Well done to two aspiring academics – Nicola and Marco

Congratulations to Nicola Croxton who passed her PhD viva on 13 October with her thesis, ‘The internationalisation of corporate social responsibility: Nonmarket strategy in a global context’. Her supervisors are Prof Liz Daniel, Prof Dev Kodwani and former OU academics Prof Thomas Lawton and Dr Raquel Garcia-Garcia. The chair was Prof Jean Hartley, the external examiner was Prof Nicholas O’Regan (Aston Business School) and the internal examiner was Dr Richard Godfrey. Nicola is looking for opportunities to begin her academic career and hoping to build on her research interests. She is currently preparing two articles, that are being developed from her doctoral thesis, to submit for publication.

Congratulations also to Marco Distinto who passed his PhD viva with no corrections on 21 October. His thesis is ‘Refugee reception centres and the integration of the migrant: an exploratory study of discourses and practices of not-for-profit organizations working to support refugees in Italy’, supervised by Dr Cinzia Priola, Dr Alexandra Bristow and former OU academic Prof Peter Bloom. The chair was Dr Caroline Clarke, external examiner Dr Martyna Sliwa (University of Essex) and the internal examiner Prof Jo Brewis who each commended the significant theoretical, methodological and empirical contributions of his thesis, and recognised the sophisticated theoretical engagement of his work. Marco is currently working on the Italian version of the latest edition of Edgar and Peter Schein’s book, The corporate culture survival guide. He hopes to stay in academia and will be writing a series of papers to expand some of his research themes for this reason.