Professor Tom Wainwright is the Head of Royal Holloway Business School. Previously, Tom has served in multiple leadership roles, including Associate Dean of Education, Director of Education Strategy, Director of Teaching and Learning and Director of the Centre for Innovation and Enterprise. Through these roles he has been particularly instrumental in implementing change both at School and Institutional level and within and across disciplines. His strategic focus has largely been centred on education enhancement and innovation and also in quality assurance ensuring integrity of degree courses.

Tom is a recognised expert in multiple academic disciplines. His areas of research expertise include entrepreneurship, particularly digital innovation, and real estate, specifically financialization, digitisation and ESG challenges. He retains an active research interest in future opportunities posed by aging populations. His work has been funded by a number of prestigious awarding bodies including the ESRC, British Academy, in addition to industry collaborators. Recent publications are listed below.

Tom’s research is impact focussed and seeks to address pressing contemporary issues. Previous external partners include Barclays Bank and more broadly the EU. More recently, he has worked with the Open Data Institute and Real Estate Data Foundation, concerning data sharing, digital business models and data ethics, while forging relationships with numerous start-ups to examine new markets. Tom is keen to expand his portfolio of work and is specifically seeking to collaborate with potential new partners on product development, organisational change and executive training.  

He welcomes applications from potential doctoral students who have mutual areas of interest.

His areas of interest are:

• Entrepreneurship, innovation and strategy
• Real estate and financialization
• Open data, digital business and open innovation
• Social entrepreneurship and ESG
• Innovation and knowledge exchange
• Financial services sector and high-net worth individuals
• SMEs and professional service providers
• Qualitative research methodologies