Emma MacDonald

Professor Emma Macdonald is Charles Huang Chair in International Business and Director of the Stephen Young Institute at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.

Prior to joining Strathclyde in 2023, Emma was Professor of Marketing at Warwick Business School for four years. She was at Cranfield School of Management for a decade before that, rising to Professor and Head of the Sustainability and Marketing faculty groups. She completed her PhD with Prof. Mark Uncles at UNSW and Masters by Research with Prof. Byron Sharp at the University of South Australia.

Emma consults to organisations across the globe in business and nonprofit sectors, in product and service industries, and in business-to-consumer, business-to-business and government sectors. She has launched and led open and custom executive programmes including a popular 2-day Customer Experience Strategy programme. She has led and taught EMBA, FTMBA and Masters level courses for over two decades. She is Visiting Professor in Cranfield’s Sustainable Business Group; alongside colleagues from Cranfield she developed and taught the Sustainable Futures Game which they took to COP26, Glasgow to demonstrate in the COP Green Zone.

Emma’s research in sustainability and marketing has been published in Harvard Business Review, and in top-ranked journals including Journal of Marketing, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Journal of Retailing, Journal of Service Research, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Industrial Marketing Management, Psychology & Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Cleaner Production, and Technology Forecasting and Social Change.

Emma has received funding from UK research councils (EPSRC, ESRC, InnovateUK) and the Australian Government. Two projects with MESH Experience were ranked by InnovateUK amongst the “best of the best” in the categories of ‘impact’ and ‘partnerships’ and selected as an ESRC Impact Case.