Dr Tanja Collavo

Tanja graduated from Said Business School and New College in 2018 with a PhD in Management Studies. In her dissertation, she looked at how creating connections between different stakeholders helped four organisations to develop the social entrepreneurship sector in England. Before that, she worked as a consultant and did a series of business internships in different countries. 

Due to her own attempts and challenges in making her research relevant and helpful for organisations working in the social entrepreneurship sector, during her last year of PhD she became interested in understanding what could be done to favour the usage of academic research for the generation of positive social impact. Ever since, she has organised and facilitated several workshops for knowledge exchange and she has been exploring opportunities to improve the connection between academics and practitioners. While completing her studies, she tried to set up a social enterprise, and then worked for a year for the Social Sciences Division to research how best to help young academics in connecting with businesses. The research led to the creation of a set of case studies and of training materials to empower PhD students and Early Career Researchers to feel more confident when reaching out to or collaborating with non-academic partners for research or CV-enhancement purposes. 

At present, Tanja works as Research Engagement and Impact Manager at Judge Business School, where she is responsible for helping faculty members to connect with non-academic organisations and to make their research accessible to the general public. Additionally, she works as freelance tutor for MBA courses and for an online course on social entrepreneurship.