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 is now a part), the University’s main research centre in science and technology policy. John previously held the role of 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 a number for the European Commission on the assessment of the socio-economic impacts of the Framework Programmes and for many departments of the UK Government including in 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 is 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 includes 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. Previous recent 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 acts as a book reviewer and a referee for fourteen major journals in the science policy, construction and evaluation fields. He supervises PhD students who are working on topics in science policy and innovation policy and very much welcomes applications from those who wish to undertake doctoral research in these areas.

John is the immediate 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.

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