About the project
This project explores how intersectional identities shape leadership and resilience in complex public systems facing continuous crises. This project reimagines system leadership as a socially embedded, equity-driven process, bridging lived experience, culture and adaptive governance to strengthen public and third sector responses in an era of uncertainty.
How do leaders build resilience in public systems under constant crisis and how do their identities shape that process? This PhD project explores how intersectional identities influence leadership behaviours and system-level resilience in complex public and third sector organisations such as healthcare, education and transport.
You’ll investigate leadership in the context of “polycrisis”, where multiple, interconnected challenges (e.g. climate change, inequality, geopolitical instability) demand adaptive, inclusive responses. Using an intersectional framework, you’ll examine how lived experience and identity shape decision-making, equity and collaboration across systems.
You will use a methodology of your choice to understand how leaders and stakeholders across sectors cultivate resilience not just through strategy, but through culture, inclusion and collective learning.
This research is part of a wider interdisciplinary effort to rethink leadership for the 21st century. You’ll be supported by a supervisory team with expertise in politics, identity and public health, and connected to the STEER collaborative at the University of Southampton, which focuses on tackling inequalities through transdisciplinary research.
The project offers the opportunity to shape real-world understanding of leadership and resilience, with potential impact on policy, training, and organisational design. If you're interested in equity, complexity, and systems change and want to make a difference in how public services respond to crisis, this is the PhD for you.
References
Donella H. Meadows (2009) Thinking in Systems, London: Earthscan
Mollie Painter and Patricia H. Werhane (2023) Leadership, Gender and Organisation, Springer
Penelope Hawe, Alan Shiell, Therese Riley (2009), Theorising Interventions as Events in Systems. American Journal of Community Psychology 43, 267–276
