Irina Popova

Irina's PhD research focused on studying and managing individual and group level transitions whilst delivering the Social Venture Incubation Programme currently known as Cambridge Social Ventures. The programme was funded by the Big Lottery Fund. Her thesis explored and theorised start-up incubation as a rite of passage of entrepreneurs and their social ventures. She is interested in studying start-ups (including social ventures), their support and growth.  So far she has used the concept of liminality and the rites of passage theory to analyse the incubation programme of support for social entrepreneurs.

Irina also did an externally funded Postdoc programme studying the impact of digitalisation on management practice (FORTE). The study was based on three public sector organisations in Cambridgeshire and their ICT enabled transformation projects. She is an NVivo trained expert and experienced ethnographer. 

Currently Irina is working on a lot of publications with co-authors from the latter project related to digitalisation and its impact. Moving forward she would like to bring her two research interests together and explore the state of digitalisation of start-ups and SMEs. She is looking for PhD supervision as well as partners to collaborate with in those areas.

Irina is interested in supervising PhD students in the following areas: social enterpise, start-ups, incubation, digitalisation. Any interdisciplinary topics as well as interests across the listed areas are particularly intersting and welcome. Irina is an experienced organisational ethnographer and has a passion for participatory research. She has been an external PhD examiner for a social enterpise focused thesis in November 2019.