive and transdisciplinary methodologies (including gender and feminist implications in research); alternative representation and non-representation of consumer and marketing research, such as through film and multimedia.

Current doctoral researchers

• IRINA SUKIASYAN

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Oct 2016 onwards

  Title of thesis:

  Mediated Post-Soviet Gender Ideologies in Russian Comedy Shows

Teaching

Teaching modules

• Consumer Behaviour (BUMN007H7)
• Principles of Marketing (Undergraduate) (BUMN144H4)

Publications

Business and community

Outreach

TRT roundtable participant on brands and activism:

https://youtu.be/tGlHFOT4paA

Birkbeck's summary of FP7 TRIGGER project, including 'gender cultures':

https://youtu.be/00iJxKXh4zA

The new beer drinker is female - media commentary:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/food-and-wine/food-trends/society-of-beer-drinking-ladies-aims-for-inclusiveimbibing/article32622929/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=Referrer:+Social+Network+/+Media&utm_campaign=Shared+Web+Article+Links