Profile

Background

Dr Damilola Joseph joined Newcastle University Business School in May 2026 as a Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and is a member of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Subject Group. Before joining Newcastle, she held academic posts at the University of Westminster as Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Strategy and at Teesside University where she was also Programme Leader and Athena Swan Lead for the Business School.

With over five years of teaching experience in higher education, Dr Joseph has taught extensively across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, leading modules including Marketing for Entrepreneurs, New Venture Creation, Contemporary Issues in Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Digital Strategies, Sustainability in Practice, Creativity and Innovation Management, and Business Research Methods. Her teaching is research-informed, drawing on her expertise in informal entrepreneurship and digital affordances to bring global and Global South perspectives into the curriculum, and she has received strong student feedback for clarity and accessibility.

Dr Joseph's research examines the intersection of informal entrepreneurship, digital transformation, and inclusion across diverse institutional and cultural contexts, with a particular focus on how entrepreneurs innovate and adapt within environments shaped by constraint, inequality, and technological change. Her current agenda extends this framework comparatively across the Global North and Global South, examining the hidden continuities between Southern informality and Northern precarity. Her work has been published in the Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, the Journal of Accounting Literature, and the International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship. She has supervised seven DBA candidates and one PhD candidate to completion, alongside numerous MSc and undergraduate dissertations.

Her research has informed regional policy and practice: as Co-Investigator on the UKSPF DIG-IT Digital Inclusion Project (with HP, the Hope Foundation, and Tees Valley local councils), her findings shaped the Tees Valley Combined Authority's digital access and literacy strategy; and as recipient of a £5,000 Participatory Research Grant on female refugee entrepreneurship in the North-East, her work informed policy dialogue with Middlesbrough Council and regional enterprise agencies.

Qualifications

• Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Strategy, Enterprise and Innovation (Trust and Risk Management in Complex Investment Settings), University of Portsmouth, UK.
• Master of Science (MSc) in Business and Management, University of Portsmouth, UK.
• Postgraduate Certificate in Learning, Teaching and Higher Education (PgCLTHE), Teesside University, UK.
• Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Marketing, Covenant University, Nigeria.

External Examiner Roles

• PhD Thesis Examiner, De Montfort University

Grants and Funding

• £5,000 Participatory Research Grant, for research on female refugee entrepreneurship in the North-East of England

Awards and Honours

• 2023 – Nominee, Outstanding Teaching Awards, Teesside University, UK.

Main Expertise

Dr Joseph's research expertise lies at the intersection of Entrepreneurship, Digital Transformation, and Inclusion, with a focus on how entrepreneurs navigate, adapt, and create value within institutionally complex and resource-constrained environments across the Global South and Global North.

Research Interests

Her work particularly examines informal entrepreneurship and the influence of digital technologies on entrepreneurial outcomes within institutionally complex environments. Building on the Institutional Voids framework, she moves beyond deficit-based analyses of governance failure to explore how entrepreneurs creatively navigate and repurpose structural gaps. Central to this work is a theoretical distinction between digital affordances — the latent potentials for value creation that technologies enable — and digital constraints, such as infrastructural deficiencies and low digital literacy, which mediate those potentials. This lens re-theorises the informal economy as a space of resilient, adaptive, and digitally enabled innovation, rather than one defined solely by exclusion or scarcity.

A further strand of her work addresses entrepreneurship through an intersectional lens, linking migration, gender, and place-based disadvantage. Dr Joseph has developed the concept of intersectional deprivation as a generative mechanism to capture how multiple forms of marginalisation (social, economic, and institutional) interact to constrain and shape entrepreneurial agency. Her approach favours ethical, co-produced methodologies, including Participatory Action Research, photovoice, and narrative analysis, positioning research participants as active co-creators of knowledge rather than research subjects.

Dr Joseph also maintains a comparative interest in hidden informalities across the Global North and Global South, examining how informal entrepreneurial practices manifest differently yet are fundamentally connected across contrasting contexts from traditional market-based micro-entrepreneurship shaped by community networks and reciprocity, to precarious digital gig work and small business compliance under tightening regulatory and technological constraints. Through this comparative lens, she develops a generalisable framework of entrepreneurial adaptation under structural constraint, reframing informality as a global condition rather than a development-stage phenomenon.

Her research is designed for tangible policy and societal impact, engaging directly with regional stakeholders, local authorities, and community organisations to translate academic insight into practical, context-specific interventions for underserved and marginalised communities.

Doctoral Supervision

Dr Joseph has successfully supervised seven DBA candidates and one PhD candidate to completion, achieving a 100% completion rate, and has served as External Examiner for PhD thesis examination at De Montfort University. She is keen to continue supervising doctoral research aligned with her areas of expertise and welcomes discussions with prospective students. She is happy to explore research proposals within the broad scope of her interests, so please feel free to get in touch to discuss your ideas.

Research Interests for PhD Supervision

• Informal and Digital Entrepreneurship
• Intersectional Deprivation and Marginalised Entrepreneurship
• Migration, Gender and Place-Based Enterprise
• Institutional Voids and Emerging/Developing Economies
• Digital Affordances and Technology Adoption in the Informal Economy
• Participatory and Co-Produced Research Methodologies

Teaching Philosophy

At the core of Dr Joseph's teaching philosophy is a commitment to inclusivity, equity, and global relevance. She views teaching as a research-informed and student-centred process, intentionally diversifying reading lists, theories, and case studies to expand students' understanding of enterprise beyond mainstream frameworks. Her approach integrates research and entrepreneurial case studies from marginalised voices and Global South contexts — including entrepreneurs in Nigeria, Kenya, and Bangladesh — encouraging students to critically compare these entrepreneurial pathways against dominant Anglo-American models such as Silicon Valley start-ups and formal venture capital systems.

Pedagogical Practice

Dr Joseph's pedagogical practice is grounded in inclusive, reflective, and experiential learning strategies. She employs creative assessment methods, including Padlet reflections and reflective vlogs to foster critical dialogue on weekly readings, role-playing and simulation exercises to illustrate communication and strategic challenges, and real-world consultancy projects in which students apply course concepts to live organisations. Her teaching is directly research-informed: her expertise in informal entrepreneurship and digital affordances is used to help students critique traditional models of enterprise through a lens of resource constraint and digital adaptation. She continually innovates her teaching methods and assessment design, incorporating field trips, guest speakers, and critical theory application to ensure learning remains current, rigorous, and responsive to student needs.

Teaching and Curriculum Development

Dr Joseph has experience across the full teaching lifecycle, from module leadership to research supervision. As Module Leader for Sustainability in Practice, she guided master's students through the entire research lifecycle, including research proposals, dissertations, and formative feedback via seminars, providing hands-on support with tools such as SPSS and NVivo. She has also co-led New Venture Creation modules, guiding students through the complete process of identifying, evaluating, and de-risking a sustainable venture, including the Value Proposition Canvas. Her curriculum contributions ensure that assessment and content remain aligned with contemporary academic standards, integrating global and Global South perspectives across all levels of teaching. Beyond module leadership, she has served as a Personal Tutor, providing pastoral and institutional guidance to students, with particular focus on supporting Level 4 students through the transition to higher education.