About
Research
Email: sara.spear@stmarys.ac.uk
Biography
As Dean of the Faculty of Business and Law, Sara oversees the broad range of teaching, research and external engagement activity within the Faculty, including marketing, communications, sports and charity management, politics, and criminology.
Sara joined St Mary’s in 2022 from Anglia Ruskin University, where she was Head of School of Management. She has previously been Associate Head of the Department for the Marketing, Events and Tourism group at the University of the West of England and a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the University of Portsmouth.
Sara has led programmes and taught on a range of modules at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and her teaching has focused particularly on social marketing, marketing communications, business ethics, and research methods. She received her PhD in Marketing from the University of Portsmouth in 2015, with her research focused on corporate communication and reputation management, and particularly exploring organisational stories and their impact on organisation members.
Research
Research profile
Sara’s current research interests are in marketing and management for social good, especially within educational settings. Sara has delivered projects funded by the British Academy, British Council, Public Health England, and Cambridge and Suffolk Councils, amongst others.
Recent work has included:
- evaluating services to support children’s school readiness
- evaluating interventions for engaging disadvantaged children in learning
- enhancing parental engagement in special schools
- exploring older people’s perceptions of choices in end-of-life care.
Sara’s work with schools has drawn upon practice theory as a way of approaching cultural change, and she has a particular interest in qualitative and participative methodologies.