Richard Bolden

About me

I joined Bristol Business School in autumn 2013 as Professor of Leadership and Management. In 2014 I established, and became Director of, Bristol Leadership Centre and led its expansion and re-launch in 2016 as Bristol Leadership and Change Centre, one of the largest and most active university-based centres of its kind.

I am committed to applied scholarship that has an impact well beyond academia. My teaching and research explores the interface between individual and collective approaches to leadership and leadership development, with a particular focus on issues of identity, culture and collaboration. I have published widely on topics including distributed leadership, systems leadership, leadership in higher education, worldly leadership and leadership development evaluation. My books include Exploring Leadership: Individual, organizational and societal perspectives (Oxford University Press, 2011) and Leadership Paradoxes: Rethinking leadership for an uncertain world (Routledge, 2016), the latter of which was shortlisted for the 2017 CMI Management Book of the Year Award. I am Associate Editor for the journal Leadership and regularly conduct reviews for leading international journals.

My academic background is in leadership/organisation studies and applied psychology. Prior to joining UWE I spent over ten years at the Centre for Leadership Studies, University of Exeter - initially as a Research Fellow, then Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Head of Centre. I have also worked in the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at Exeter and as a Research Psychologist at the Institute of Work Psychology, University of Sheffield. Outside of higher education, I have worked as an independent consultant (conducting evaluation projects in Egypt and Bosnia amongst other places) and spent two years at an IT company in France developing and marketing the English-language version of their survey design and analysis software.

My research, education and engagement activities involve working closely with a range of groups and organisations, including the NHS Leadership Academy, Bristol Golden Key, Bristol Mayor''s City Office, Singapore Civil Service College, Leadership Centre and Leadership Foundation for Higher Education.

I teach on a number of programmes at UWE, including the Bristol MBA, BA Management and Leadership and ILM accredited courses on leadership and management. I supervise PhD and Masters students in areas related to my research interests and am always pleased to consider new proposals.

To find out more please follow me on Twitter or get in touch by email.​