PhD Studentship - ‘Staying in Business? The Aftermath of Acquired Disability for the Entrepreneur’

Award summary

The studentship will cover full PhD fees (home and international) for 3 years and, as such, are aimed at exceptional PhD candidates (we reserve the right to make no awards). The studentship provides an annual stipend equal to that provided by UKRI studentships (for reference it was £19,237 in 2024/25). Fee increases over the years will also be covered by the studentship.

Overview

There is a long history of investigating entrepreneurs as groups based on certain shared demographic characteristics (e.g., age, gender, ethnicity). However, there is a much shorter history of research that examines disability as a characteristic, despite a steadily increasing number of outputs in recent years (Darcy et al., 2023; Hidegh et al., 2023). Knowledge to date has tended to coalesce around certain key themes: self-employment as a path into the labour market for the disabled (Norstedt and Germundsson, 2023); the specific support needs of the disabled if they do achieve business ownership status (Csillag et al., 2019); and, the type of businesses that disabled entrepreneurs tend to run (Kašperová, 2021).

What is rarely considered is the point in an individual’s business ownership trajectory at which they acquired a disability. For those who have always been disabled, or became disabled before they became self-employed, it is likely that this change in status (to business owner) can bring with it positive evolutions in their identity and work experiences – being seen either as a solution to existing labour market exclusion or a positive and pro-active response to their identity as a disabled person (Jammaers and Williams, 2023). What is less well understood is the impact of acquiring a disability on those entrepreneurs who are already running a business.

Acquiring a disability may provide greater threats to ontological security generally, and identity (Jammaers and Zanoni, 2020) and work specifically, for pre-existing entrepreneurs than those who started a business whilst already living with a disability (Kašperová et al., 2018). For entrepreneurs already running their own business when they acquire a disability the challenges may be amplified at both an existential and practical level due to the nature of self-employment as a form of work.

The project will be qualitative with data collection oriented to interview as the primary fieldwork approach (accommodating participant needs as required). Other data collection tools may be deployed to capture lived experience, such as journaling, photo elicitation, diaries, and observation.

Number of awards: One

Start date: September 2025

Award duration: 3 years

Application closing date: 17^th February 2025 at 16:00 (GMT)  

Sponsor: Newcastle University Business School Innovation Research Endowment

Name of supervisor/s: Professor Kate Lewis and Dr. Fiona Whitehurst

Eligibility criteria:

A 2:1 honours degree, or international equivalent, in a relevant subject. We also expect a master’s degree, or international equivalent, at merit or above. In addition to academic qualifications, we also value relevant work experience.

Applicants must meet the minimum English language requirements. For details see www.ncl.ac.uk/postgraduate/degrees/8240f-65

Interviews will be held for short-listed candidates

How to apply

For detailed information on how to apply see www.ncl.ac.uk/postgraduate/fees-funding/search-funding/?code=NUBS011

Contact details

For further enquiries please contact Professor Kate Lewis at kate.lewis@newcastle.ac.uk

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