Contact Us

By telephone
During office hours
(Monday-Friday 08:30-17:00)
+44 (0)1234 400 400

Outside office hours
(Campus Watch)
+44 (0)1582 74 39 89

By email
admission@beds.ac.uk (admissions)
international@beds.ac.uk (international)
sid@beds.ac.uk (student support)
help@beds.ac.uk (registration)

By post
University of Bedfordshire
Park Square
Luton
Bedfordshire
UK, LU1 3JU

Dr Christina Schwabenland

Profile

Dr. Christina Schwabenland, Reader: Public and Voluntary Sector Management

Dr Christina Schwabenland

Dr Christina Schwabenland have recently joined the university with a brief, together with Alison Hirst, to develop new courses and research focused on people working in the public and voluntary sectors. She is passionately committed to the voluntary sector as representing a space where people come together to construct institutional responses to social injustice and towards building the good society. Christina brings over 25 years experience of working in the voluntary sector at a local, regional, national and international level. She worked for 14 years as the CEO of two organisations; The Elfrida Society, a service providing organisation working with people with learning difficulties, and London Voluntary Service Council, a regional membership organisation providing support and representation.

Christina's research explores the ways in which voluntary organisations respond to ethical issues. Her PhD looked that the founding stories of organisations in the UK and in India and the ways in which these stories function as ‘sacred texts’ and encode the founders’ visions for a better society.

Together with Frances Tomlinson, she has been working for several years on a research project on diversity management in the sector and currently she is researching organisations in India, Israel and Northern Ireland, working across religious and communal boundaries.

Christina's theoretical orientation is an eclectic mix, drawing on social constructionism, critical and postcolonial theory and hermeneutics and she is specifically interested in the use of metaphor and story telling to create and sustain meaning in organisations..

Teaching experience includes course leadership of the MA International HRM and MA Cross-Cultural Management at London Metropolitan University. Chistina was also responsible for modules in Managing Diversity and Equality at postgraduate and undergraduate level, also teaching on Cross-Cultural Management (postgraduate and undergraduate level) and Alternative Perspectives in Organisation Theory (undergraduate and together with a colleague at London Metropolitan, she developed a postgraduate level module on The Impact of Religion and Spirituality on Management.

Recent publications

Books
  • (in progress) Schwabenland, C. (2012?) Metaphor and Dialectic in Managing Diversity, Palgrave
  • Schwabenland, C. (2006) Stories Visions and Values in Voluntary Organisations: Ashgate
  • Schwabenland C. (ed.) (2003) Participation North and South: New Ideas in Participatory Development from India and the UK, The Elfrida Press, London
  • Schwabenland, C. (ed.) (2000) Relationships in the Lives of People with Learning Difficulties, The Elfrida Press, London

Articles in Academic Journals
  • Schwabenland, C. (2011 forthcoming) ‘Surprise and Awe: Learning from Indigenous Managers’ Journal of Management Education
  • Tomlinson, F. and Schwabenland, C. (2010) ‘Conciliating Competing Discourses of Diversity: The UK Non-profit Sector Between Social Justice and the Business case.’ Organization 17/1: 101-121
  • Schwabenland, C (2009) The Use of Disruption as a Pedagogical Intervention, in Educational Action Research 17/2: 293-309
  • Schwabenland, C. and Tomlinson, F. (2008) ‘Managing Diversity or Diversifying Management?’ Critical Perspective on International Business 4 /2: 320-333

Chapters in Edited Books
  • (In Progress) Schwabenland, C. (2011 forthcoming) ‘Swachh Narayani: the creation of a goddess as an organisational intervention’ in Against the Grain: advances in postcolonial organisation studies A. Prasad (ed.) Liber/ Copenhagen Business School Press
  • Schwabenland, C (2009) ‘Identity’, in Encyclopaedia of Civil Society Anheier, H. (Ed.) Springer
  • Schwabenland, C. (2008) ‘Representations of the Ideal as Symbols of Subversion’ in Mythical Inspirations for Organisational Realities M. Kostera (ed.) Palgrave Macmillan
  • Schwabenland, C. (2006) ‘Stories, Mythmaking and the Consolation of Success’ in Discourse, Power and Identity Trentham Press
  • Schwabenland, C. (2006)’ Founding stories as creation myths’, in Brewis, J., Linstead, S., Boje, D. and O’Shea, T. (eds.) The Passion of Organizing, Copenhagen: Liber / Copenhagen Business School Press
  • Schwabenland, C. (2004) ‘Utopias, Dystopias and the Paradox of Compliance’ published volume of selected conference papers International Society for Third Sector Research www.istir.org
  • Schwabenland,C. (2003) ‘Towards A Paradigm Shift: Lessons from anti-oppression movements’ in C. Schwabenland (ed.) London: The Elfrida Press
  • Schwabenland, C. (1993) ‘Elfrida Rathbone, a Case Study in Contracting’, in J. Bornot (ed.) Community Care, A Reader, Open University Press (updated as Contracts Five Years On, 1996)

Qualifications

  • 2008 MA Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (Distinction) London Metropolitan
  • University
  • 2002 PhD, University of East London: Creation Mythology in Voluntary Organisations in the UK and India
  • 2000 People Based Development: Three-week course held at the Manavodaya Institute in Lucknow
  • 1996 MA (Distinction) Voluntary Sector Management, University of East London: dissertation Metaphors of Creativity in the Voluntary Sector
  • 1995 Level II Hindi, Institute of Linguists
  • 1984-87 Postgraduate Diploma in Counselling Skills (part-time), South West London College
  • 1978-79 Arts Administration, State University of New York
  • 1974-77 BA Hons, University of East Anglia: English history and literature

Contact details

 E: christina.schwabenland@beds.ac.uk

Bedfordshire University

Apply» Faculties & Departments» Department of Strategy & Human Resource Management» Staff» Dr Christina Schwabenland

Top