Dr Kate Broadhurst

PhD, MBA, BA

  • Senior Lecturer in International Business, Strategy and Innovation
  • Programme Lead for Senior Leader Apprenticeship (MSc Strategic Leadership pathway) and Strategic Leadership MSc

Kate is a Senior Lecturer in Innovation and Strategy and a member of the International Business, Strategy and Innovation group.

Before joining Loughborough in 2019 Kate had spent over 20 years working across the public, private and voluntary sector in a range of research, consultancy and programme management roles. She was research director at a spin out company of the University of Leicester from 2003 to 2011 that specialised in working with businesses, national and local governments, international organisations, and charities to develop and implement crime reduction and security strategies. Between 2011 and 2015 Kate was Head of Enterprise Development at the University of Northampton where she managed ERDF funded programmes including ‘Enterprise Ecologies’, a programme that sought to use enterprise and entrepreneurship skills to tackle low aspirations and achievements in deprived communities, and a follow-on programme that involved a package of business start-up, growth and innovation support for local businesses.

Kate’s research interests include economic development, place-based partnerships, collaboration and service co-production. Her doctoral thesis explored the decentralisation of English economic policy looking in particular at the factors that enable and inhibit Local Enterprise Partnerships to develop strategies for growth.

Kate is an experienced and engaging teacher and teaches on a range of innovation, enterprise, employability and business planning modules.

Kate has contributed to national and international conference proceedings, including those organised by the British Academy of Management, the Regional Studies Association and the Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

She is a member of the RSA’s place-based leadership network which aims to surface new leadership approaches in and for urban and regional development by bringing together academics internationally to debate leadership, place and economic development/planning discourses.

She acts as a reviewer for a number of journals including the International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Local Economy.

Having returned to academia from industry, Kate continues to engage with a number of entrepreneurial and innovation networks in the Midlands and serve as a business mentor to a number of start-ups locally.

Kate continues to maintain a long-standing research collaboration with The Y – a charity based in supporting vulnerable young people and was most recently commissioned to produce a White Paper for them on Co Production of Services with Vulnerable Service Users.

My research interests explore the decentralisation of economic policy in the UK and the notion of sub-national forms of governance. My research considers the factors that underpin the effectiveness of sub national place-based partnerships. Related research interests include the leadership of place-based collaborations and the concepts of shared leadership, human capital, power and tacit knowledge within collaborations.

A second focus of my work is on service co-production and public value creation. I am particularly interested in how these concepts apply to vulnerable groups and service users who exist on the margins of society.

  • Broadhurst, K., Berkeley, N. and Ferreira, J. (2020) 'Place Leadership: Developing a model to guide regional partnerships', Regional Studies, In Press.
  • Broadhurst, K. (2018) 'In the pursuit of economic growth: Drivers and inhibitors of place-based partnerships', Regional Studies, Regional Science, 5:1, 332-338, DOI: 10.1080/21681376.2018.1530134.
  • Ferreira, C., MacNeill, S., Broughton, K., Ferreira, J., Broadhurst, K., and Berkeley, N. (2018) 'ReSSI Regional strategies for sustainable and inclusive territorial development – Regional interplay and EU dialogue - Targeted Analysis, Final Report', ESPON: Luxembourg.