Personal profile

Personal profile

Dr Amal El-Sawad works part-time as a Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management and Organisation Studies. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She has worked in both the public and private sectors, including at IBM UK. Prior to joining Royal Holloway she was Associate Professor of Human Resource Management at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi. Her research work has been presented at international conferences and published in journals including: Human Relations; Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology; and Group and Organization Management.

Amal specialises in developing innovative approaches to business and management education, drawing in particular on theatre, music and the creative arts. She authored a free-to-access short course on the Coursera platform: 'Explore Management Concepts Through Metaphor and Music'.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/explore-management-concepts-through-metaphor-and-music

Amal has also designed two new undergraduate modules: Management, Music and Creativity; and, Management and the Arts. She was awarded the Royal Holloway 2022 Teaching Excellence Prize for innovation in curriculum design and development for her project: 'Management and Music - harnessing the creative arts and student-led research to create an inclusive, co-curated online course.

https://intranet.royalholloway.ac.uk/staff/teaching/teaching-learning/2022/management-and-music-harnessing-the-creative-arts-and-student-led-research-to-create-an-inclusive-co-curated-online-course.aspx

Amal has recently embarked on a new career as a composer. For her first professional commission, she worked with Mikron Theatre company as composer for Poppy Hollman's play ‘Twitchers’ which toured the country from April to October 2023 and received excellent reviews. Amal's second professional commission will see her once again working with Mikron as composer for a new play touring in 2025. In addition, Amal is an emerging playwright and was a member of the Royal Court theatre's new writers' group in 2022. She runs Exit Stage Write, developing creative arts inspired training and development programmes for business and community groups.