ISBE is delighted to announce the appointment of one new and one returning Co-Chair for the ISBE Research in Enterprise Education (REntEd) Special Interest Group (SIG) for a three-year term, commencing 1 September 2026.
Please join us in congratulating Professor Bahare Afrahi, Reader in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Kingston University London, on her new appointment, and Dr Lucy Hatt, Reader in Entrepreneurial Education, Newcastle University Business School, on her second term as Co-Chair.
We look forward to working with Bahar and Lucy and supporting the continued development of the REntEd SIG over the next three years.
Congratulations to you both! 👏
Dr Bahare Afrahi, Reader in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Kingston University London
Bahare works at the intersection of innovation and entrepreneurship, translating the latest research into practical tools to help organisations grow in local and international markets. She also leads the Business Growth Programme and the Innovation Playground, an entrepreneurship education programme at Kingston University London.
Her academic work is informed by her experience founding, scaling, and exiting ventures in retail, publishing, and consumer goods. Her research focuses on work and its implications for innovation, including how employee disengagement can encourage innovation, or how business owners’ health and well-being can discourage it. My PhD topic was specifically about business exit, team innovation, and leadership. My publications in these areas have received public attention.
Her publications on psychological and social factors influencing entrepreneur well-being and motivation as well as their work engagement has received public attention.
With a keen interest in collaborating with industry partners, she aims to bring to the SIG is a collaborative approach to building a community across researchers, educators, practitioners, policy partners, and wider audiences. She is particularly keen to act as a bridge between research and practice, and to help create an inclusive space for early career researchers, doctoral students, and colleagues from different institutional and geographic contexts.
Bahare says “I was so delighted when I learned about my appointment as the co-chair of the SIG that I had to pop the cork. Indeed, I am looking forward to working together to enable endless opportunities for entrepreneurship education in the next few years.”
Dr Lucy Hatt, Reader in Entrepreneurial Education, Newcastle University Business School
Dr Lucy Hatt is a Reader in Entrepreneurial Education in the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Subject Group at the Newcastle University Business School. She moved into academia after a career in industry and has a wide range of research interests including threshold concepts in entrepreneurial thinking, value creation pedagogy and design thinking. She has experience of leading UG, PG, post-experience blended learning and MBA programmes and modules. She has taught courses on innovation, change, enterprise and personal and professional transformation. She has published in Industry and Higher Education, Local Economy, Education + Training, Project Leadership and Society, International Journal of Management and Applied Research and the Journal of Teaching and Learning for Graduate Employability, authored five book chapters and presented at numerous conferences.
Lucy comments: “I am really excited to be continuing my term as SIG co-chair with Bahare Afrahi and we look forward to planning and delivering an exciting programme of SIG activities with our new and existing committee members. It’s such an interesting time for research into enterprise and entrepreneurship education with so much potential for value creation and inter-disciplinary pedagogical innovation.”