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Professor Andy Adcroft

Positions held:
  • Head of School - Birkbeck Business School, Business and Law Central
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  • Overview

    Overview

    Biography

    I joined Birkbeck as Head of the Business School in August 2024 following a decade in leadership positions at Surrey Business School. I started my 30 year academic career as a political economist but have spent the last decade as an influential researcher in management education where I have won national awards for my scholarly and collaborative work. I am a National Teaching Fellow (2015) and a winner of a Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence (2024).

    Opening up the academy to the wider world is core to my work and in doing this I have undertaken activities which run from ESRC funded impact programmes to stand up comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe to co-hosting a breakfast radio show.

  • Research

    Research

    Research interests

    • The impact of curiosity on academic performance
    • Performance and competitive orientations in sports organisations
    • The relationship between feedback and performance improvement

    Research overview

    Over the past 30 years, my research has come in three waves:
    • As a political economist working in an established research team based at the universities of East London, Aberystwyth, Royal Holloway and Manchester;
    • Public sector management in general and higher education policy in particular;
    • Pedagogy and two key relationships – between feedback and performance and between motivations to study, expectations of studying and learning strategies.

    More recently my work focuses on curiosity and its impact on academic performance.

  • Supervision and teaching

    Supervision and teaching

    Teaching

    People learn best when they work things out for themselves. If I had something so grand as a philosophy of teaching that would be it. I believe in people taking responsibility for their learning, that University is a place where people come to learn rather than just to be taught and, most important of all, that learning only happens when you participate. Spectators don't learn half as well as participants.

    Teaching modules

    • Help To Grow: Management (BUBU071N0)
    • International Strategy and Operations (BUMN141H6)