Voluntary Action Research Groups members supervise doctoral candidates across a range of topic areas and disciplines, making use of a variety of methods. Members are always keen to hear from prospective doctoral candidates.

Current doctoral students are focusing on the following topics:

Jo Watts: Inter-organisational collaboration in nonprofit organisations: power and ideas in discourse.

Russell Hobbs: Charity governance in the regulatory era.

Josie Soutar: Social Impact Bonds: a voluntary sector perspective

Lorna Dowrick: Understanding the impact of enduring public sector austerity on local women’s organisations.

Ruth Squire: How the third sector shapes widening participation policy and practice   .

Recently completed doctoral students and their work include:

Jules O’Dor: What influences social entrepreneurs to adopt particular social enterprise structures and why? DBA. 2019.

Beth Patmore: Working across agency boundaries: A micro-institutional perspective on public service innovation. PhD. 2019.

Kiri Langmead: Exploring the performance of democracy and economic diversity in worker cooperatives. PhD. 2017.

Dawn Elliott: Voluntary sector chargeable support services: A typology of actor worldviews of legitimacy. PhD. 2016.

Ioannis Prinos: Third sector, welfare, governance and social citizenship in Greece and the UK. PhD. 2016.

Ellen Bennett: The power of ideas: the state-sector relationship in policy and practice. PhD. 2015.