Postgraduate Opportunities

I no longer recruit research students.

John read History at Cambridge and then worked as an IT manager before completing his PhD at the University of Manchester, studying under Professor Luke Georghiou and Dr Mark Boden of PREST, and Dr Sue Tindal of the Building Research Establishment, and writing his thesis on the rationale, rhetoric and impact of an information and advice dissemination programme for energy efficiency. John is associated with the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (of which PREST became part), the University’s main research centre in science and technology policy. John previously held the role of the Institute's and the Innovation, Management and Policy Division's Postgraduate Research Coordinator/Associate Head of Postgraduate Research.

John has previously taught on the MRes and Doctoral Training Programme and also on the MIOIR Evaluation Course. His research interests centre on the themes of theories, rhetorics, implementation and impacts of policy in the contexts of science policy and innovation. His interests in methodology concern the use of network analysis and the use of relational databases to store and manipulate research data. 

John has carried out a wide range of policy relevant research studies including several significant reviews for the European Commission: on the assessment of the socio-economic impacts of the Framework Programmes, and in the area of public procurement of innovation. He has also undertaken policy research and evaluation for many departments of the UK Government including the Department of Health, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Department for Education and Skills, the Department for Transport and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. John has been active in research evaluation, leading a large scale study in 2004 with the Fraunhofer Institute of Systems Innovation to review the Austrian Science Fund (Fonds zur Forderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung) research networks. Other important work on the evaluation of programmes has included a large scale study of the Human Frontier Science Program Organisation, an international organisation funding research in the area of microbiology.

John is an invited speaker on methods of evaluation of socio-economic impacts and has written on such issues as the development of the European Research Area and on the future of peer review. His earlier research work in the area of defence includes studies for a number of industrial groups, including the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences on defence industry structure and dual-use technologies, and the Centre for Naval Analysis (formerly part of the RAND Corporation) on transatlantic defence industry relationships. John has extensive interviewing experience of both industrial and commercial organisations and policy makers.

John continues to act as journal referee to a wide range of journals [by 2025 to 35 journals] in science policy, technology and general science fields, contibuting his expertise to the review at both domain specific and methodological levels. 

John is a Past President of Manchester Statistical Society http://www.manstatsoc.org/people having served his two year term between 2015-1017. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and a Life Member of the International Society for Scientometrics and Infometrics, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

John is a member of the high I.Q. society, MENSA.

John is very much in demand as a journal referee by prestigious academic journals. Below is a list which includes the date of the first review:

1) Evaluation – since 2003; 2) Science and Public Policy – since 2002; 3) Technology Analysis and Strategic Management - since 2002 4) R&D Management – since 2002 5) Research Policy – since 2004; 6) Journal of Technology Transfer - since 2005; 7) Building Research and Information – since 2006; 8) Higher Education - since 2011; 9) Minerva – since 2012; 10) Public Management Review (2012); 11) Technological Forecasting & Social Change (2012); 12) Social Networks (2013); 13) Scientometrics (2012) Denise Chiavetta, Dr Wolfgang Glaenzel; 14) Policy and Politics (from 2015); 15) Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology; 16) Diabetic Medicine (from 2017); 17) Journal of Evolutionary Economics (from 2017); 18) Small Business Economics (from 2017); 19) California Management Review (from 2018); 20) Publications (from 2018) (ISSN 2304-6775); 21) Journal of Cleaner Production (from 2019); 22) Economics of Innovation and New Technology (from 2019); 23) British Medical Journal – BMJ Open (from 2019); 24) PLOS-One (from 2019); 25) Accountability in Research (from 2020); 26) Social Science Computer Review (from 2021); 27) Catena (from 2021); 28) Entropy (from 2021); 29) Economics Letters (from 2021); 30) Journal of Informetrics (from 2021); 31) Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings (from 2021); 32)  International Review of Administrative Sciences (from 2022) ‘Oldest scholarly and peer-reviewed public administration journal specifically focused on comparative and international topics’; 33) Qeios (from 2022); 34) Review of Policy Research (from 2023); 35) International Journal of Epidemiology (from 2024); 36) Sustainable Development (from 2024).

John's research company, Bibliometrica Ltd, founded in 2020, conducts bibliometric research consulting, training and impactful interventions in a range of science and technology policy areas.

John continues his engagement with public procurement and innovation through a role as a senior policy adviser at the leading European legal firm, Corvers Procurement Services BV.